The impacts of global warming are already being felt. If we don’t act now, the climate crisis will become much worse, dramatically impacting people around the world and causing irreversible damage to the environment. Friends of the Earth believes we can and must solve this crisis and do so in an equitable and responsible way, but the path ahead is not easy. It will require bold leadership and a broad transformation of our society.
Friends of the Earth is working for aggressive legislation in the United States that quickly reduces -- and eventually ends -- our country's emissions of heat-trapping gasses. We are also participating in Friends of the Earth International's efforts to bring the international community together behind a strong global climate agreement, without which this problem cannot be solved.
Read the latest news and updates from our Global Warming campaign:
Despite conclusive evidence (see http://foe.org/keystone-xl-pipeline-influence-scandal) that the State Department has overseen a corrupt Keystone XL tar sands pipeline review process, the Obama administration indicated last Thursday (November 10) that the department will remain in charge of the new environmental review of the proposed pipeline.
But additional evidence has surfaced that will complicate the State Department's bid to oversee this review. Friends of the Earth and allies have received a third tranche of documents in response to our Freedom of Information Act request and what is hidden from view is just as concerning as the further evidence of collusion with TransCanada that is revealed. The evidence indicates State Department employees have inappropriately shown favoritism toward TransCanada – acting as though it was their job to ensure the pipeline was approved rather than that an impartial review was conducted. It also shows that the department is hiding something.
Friends of the Earth is proud to team up with Annie Leonard, creator of the hit video The Story of Stuff, on her latest project -- The Story of Broke. This new video describes the myriad ways in which our government subsidizes big polluters and other destructive industries and then tells us that we’re broke. As the video illustrates, the truth is we're not broke. If we shift government spending away from the "dinosaur economy" and toward protecting our environment, safeguarding public health and educating our kids we can create jobs and build a better future.
12,000 strong. That's how many people showed up Sunday, November 6 -- exactly one year before Election Day 2012 -- to link arms around the White House in a circle of hope (three rings deep!) and urge President Obama to stop the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
We're gaining momentum day by day. We can win, but only with continued commitment to hold President Obama to his word.
Evidence is mounting that the State Department’s review of a proposed tar sands oil pipeline has been corrupted by bias, lobbyist influence and conflicts of interest. The growing scandal is making front-page headlines and putting new pressure on President Obama to stop the pipeline.
The proposed pipeline — TransCanada’s Keystone XL — would transport the world’s dirtiest oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The pipeline threatens drinking water, air quality, and the livelihoods of the people who live along its route. It would also act as a “carbon bomb” that jeopardizes our climate.
At the core of the scandal: the firm Cardno Entrix, allowed by the State Department to conduct the impacts review for the pipeline despite a stunning conflict of interest; emails between State Department staff and TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott, previously a top Hillary Clinton campaign aide, that indicate bias and complicty at State; a web of lobbyists and State Department employees cozy with the oil industry; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who announced last year announced she was “inclined” to approve the pipeline even though the State Department’s review was not yet complete.
The recently released Green Scissors 2011 report identifies environmentally beneficial spending cuts that could save taxpayers more than $380 billion. Recommended cuts range from giveaways to big oil companies to road projects to environmentally destructive Army Corps of Engineers projects.
One program highlighted in the report is the little-known Advanced Research Programs Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, which is part of the Department of Energy. Because this has received some attention since the report’s publication yesterday (see, for example Stephen Lacey’s post at Climate Progress, or Michael Grunwald’s praise for ARPA-E at Time’s Swampland blog), I want to explain why Friends of the Earth supports ARPA-E’s inclusion in this year’s (and last year’s) report.
Every year, the federal government gives away more than $10 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies. These polluting industries are already raking in record profits -- it’s an outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars to pay them for damaging our environment.
Download our action toolkit for five simple ways to get Congress to eliminate oil and gas subsidies.
A new report by Friends of the Earth, called Corn Ethanol and Climate Change, targets the Environmental Protection Agency and the Renewable Fuel Standard for manipulating data -- and the public -- in order to increase incentives for dirty biofuels.
In July 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on three new free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Friends of the Earth and other environmental advocates oppose ratification of the three agreements, which were negotiated by the George W. Bush administration and are based on the flawed model of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In the past several years, extreme weather events have wreaked devastation around the globe -- from violent tornadoes that descend out of nowhere to reduce entire towns to rubble, to floodwaters that break their containment dams and levees to surge into the streets, to wildfires that consume hundreds of acres and threaten homes. In just the past year, records have been broken, billions of dollars have been lost, millions of people have been displaced and hundreds more have lost their lives. But although the circumstances of each event are unique, they are all linked by a common thread -- the serious impacts of global climate change.
As Wall Street profits remain sky high and fat cat bonuses are doled out on silver spoons, the world's poor are struggling to deal with a climate crisis that they did not cause, facing increasingly severe droughts, floods, crop losses and water shortages. Current pledges of climate finance by developed countries ($30 billion until 2012 and an aim of mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020) come nowhere near the sums needed to address climate change in developing countries. But there are solutions in front of us. A financial transaction tax levied on all financial market transactions involving stocks, bonds, foreign exchange and derivatives could raise hundreds of billions per year, helping to fund a just transition to low-carbon economies in developing countries while also supporting public services at home. This tiny tax is only one of many options on the table that could help plug the gap in much needed financing from developed countries.
This blog post is one of a series of updates from Friends of the Earth representatives at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany.
