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:
Friends of the Earth has launched an online advertising campaign in opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill moving through Congress. Here are some of the ads we're running on progressive and environmental websites.
The history of the Clean Air Act has demonstrated its value in reducing air pollution and improving health and welfare in cost-effective ways. Its programs have reduced a wide variety of air pollutants -- from nitrous oxides to volative organic compounds, from sulphur to pollutants causing the ozone hole -- and have done so across a wide variety of sources, from stationary sources to motor vehicles.
The Clean Air Act’s regulations have also resulted in the development of cutting-edge pollution control technologies such as SO2 scrubbers and catalytic converters as industry responded creatively to theEnvironmental Protect Agency's (EPA) mandate for clean air.
The American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (ACELA) fails to heed President Obama’s call for clean energy jobs and a green economy. Instead it takes the same past false steps and increases our reliance on failed dirty energy sources.
ACELA 2009 is expected to become a part of a larger climate and energy bill that would come to the Senate floor in the fall. It would be combined with global warming legislation from Chairwoman Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee, an energy tax package from Chairman Baucus’s Finance Committee and pieces from other committees.
A bill intended to spur the United States’ transition to a clean energy economy and reduce global warming pollution is advancing in Congress. The bill (H.R. 2454), sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21.
Friends of the Earth appreciates the work members of Congress have put into crafting and debating this bill and welcomes its multi-pronged approach. Using an array of complementary strategies to transition to a clean energy economy is smarter than relying on any single policy option.
Unfortunately, special interest lobbyists paid by Big Oil, Dirty Coal and other polluters—as well as Wall Street traders—have managed to substantially weaken the bill. (The fact that giant polluters like Shell Oil and Duke Energy, which is trying to build new coal-fired power plants, are backing the bill demonstrates its impotence.)
International climate change negotiations are underway in Bonn, Germany. These negotiations, formally known as an "intercessional," are running from June 1 to 12 and are intended to lay the groundwork for countries to form a binding agreement to tackle the climate crisis. The agreement is expected to be finalized during further negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, later this year.
Two Friends of the Earth U.S. staff (Kate Horner and Karen Orenstein) are in Bonn to participate in the negotiations, and they're producing this video blog to keep folks back home up to speed.
On June 8, a settlement was reached shortly before Shell was due to stand trial in U.S. federal court for complicity in the executions of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other nonviolent Nigerian activists.
After 13 years of legal battles, the deaths of these activists who opposed Shell's gas flaring and environmental devastation of their homeland have been recompensed. Shell was forced to pay $15.5 million, including $5 million for a trust to benefit communities in Ogoni territory in Nigeria, the homeland of the executed activists.
Just when you thought that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill couldn't get any worse, it does.
According to Friends of the Earth's analysis of the bill, the bill would over 100 billions of dollars in permits to the industries that contribute greatest to global warming: coal and oil. Happily, the bill also provides a significant amount of money to low income and consumers as well as smaller portions to international adaptation and clean energy technology transfer.
On May 21, comprehensive climate change legislation passed a congressional committee for the first time in history. Unfortunately, what should be a momentous occasion for all of us is, instead, a huge letdown.
For more than 10 years, I have fought in the trenches with champions such as Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey (the bill's sponsors), hoping for an opportunity to pass the sort of bold clean energy bill that our planet desperately needs. After last year's elections, we finally have that opportunity, but it's being squandered with this bill.
The last week’s deliberations on climate legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee 
did not leave environmental safeguards from biofuels unscathed. The bill containes severely compromised language on forest protections for the Renewable Fuels Standard’s biofuels mandate. While several amendments to further weaken forest protections were introduced, they fortunately failed to get enough votes in committee voting.
The biggest looming threat, however, is increasingly noisy calls to hold the climate bill hostage if the global warming protections in the Renewable Fuels Standard are not significantly weakened. While amendments to weaken this provison did not pass in committee, these global warmng provisions are still under attack by the powerful agricultural committee.
The nations of the world expect U.S. leadership this year in international climate negotiations, which will culminate in the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark in December. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES Act) begins to take steps to address key issues in the international negotiations, such as emissions reductions targets and support for international adaptation, clean technology and the protection of tropical forests. But in all these areas, the ACES Act fails to meet the necessary level of ambition from the United States to reach a strong and equitable global climate agreement.
