Friends of the Earth knows regulation, legislation, taxes, and banking have a big impact on our environment. We hold our elected officials accountable and work to expose unnecessary funding for environmentally destructive projects—saving taxpayers’ money and the planet.
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Read the latest news and updates from our Government and Industry campaigns:
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) ill-conceived plan for a nuclear park at a key site in the DOE complex has hit a wall after a persistent challenge by Friends of the Earth. Although never developed as a departmental policy, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management began its own secretive initiative and quietly negotiated with contractors to pursue a subsidized “energy park” at the sprawling Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
The Humane Society of the United States, in conjunction with Friends of the Earth and other organizations, petitioned EPA to regulate global warming pollution and other air pollution from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), or factory farms.
The Renewable Fuels Standard, as passed in the 2007 Energy Bill, is one more step closer to being finalized. Comments to EPA's draft regulation, released in the Spring 2009, were due September the 25th of 2009. The Environmental Community, including Friends of the Earth, wrote brief comments on this issue and were overall supportive with the general approach the EPA took to protect natural lands from biofuel, accounting for global warming pollution from biofuels, and applying sustainabiltiy standards to the fuels. However, we also made some specific recommendations for how EPA could improve the effectiveness of the rule.
Senator Harkin, along with Senators Grassley and Nelson, attempted to scrap funding for EPA to finish their lifecycle analysis of global warming pollution in the 2010 Senate Appropriations Bill. The target of their fury was the inclusion of emissions from deforestation and other forms of land use change that occurs indirectly from increased biofuels production in the lifecycle assessment of biofuels for the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). Luckily, a large coalition of groups, including Friends of the Earth, rallied against this move, resulting in Harkin withdrawing his amendment and allowing EPA to continue it's critical work to finalize their life-cycle analysis.
A broad coalition of more than 300 faith, human rights, social justice, and environmental groups have composed and sent a letter to U.S. senators calling for energy and climate legislation that is much stronger than the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House of Representatives June 26. That bill contained massive giveaways to polluting special interests and would fail to ensure a rapid transition to clean energy.
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.
Many bad deals were made to help pass a major climate and energy bill in the House. Some of the most egregious were brokered on behalf of corporate agribusiness by Rep. Collin Peterson (D - Minn.) and his Agriculture Committee.
Now we have to pressure the Senate to fix the House's compromises.
The $600M investment by Exxon into Synthetic Genomics, J. Craig Venter's synthetic biology company, is just the latest in a string of controversial and what should be eyebrow-raising investment deals between the oil industry and synthetic biology research ventures. The BP-Berkeley deal was the first major investment by Big Oil into synthetic biology research, in which BP invested $500M over 10 years to fund researching synthetic biology for the development of new biofuels in 2007. Since then, almost all major oil companies have invested, steeply, in synthetic biology research for biofuels. Here is a report from ETC Group outlining all of these investments.
Congress has a historic opportunity this year to pass legislation that dramatically reduces greenhouse gas pollution and puts us on a path to clean energy. Unfortunately, that opportunity could be squandered this week when a deeply flawed bill comes to the House floor.
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.
