February, 14 2023, 03:03pm EDT
Sierra Club Supporters Submit More than Sixteen Thousand Comments Urging EPA to Finalize Strongest Possible Methane Rule
Comments Show Support, But More Limits on Flaring Needed to Protect Climate & Public Health
The public comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed supplemental rule aimed at cutting methane and other emissions from the oil and gas sector ends today. The broad coalition of methane rule supporters submitted more than 400,000 comments, more than 16,000 of which came from Sierra Club members and volunteers, urging EPA to further strengthen the draft rule and quickly finalize, by summer at the latest, and implement it so communities can realize its emission reduction benefits as soon as possible.
While the comments supported the supplemental rule, which is an improvement over the original draft from 2021, they also urged EPA to impose greater limits on the harmful practice of flaring. These restraints are critical to ensure the strongest possible methane safeguards to mitigate climate change and protect public health. EPA must also widen standards to address emissions from more storage tanks and improve and clarify ways in which communities and individuals can report large leaks.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, driving approximately one-third of the warming our planet has experienced to date. Each year, the U.S. oil and gas sector emits 16 million metric tons of methane, alongside other damaging and harmful pollutants, into our atmosphere.
In January, over three days of public hearings, 289 advocates across 33 states and 110 organizations testified in support of a strong methane rule. Along with the written comments, it should now be clear to EPA that finalizing maximally protective safeguards against methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is essential to advancing environmental justice, slowing the rate of climate change, and keeping everyone's air clean and safe to breathe.
In response, Sierra Club released the following statements:
Senior Director of Energy Campaigns Kelly Sheehan said: “The response to EPA during this public comment period leaves no question: the agency must strengthen and finalize the strongest possible methane rule as swiftly as possible to protect clean air and ensure a stable climate and healthy communities. During the public hearings and this comment period, EPA heard from people who have experienced the harmful impacts of pollution from oil and gas drilling firsthand, who live and work on the frontlines of the climate crisis, and who are counting on the agency to hold these fossil fuel companies accountable. Many of these communities live in states where political leaders have failed to prioritize community protections. We urge EPA–for the benefit of our families, economy, and climate–to incorporate these recommendations into the final rule and to enact the strongest safeguards possible without delay. Nothing less than our lives and planet depends on it.”
Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter’s Conservation Director Cyrus Reed said: “No state produces more oil and gas than Texas, and no state has more to gain from strong methane regulations than our state. Unfortunately, state leadership and our two main state agencies that have a role in regulating methane -- the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Railroad Commission, have largely turned a blind eye on Texas communities, putting our health and our planet at risk. We look to the federal government to do what our state leadership has not done - protect our communities. The EPA can and must adopt a strong final rule on methane pollution.”
Sierra Club Organizer for Southern New Mexico Antoinette Reyes said: “It has been more than a year since its initial introduction, so we are looking forward to the finalization of EPA’s methane rule after hundreds of thousands of comments showed clear support for a strong rule that cracks down on leaks. Air pollution knows no boundary, these rules are necessary to protect public health and the environment in New Mexico, as well as in bordering states, like Texas. It is the job of the EPA to create meaningful federal rules that set a minimum standard for new and existing oil and gas operations - it is the best tool we have to protect communities from harmful pollutants. After a huge outpouring of comments from all over the country, it is not critical that a final, strong rule be implemented as soon as possible to ensure that our communities' air gets cleaned up for healthier, fuller lives."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Lobbyist-Dominated Plastics Talks End Without Clear Path to Production Cuts
"Despite mounting proof of plastics' enormous harm to people and the planet, the petrochemical industry and the countries that put them first are ramping up efforts to water down this treaty," one campaigner said.
Apr 30, 2024
The fourth and second-to-last round of negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty concluded Tuesday with what campaigners called a "weak" and "disappointing" compromise, as countries did not agree to discuss curbing primary plastic production before the final session later this year.
The "underwhelming" result came at the close of talks in Ottawa, Canada, at which 196 fossil fuel or chemical industry lobbyists attended, a 37% increase from the third round of negotiations and more than the entire delegation of the European Union.
"People are being harmed by plastic production every day, but states are listening more closely to petrochemical lobbyists than health scientists," Graham Forbes, Greenpeace's head of delegation to the negotiations and Greenpeace USA's global plastics campaign lead, said in a statement. "Any child can see that we cannot solve the plastic crisis unless we stop making so much plastic."
"The Global South countries who are fighting tooth and nail for a strong plastics treaty have been steamrolled by the will of wealthy nations."
Civil society and frontline groups called reducing plastics production a "nonnegotiable" component of the treaty heading into the fourth session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee to advance a plastics treaty (INC-4), the continuation of a process launched at a United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi in 2022. However, when delegates agreed at the end of the latest negotiations to continue discussions of certain issues in "intersessional" work, this did not include a discussion of primary plastic polymers.
"From the beginning of negotiations, we have known that we need to cut plastic production to adopt a treaty that lives up to the promise envisioned at UNEA two years ago," said David Azoulay, the director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). "In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address production of primary plastic polymers. But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional program, we saw the same developed member states who claim to be leading the world toward a world free from plastic pollution, abandon all pretense as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them."
The negotiations, which began April 23, were pulled between more ambitious countries—particularly Global South countries in Africa, Latin American, and the Pacific Islands—and the so-called "Like-Minded Group" of fossil fuel and polymer producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Kuwait, Qatar, and India. On the more ambitious side of the spectrum, Rwanda and Peru spearheaded a call for intersessional work on a plan to cut production of primary polymers by 40% of 2025 levels by 2040, which was backed by Malawi, the Philippines, and Fiji.
"While not high enough to avoid breaching the 1.5°C climate target, Rwanda and Peru's proposal is the first time a group of countries have put forward a specific target for plastic production cuts," environmental coalition GAIA said in a statement.
Another promising development was the Bridge to Busan Declaration on Primary Plastic Polymers, in which signatories promised to work toward maintaining a plastic production reduction commitment in line with the Paris agreement in the final treaty text, to be set in Busan, South Korea, at the end of 2024.
On the other hand, Break Free From Plastics said that some countries had obstructed the process by pressuring negotiators to agree to consensus, even though the procedure allows for voting when consensus cannot be reached. They also interfered with the drafting of the treaty itself.
"A small number of countries continued their obstructionist and low-ambition tactics—watering down, adding countless brackets, and shamelessly twisting the language across the different provisions in an attempt to narrow the scope and lower the ambitions of the treaty," the group said.
However, GAIA said that negotiations did make progress on a draft treaty text that included a reduction of plastic production, the banning of toxic chemical additives, a financial mechanism to help countries meet targets, and a commitment to a just transition. After this progress, the chair's proposal that intersession work would not consider polymers came as a surprise.
"Tonight's upsets show that historical injustices have made their way into the halls of the plastics treaty negotiations," Camila Aguilera, communications officer for GAIA Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. "The Global South countries who are fighting tooth and nail for a strong plastics treaty have been steamrolled by the will of wealthy nations. The debate over intersessional work is a proxy for these geopolitical divides between the Global North and the Global South."
CIEL said that several countries in the self-described "High Ambition Coalition," (HAC) including the European Union, had not pushed back sufficiently on attempts to weaken the treaty and the process. It, along with many other environmental groups, also criticized the United States, which is not an HAC member, for failing to stand up for an ambitious treaty.
"Negotiating with the U.S. and other oil states has felt like trying to negotiate with industry, always prioritizing profit over the well-being of people and the planet."
"The United States needs to stop pretending to be a leader and own the failure it has created here," said CIEL President Carroll Muffett. "When the world's biggest exporter of oil and gas, and one of the biggest architects of the plastic expansion, says that it will ignore plastic production at the expense of the health, rights, and lives of its own people, the world listens. Even as the U.S. signaled to the G7 that it would commit to reduce plastic production, it intentionally blocked efforts to do that in the global talks most relevant to the issue. It's time to ask whether the U.S. delegation to the plastics treaty simply missed the memo on protecting health and human rights from the plastic threat, or whether the Biden administration forgot to send it."
Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Julie Teel Simmonds said that "rather than showing leadership, the United States has remained disappointedly in the middle."
"The U.S. proposals lack binding targets and focus on cutting demand for plastic rather than production itself," Simmonds continued. "And they don't go beyond existing U.S. policy, which has failed to curb plastic production or protect frontline communities and the environment from harm."
Frankie Orona, the executive director of the Society of Native Nations, recounted that "negotiating with the U.S. and other oil states has felt like trying to negotiate with industry, always prioritizing profit over the well-being of people and the planet."
On the final day of negotiations, Break Free From Plastics published a statement calling out the U.S. for not committing to legally binding plastic production cut targets, underselling its own regulatory apparatus, and overemphasizing recycling.
"As the world's largest consumer and exporter of plastic waste, purporting to recognize the severity of the crisis, the U.S. must act decisively on these imperatives rather than negotiating an ineffective treaty that will sacrifice the public health and human rights of all to the interests of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries," the group said.
It demanded that the U.S. delegation support a legally binding treaty that includes set global targets; production caps, phaseouts, and phasedowns for plastic polymers; the health-based control of toxic chemicals in production; a just transition for all communites impacted by the plastics lifecycle; and waste management that protects health and the environment and rejects false solutions.
Civil society groups also argued that negotiators should heed the demands of Indigenous peoples, and that they should be given more resources and support to participate. However, CIEL found that plastics lobbyists outnumbered the 28 representatives of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus by a rate of seven to one.
"We need intersessional work with the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples—who are rights holders with traditional knowledge and a deep understanding of sustainable resource management—as well as frontline and fenceline communities—who, for generations, have borne the brunt of environmental damage from fossil fuels and petrochemical production," Orona said. "By including these often-marginalized groups, we can move beyond 'business as usual' to achieve an ambitious treaty that protects our environment, respects human rights, and fosters a more equitable and sustainable future for all of us and Mother Earth."
Green groups also called for conflict-of-interest policies to reduce the role of industry lobbyists.
"Despite mounting proof of plastics' enormous harm to people and the planet, the petrochemical industry and the countries that put them first are ramping up efforts to water down this treaty," Teel Simmonds said. "We'll keep fighting their deception and obstruction because the world desperately needs a treaty that protects us from plastic production and pollution. And we'll keep pushing the United States to lead."
The next and last round of negotiations is set to begin on November 25. In the meantime, intersessional work will move forward on a financial mechanism, plastic products, chemicals of concern in plastic products, product design, reusability, and recyclability. Observers will be able to contribute to these sessions, while another group conducts a legal review of the treaty.
"The success of the International Plastics Treaty depends on the reduction of primary plastic polymers," said Yu Hyein from the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements and Friends of the Earth, South Korea. "There was not enough discussion on this at INC-4, and it is likely that this will continue at INC-5. As a host country and a member of the High Ambition Coalition, the Korean government should make an ambitious declaration on reducing primary plastic polymers."
Greenpeace's Forbes added, "The entire world is watching, and if countries, particularly in the so-called 'High Ambition Coalition,' don't act between now and INC-5 in Busan, the treaty they are likely to get is one that could have been written by ExxonMobil and their acolytes."
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Trump Says He Would Let States Prosecute Women for Violating Abortion Bans
"There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump will choose anti-abortion extremists and their horrifying agenda over American families every single chance he gets," said one reproductive rights campaigner.
Apr 30, 2024
Former U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview published Tuesday that if reelected in November, he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban.
That position, said one leading reproductive rights organization, underscores the grave threat the presumptive GOP nominee poses to fundamental freedoms.
"There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump will choose anti-abortion extremists and their horrifying agenda over American families every single chance he gets, and this new interview proves that he will ban abortion in all 50 states," Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in response to the former president's comments. "It's imperative," she added, "that we double down on our mission to reelect the Biden-Harris ticket and deliver congressional majorities to lock our right to abortion care into federal law."
Speaking to TIME magazine, Trump said it's "irrelevant" whether he's "comfortable or not" with states prosecuting people for obtaining abortion care in violation of state-level abortion bans.
"It's totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions," said Trump.
The former president also said he believes states "might" attempt to monitor pregnancies to determine compliance with abortion bans, but the federal government under his leadership would not intervene to stop such a massive invasion of privacy.
TIME's Eric Cortellessa, who conducted the interview, stressed that Trump's allies "don't plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power," pointing to the Heritage Foundation's support for "a 19th-century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills."
"The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to 'the moment of fertilization.'"
When Cortellessa asked Trump if he would veto that legislation if it reached his desk, the former president dodged the question.
"I don't have to do anything about vetoes because we now have it back in the states," Trump said.
"November's election will determine whether women in the United States have reproductive freedom, or whether Trump's new government will continue its assault to control women's healthcare decisions."
In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Republican-led states rushed to impose draconian abortion bans, laws that have endangered lives and forced many to travel out of state to receive care. Nearly two dozen states across the U.S. currently ban or restrict abortion care.
Trump, who nominated three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, has celebrated and taken credit for the high court's decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.
In a video released earlier this month, Trump said he was "proudly the person responsible" for the reversal of Roe and supports letting states do "whatever they decide" on abortion access.
"Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that's what they will be," Trump said in the video. "You must follow your heart—or, in many cases, your religion or your faith."
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has signed executive orders aimed at protecting abortion access, though abortion rights campaigners say such steps are no replacement for the passage of legislation codifying abortion protections at the federal level.
Last week, as The Associated Pressreported, the Biden administration finalized a rule "intended to protect women who live in states where abortion is illegal from prosecution."
"The medical records of women will be shielded from criminal investigations if they cross state lines to seek an abortion where it is legal," the outlet noted. "In states with strict abortion rules, the federal regulation would essentially prohibit state or local officials from gathering medical records related to reproductive healthcare for a civil, criminal, or administrative investigation from providers or health insurers in a state where abortion remains legal."
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Biden's 2024 reelection campaign, said Tuesday that Trump's comments to TIME "leave little doubt: If elected, he'll sign a national abortion ban, allow women who have an abortion to be prosecuted and punished, allow the government to invade women's privacy to monitor their pregnancies, and put IVF and contraception in jeopardy nationwide."
"Simply put: November's election will determine whether women in the United States have reproductive freedom, or whether Trump's new government will continue its assault to control women's healthcare decisions," said Rodriguez. "With the voters on their side this November, President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris will put an end to this chaos and ensure Americans' fundamental freedoms are protected."
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'Scathing Indictment' of Big Oil Lies Unveiled on Eve of Senate Hearing
The report details a "campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence."
Apr 30, 2024
Two U.S. congressional committees on Tuesday released a report that "provides a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions."
The report—titled Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change—was released after nearly three years of investigation by the Democratic staffs of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget Committee.
"For decades, the fossil fuel industry has known about the economic and climate harms of its products but has deceived the American public to keep collecting more than $600 billion each year in subsidies while raking in record-breaking profits," said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
"As this joint report makes clear, the industry's outright denial of climate change has evolved into a green-seeming cover for its ongoing covert operation—a campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence—to block climate progress," the senator added.
Big Oil’s 4 phases on climate change:
1.Learn of the danger posed by climate change from their own scientists
2.Form an armada of front groups to cover it up
3.Deny a problem exists
4.Engage in doublespeak by pretending to care for a solution
Now we're holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/YlqztAZgo1
— Senate Budget Committee (@SenateBudget) April 30, 2024
In a statement welcoming the report, Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said that "this new evidence of Big Oil's climate lies will likely be used to hold these companies accountable in court—and it should generate renewed calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to finally open its own investigation into the fossil fuel industry."
The congressional probe targeted four companies and two industry allies: BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell USA as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Chamber of Commerce. As the report details, the committee staffers found:
- Documents demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science.
- Big Oil's deception campaign evolved from explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.
- The fossil fuel industry relies on trade associations to spread confusing and misleading narratives and to lobby against climate action.
- The fossil fuel industry strategically partners with universities to lend an aura of credibility to its deception campaigns while also silencing opposition voices.
- All six entities—Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber—obstructed and delayed the committees' investigation.
The report was released on the eve of a Wednesday morning Senate hearing hosted by Whitehouse. The House panel's ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—who participated in a related October 2021 event in the lower chamber—is expected to join multiple experts in testifying.
"We applaud Sen. Whitehouse, Rep. Raskin, and their committees for helping to shine further light on Big Oil's ongoing climate deception," said Wiles. "Communities across the country are already taking these polluters to court to make them pay for their deceit, and many of their lawsuits have cited documents unearthed by Congress as evidence."
"Big Oil's concerted efforts to mislead the public about their destructive industry are the most consequential corporate fraud in history," he continued. "Tomorrow's hearing should make clear that it's time for the U.S. Justice Department to get off the sidelines and take action to hold Big Oil accountable for lying to the American people for decades."
Wiles was far from alone in demanding action from the Biden administration based on the committees' findings.
"This report is a scathing indictment of the fossil fuel industry's lies and corruption," declared Cassidy DiPaola, a spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign. "As the impacts of the climate crisis worsen, from deadly heatwaves to devastating floods and wildfires, it's never been more important to hold polluters accountable for the damage they've knowingly caused. The Senate Budget Committee's investigation is a critical step towards justice, and it's time the Biden administration follows suit."
Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay urged President Joe Biden—who is seeking reelection in November—to "fight for young people by holding companies like Exxon accountable for their climate lies."
"President Biden must hold Big Oil responsible by declaring a climate emergency and suing fossil fuel companies for creating the climate crisis and lying to the public about it," Shiney-Ajay said. "For too long we've seen fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Chevron deny the cause of the climate crisis and pretend to fight for climate action, all the while lining their pockets with bigger and bigger returns. This must stop and the president can do something about it."
"Biden must direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute fossil fuel companies like Exxon for their disinformation," she argued. "Until the administration starts treating Big Oil like Big Tobacco, everyday Americans will continue to pay for their lies with flooded homes, hotter summers, and more extreme weather."
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