Friends of the Earth is exposing and fighting pollution and exploitation of our ecosystems. Our Clean Vessels campaign is cleaning up the cruise industry, protecting marine sanctuaries, and reducing air pollution from ocean-going vessels. The environment is for everyone, and a healthy and just world requires clean air and water.
Read the latest news and updates from our Air and Water campaigns:
Friends of the Earth submitted comments to President Barack Obama’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. We commend President Obama for addressing the critical need for a national policy unifying ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes protections and we make recommendations for improving regulation of the significant air and water pollution from the shipping industry.
Read our comments to the Ocean Policy Task Force.
Friends of the Earth has come out in opposition to the nomination of Joseph G. Pizarchik to become the the Director of the Office of Surface Mining
Reclamation and Enforcement, which is part of the Department of the Interior. Our opposition to his nomination is informed both by his experiences in regulating coal mining and coal combustion waste in Pennsylvania, as well as our desire to see fundamental change at an agency that continues to allow the unlawful expanded use of one of the most destructive forms of coal mining, mountaintop removal.
We received a big reminder of the threat to whales from large, ocean-going ships this past week as the Sapphire Princess, a cruise ship returning from a voyage to Alaska, impaled a fin whale likely north of Vancouver Island. Knowledge of the strike was only realized when the cruise ship arrived at the Port of Vancouver with the whale's dead body wedged against the cruise ship's bow. A test is currently being performed to determine if the whale was alive when it was struck – which is generally the case. This unfortunate incident occurred despite the cruise line’s assertions that is has "strict whale avoidance procedures in place when our ships are in the vicinity of marine life," and goes to show that more must be done to protect these wondrous creatures.
New international regulations to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from ships will be considered in London next week at the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization meeting which is being held from July 13 to July 17, 2009.
The meeting will host over 170 Member States and Associate Members, plus shipping industry groups, and environmental organizations, including Friends of the Earth. The gathering will focus on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, an extremely contentious issue which has divided the organization’s members. In addition, the meeting will address whether a first-of-its-kind U.S./Canada clean shipping zone proposal will be considered. It will also address environmental requirements for Arctic shipping, which is expanding rapidly without adequate oversight.
Members of Congress from California sent a letter today to Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urging the EPA to allow California to protect its waters and the public from harmful sewage discharges from large ships. Friends of the Earth thanks these Members of Congress for taking action and standing up for the people and coast of California.
Nine years and two court battles after Friends of the Earth first demanded that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) craft more protective air pollution limits for large ships, the agency announced proposed cleaner air pollution standards for ocean-going vessels last week. The rules would reduce harmful pollutants by 80 percent or more by 2030, preventing between 13,000 and 33,000 premature deaths.
This Monday, June 8 is World Oceans Day! After many years and much effort on the part of oceans advocates, the United Nations declared June 8, 2009 as the first official World Oceans Day.
World Oceans Day provides us with an opportunity to recognize why the oceans matter to us. Unless we spend a lot of time in or near the ocean, it can be easy to think of the ocean as a vast blue “other” that has nothing to do with our daily existence.
Right now, cruise ships and other large ocean going vessels are getting a free pass because the standards for dumping their sewage are over 30 years old! We recently submitted a petition to the U.S. EPA urging it to bring large ship sewage dumping standards into the 21st century. The EPA’s standards were set in 1976, based on pollution treatment technology available at the time. More than 30 years later, those standards have yet to be updated to take into account modern technology.
April 28, 2009 – Friends of the Earth issued a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today urging the EPA to update standards governing sewage dumping from large ships. These outdated standards, adopted in 1976, allow the use of 30-year-old treatment technology and fail to protect water quality. Far better treatment technology exists and has been in use in some cruise ships for years.
We recently passed the the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. And what is there to remember from such an awful environmental disaster? Maybe the thousands of gallons of crude oil still polluting Alaska, the almost assured extinction of an orca pod, the collapse of the Prince William Sound herring stock, or the paltry amount Alaskan fishermen were finally paid by Exxon, which will never make up for ruined lives and ruined livelihoods.
