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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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.
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.
On Wednesday, we released a joint statement with Greenpeace and Public Citizen to express our concern about disturbing changes to the new climate bill currently being discussed in Congress:
We are extremely troubled by the reports coming out of the Energy and Commerce Committee last night on additional compromises to the already flawed American Clean Energy & Security Act. The world needs real leadership from Congress and the Administration to address global warming — action that will enable us to transform our economy with clean, renewable energy technology, new green jobs and show leadership internationally. If reports are true, the compromises being struck on the bill undermine these goals.
Friends of the Earth released a report in May 2009 that examined the extent to which biofuels are subsidized by the tax credits as well as the Renewable Fuels Standard. The report found that biofuels received enormous benefits from these policies, particularly when combined. Between 2008 and 2022, biofuels will have received more than $400 billion in subsidization. This value could more than double, to $1 trillion, should we continue to increase biofuels production, as President Obama promised in his presidential campaign bid. Meanwhile, these subsidies are not driving us to sustainable biofuels, and in fact, they support even the most horrendous biofuels, such as corn ethanol.
Gas flares are created when oil companies burn off extra gas that escapes as a result of oil drilling.
Gas flares burn several stories high throughout the Niger Delta, often within a few hundred yards of communities. Some flares, like the one pictured here, have been burning constantly day and night for over 30 years.
People living in villages near the flares suffer from polluted air and water, and contract asthma and cancer as a result of breathing flare smoke.
On April 1st, Friends of the Earth and Rainforest Action Network asked our e-activists to vote for the biggest biofool. The votes have been tallied and Hugh Grant, CEO of Monsanto, won by a landslide.
Grant has been a long-time supporter of biofuels, insisting, despite evidence to the contrary, that biofuels are good for the environment.
Today, April 1st 2009, in partnership with Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth held the inaugural Biofools Day. We asked our online activists to vote on who was the biggest “biofool” from a choice of three industry heads and three lawmakers who support biofuels despite compounding evidence that biofuels are neither economically nor ecologically sensible. Take action at: biofoolsday.org.
