October, 09 2024, 01:11pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Gigi Singh, Campaign Communication Manager, Greenpeace USA, gsingh@greenpeace.org
Study confirms Hurricane Helene fueled by Big Oil’s emissions: Greenpeace calls for climate polluters to pay
Reacting to a rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution[1] that links the historic storm Helene that killed at least 227 people across six states to climate change induced by fossil fuel warming,
Rolf Skar, Greenpeace USA National Campaigns Director said:
“The evidence is overwhelming: climate change is fueling the extreme weather patterns we are witnessing worldwide. Hurricane Helene is just one example of the increasing frequency and severity of storms. This week, Hurricane Milton has already reached Cat 5 and is projected to bring life threatening hurricane force winds and a destructive storm surge to Florida. Those directly impacted by these disasters endure immense suffering, while major oil and gas companies continue to prioritise profits over the well-being of our planet and its people. As these extreme weather patterns become more intense and frequent, the costs to life and property will only escalate. It’s time to make big oil and gas polluters pay for the mess they have created.”
Ian Duff, Head of Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign said:
“The death and misery brought by storms like Helene and Milton are what we get while the oil and gas giants that are responsible take in massive profits. So long as nowhere is safe from the climate crisis, there must be no impunity for climate polluters. Any new U.S. administration must force Big Oil to stop drilling and start paying for the harms it is doing to everyday people and the economy.”
The total economic loss from the humanitarian crisis created by Hurricane Helene, including damages to infrastructure, healthcare costs, blackouts, and business disruptions, was estimated by AccuWeather[2] to be as high as $250 billion.
Storm Helene and hurricane Milton are striking the U.S. while Big Oil is making such violent events ever more likely, with companies like TotalEnergies, Shell, Energy Transfer and Eni launching intimidation lawsuits against those who warn of their toxic mode of operations.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Senate GOP Healthcare Plan Decried as ‘Utter Joke’ That Would Devastate Sick Americans
One campaigner said Republicans want to force people "onto junk plans that leave them at risk of crippling medical debt."
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The Republican healthcare proposal that's set for a vote in the US Senate on Thursday would not prevent insurance premiums from skyrocketing for tens of millions of Americans and would likely harm sicker people by promoting high-deductible plans.
The GOP bill, led by Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), would allow enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits to expire, replacing them in 2026 and 2027 with an annual payment of up to $1,500 in tax-advantaged health savings accounts to help cover out-of-pocket costs.
The catch is that only Americans enrolled in high-deductible bronze or catastrophic plans on the ACA exchanges would be eligible for the funding, which could not be used on monthly premiums. In 2026, the average individual deductible for bronze plans is $7,476, and the average for catastrophic plans is $10,600.
Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, said Tuesday that "premium payments would still more than double next year" under the GOP plan, which does not have enough support to overcome the Senate's 60-vote filibuster.
"Healthy people could be better off in a high deductible plan with a health savings account," Levitt noted. "People who are sick would face big premium increases or a deductible they can't afford."
Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, called Senate Republicans' legislation "an utter joke that would set healthcare progress back by decades and leave Americans high and dry without the care and coverage they deserve."
"Republicans are proving once again how unserious they are," said Woodhouse. "Instead of protecting hard-working families, Sens. Cassidy and Crapo want to force them off the insurance plans they like and onto junk plans that leave them at risk of crippling medical debt. That’s not what American families want, and it’s certainly not what they deserve.”
Asked earlier this week if he supports the Crapo-Cassidy bill, President Donald Trump responded, "I like the concept."
The Senate GOP plan was introduced as a counter to Democrats' push for a clean three-year extension of the enhanced ACA subsidies. Republicans, who passed legislation over the summer that enacted the largest-ever cuts to Medicaid, are expected to vote down the Democratic plan on Thursday.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that if the ACA tax credits lapse at the end of the year, "a couple making $44,000 (208% of the poverty level) will see their monthly marketplace premium rise from $85 to $253—an annual increase of $2,013."
With the Senate vote looming, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) is "still trying to figure out" his healthcare proposal, Politico reported Tuesday.
"The goal is for GOP lawmakers to have 'something' to vote on before the end of next week, according to one of the senior House Republicans involved in the talks," the outlet added, "even if there is no time left for the Senate to pass it before the subsidies lapse."
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President Donald Trump's administration has drastically slashed resources for enforcing tax laws, and the result has been a massive plunge in tax-related prosecutions.
A Tuesday report from Reuters found that federal tax prosecutions in 2025 fell to "their lowest level in decades this year," falling by 27% over the last year.
The report noted that the Trump administration has made "deep cuts to the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigative unit," and has also reassigned some agents who worked in the unit to focus more on immigration cases.
The Trump administration has even assigned more than 20 IRS agents in the agency's DC office to conduct patrols alongside city police officers as part of the president's purported plan to reduce crime in the capital city, Reuters reported.
Reuters also observed that the US Department of Justice closed its Tax Division, and that "a third or more of the criminal lawyers who worked there quit."
Sources told Reuters that the Trump administration explicitly told DOJ prosecutors earlier this year that tax prosecutions were not a top priority, and one source said that DOJ leadership under the second Trump administration was "very skeptical about white-collar crime and whether we should be doing those cases."
The report added that US attorneys' offices at the moment are unlikely to pick up the slack for enforcing tax laws given that DOJ records show "more than 1,000 lawyers have left US attorneys’ offices this year, roughly double the number who quit or were pushed out in previous years."
David Hubbert, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at New York University’s law school, told Reuters that these cuts would likely result in a surge in tax cheating.
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"The choices we make in the coming years will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity."
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The global wealth gap has become so staggering, and its impact on economies and democratic institutions so corrosive, that policymakers should treat it as an emergency, argues the third edition of the World Inequality Report, a comprehensive analysis that draws on the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide. Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a researcher at the World Inequality Lab, is the report's lead author.
"Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention," reads the new report. "The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices."
The richest 10% of the global population, according to the latest data, own three-quarters of the world's wealth and capture more income than the rest of humanity. Within most countries, it is rare for the bottom 50% to control more than 5% of national wealth.
"This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating," the report observes. "Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population. The poorest have made modest gains, but these are overshadowed by the extraordinary accumulation at the very top."
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