Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leaves the courthouse after testifying in the Exxon Mobil trial on Oct. 30, 2019 in New York. DON EMMERT / AFP via Getty Images
A judge in New York's Supreme Court sided with Exxon in a case that accused the fossil fuel giant of lying to investors about the true cost of the climate crisis. The judge did not absolve Exxon from its contribution to the climate crisis, but insisted that New York State failed to prove that the company intentionally defrauded investors, as NPR reported.
<p>In fact, the judge seemed to lay the groundwork that Exxon could face litigation for its role in contributing to the climate crisis.</p><p>"Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gasses in the production of its <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuel</a> products," wrote Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York State Supreme Court, as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/10/780317799/exxon-wins-new-york-climate-change-case" target="_blank">NPR</a> reported. But, he added, "this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case."</p><p>The case that New York State built took four years of investigations and millions of pages of internal documents, including emails from Exxon's former CEO and Trump's first Secretary of State <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson" target="_self">Rex Tillerson</a>. The case sought a penalty of $476 million to $1.6 billion to be returned to shareholders for the alleged fraud. As <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-trial-climate-crisis-fraud-2641061957.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" target="_self">EcoWatch</a> reported, the state alleged that Exxon kept two sets of numbers to assess the risk it faced from the climate crisis — one set, showing less vulnerability, was presented to investors, while another showing a more accurate risk assessment was kept by the company.</p><p>As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/climate/exxon-climate-lawsuit-new-york.html?searchResultPosition=1" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported, the judge seemed particularly engaged in Tillerson's testimony, but unimpressed and impatient with New York State's presentation of its case throughout the 12 days of the trial.</p><p>"We provided our investors with accurate information on the risks of climate change," Exxon said in a statement, according to the <a href="https://apnews.com/4f1ed81a07d678a46532f807a407da87" target="_blank">AP</a>. "Lawsuits that waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change."</p><p>New York Attorney General Letitia James touted the lawsuit for what it did accomplish.</p><p>"For the first time in history, Exxon Mobil was compelled to answer publicly for their internal decisions that misled investors," James said in a statement, as <a href="about:blank" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported. She added, "Despite this decision, we will continue to fight to ensure companies are held responsible for actions that undermine and jeopardize the financial health and safety of Americans across our country, and we will continue to fight to end climate change."</p><p>Scientists and environmental activists insisted that Exxon and other fossil fuel companies will one day have to answer for their contribution to the climate crisis.</p><p>"Exxon and its friends will eventually have to take responsibility for the decades of deception about knowingly contributing to climate change," said Vicky Wyatt, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA, in a statement reported by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/10/business/exxon-climate-change-ruling/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. "The people will not stop. We're seeing a wave of frontline communities, political leaders and investors demanding accountability and bold action as climate impacts worsen and become costlier."</p><p>The Union of Concerned Scientists also said that this will not deter people from holding the fossil fuel industry accountable. "The fossil fuel industry's day of reckoning will come," said group President Ken Kimmell, adding that several other lawsuits continue, as the <a href="https://apnews.com/4f1ed81a07d678a46532f807a407da87" target="_blank">AP</a> reported.</p><p>The Massachusetts attorney general filed a similar lawsuit in October that accused Exxon of misleading both consumers and investors for decades about the contribution fossil fuels made to the climate crisis, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-lawsuit-factbox/exxon-wins-climate-change-lawsuit-as-cases-over-global-warming-proliferate-idUSKBN1YE29T" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported.</p><p>Additionally, Rhode Island, Baltimore and about a dozen local governments have filed suits against several oil and gas companies, claiming that the companies created a public nuisance by adding so significantly to the climate crisis. The lawsuits ask the companies to pay for seawalls and other infrastructure designed to protect municipalities from climate crisis-induced <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" target="_self">extreme weather</a> and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">rising sea levels</a>, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-lawsuit-factbox/exxon-wins-climate-change-lawsuit-as-cases-over-global-warming-proliferate-idUSKBN1YE29T" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.</p>
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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives at Travis Air Force Base, California on June 2, 2017. U.S. Air Force / Louis Briscese
The case New York State has brought against ExxonMobil for defrauding investors about the the true cost of the climate crisis is in its second week and is seeing a star witness take the stand Wednesday.
<p><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson"></a><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson">Rex Tillerson</a>, the company's former CEO and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump</a>'s first secretary of state, will testify about his role in pricing the value of Exxon's assets as governments around the world ramp up regulations to combat the global climate crisis, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/rex-tillerson-exxon-climate-change-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p><p>Tillerson was <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon">Exxon</a>'s CEO from 2006 until he left the post to join Trump's cabinet in 2017. During his tenure as CEO, Exxon communicated to investors that it had created a robust system of "proxy costs" to assess the future impact of climate crisis regulations, valuing it at $80 per ton of carbon emissions. However, that was fraud, alleges the State of New York, since Exxon used internal figures as low as $40 per ton of carbon, and sometimes used no figures at all, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-lawsuit/former-exxon-chief-rex-tillerson-to-testify-in-climate-change-fraud-trial-idUSKBN1X912M" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.</p><p>New York says the difference in numbers cost investors to overvalue the company's stock by $476 million to $1.6 billion, as <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-trial-climate-crisis-fraud-2641061957.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2">EcoWatch</a> reported when the trial began last week.</p><p>The fuzzy math "exposed the company to greater risk from climate change regulation than investors were led to believe," according to the <a href="http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20181024_docket-4520442018_complaint-1.pdf" target="_blank">lawsuit</a>, and it occurred under Tillerson's watch. The case leans heavily on Tillerson's public comments, including a remark from a 2016 shareholder meeting in which he claimed that the company accounted for climate crisis regulation. "We have accommodated that uncertainty in the future and everything gets tested against it," said Tillerson at the shareholder meeting, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/rex-tillerson-exxon-climate-change-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported. "[That cost] gets put into all our economic models when we make investment decisions as well."</p><p>Exxon said the case is false and politically motivated. Theodore Wells, a lawyer for the company, explained the price differential in his opening statement. He said that the $80 per ton proxy cost reflected a macroeconomic, global assessment of the cost, while the lower figures were assigned to particular capital projects. He added that Exxon never said the two numbers were the same to investors, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-lawsuit/former-exxon-chief-rex-tillerson-to-testify-in-climate-change-fraud-trial-idUSKBN1X912M" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.</p><p>Well said in his opening statement that Tillerson "put in place a robust system to manage the risk of increasing climate change regulations," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/rex-tillerson-exxon-climate-change-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported.</p><p>One of the stranger parts of Tillerson's testimony is likely to focus on an on-line pseudonym that Tillerson used, Wayne Tracker. Tillerson had a separate email account at Exxon issued to Wayne Tracker (Wayne is his middle name). Even though New York State issued a subpoena for all of the emails in the Wayne Tracker account, which Tillerson did use for company business, Exxon destroyed all of the Tracker emails prior to mid-August 2015 — almost a decade's worth of emails, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/rex-tillerson-exxon-climate-change-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p><p>Wells claimed destroying the emails was just part of how the company's system was configured and that not only would any information in them be insignificant, but it would also be through the recipients' accounts.</p><p>"It's hard to understand how Tillerson's emails could not be highly relevant here," said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law, to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/rex-tillerson-exxon-climate-change-case.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. "He spent a decade as CEO and chairman. To the extent that some emails are not available from his account or the accounts of others, the court loses information and information is the cornerstone of accurate verdicts."</p>
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By Elliott Negin
A decade after pledging to end its support for climate science deniers, ExxonMobil gave $1.5 million last year to 11 think tanks and lobby groups that reject established climate science and openly oppose the oil and gas giant's professed climate policy preferences, according to the company's annual charitable giving report released this week.
<p>Nearly 90 percent of ExxonMobil's 2017 donations to climate science denier groups went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and three organizations that have been receiving funds from the company since it started bankrolling climate disinformation 20 years ago: the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, which—in a surprise move—ExxonMobil recently quit. (More on that later.)</p><p>The other ExxonMobil denier grantees last year were the Center for American and International Law ($23,000), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000), National Taxpayers Union Foundation ($40,000), and Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).</p><p>ExxonMobil's funding priorities belie the company's purported support for a carbon tax, the Paris climate agreement and other related policies, which it reaffirmed in a January <a href="https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/perspectives/better-approach-climate-change/" target="_blank">blog post</a> by its public affairs director, Suzanne McCarron. If, as McCarron claims, ExxonMobil is "committed to being part of the solution," why is the company still spending millions of dollars a year on groups that are a major part of the problem?</p><h3>ExxonMobil's History of Deceit</h3><p>There is <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" target="_blank">ample evidence</a> that Exxon was fully aware of the danger its products pose to the planet since the 1980s and likely even earlier. Nonetheless, the company helped initiate a fossil fuel industry-backed climate disinformation campaign in 1998, a year before it merged with Mobil.</p><p>The company's behind-the-scenes role went largely unnoticed for nearly a decade, but in early 2007, a <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html#.VaQi0PmK-7M" target="_blank">report</a> by the <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_blank">Union of Concerned Scientists</a> (UCS) revealed that it had spent at least $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to fund a network of more than 40 think tanks and advocacy groups to manufacture doubt about climate science under the guise of being neutral, independent analysts.</p><p>In response to the negative press generated by the UCS report, ExxonMobil vowed in its <a href="http://www.socialfunds.com/shared/reports/1211896380_ExxonMobil_2007_Corporate_Citizenship_Report.pdf" target="_blank"><em>2</em><em>007 Corporate Citizenship Report</em></a> to "discontinue contributions [in 2008] to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner."</p><p>Note that the company only promised to stop funding <em>several</em> policy groups, not all, and it did in fact drop some high-profile grantees, including the Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and Institute for Energy Research. But it never completely ended its support for the disinformation network. From 1998 to 2007—the year of the pledge—it spent nearly $23 million on it. From 2008 through last year, it spent another $13.17 million, for a total of $36.13 million over the last 20 years. As far as anyone has been able to determine from publicly available data, only Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire owners of Koch Industries, have spent more to deceive the public about climate science and block government action on climate change.</p><p>Last year, $1.35 million of the $1.5 million ExxonMobil spent went to the following four organizations:</p><h3>U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Sponsoring Slanted Studies</h3><p>In 2014, ExxonMobil committed to give $5 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Capital Campaign in $1 million-a-year increments on top of its annual dues, despite the lobby group's history of misrepresenting climate science and the economics of transitioning to clean energy. Last year, the company kicked in another $15,000 for the Chamber's Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total donation to $1,015,000.</p><p>If one takes ExxonMobil's climate policy claims at face value, the Chamber's positions are polar opposite.</p><p>ExxonMobil has been very vocal about its support for the Paris climate agreement, for example, and during its former CEO Rex Tillerson's brief stint as U.S. secretary of state, he reportedly implored President Trump to keep the U.S. in it. What did Trump cite last year when he announced he was pulling out of the accord? A widely debunked report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.</p><p>Cosponsored by a former ExxonMobil grantee—the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF)—the <a href="http://accf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/170316-NERA-ACCF-Full-Report.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> maintained that the Paris accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades and eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by 2040.</p><p>According to analyses by the <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/donald-trump-climate-accord-fact-check" target="_blank">Associated Press</a> (AP), <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/01/fact-checking-donald-trumps-statement-withdrawing-/" target="_blank">Politifact</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/06/01/fact-checking-president-trumps-claims-on-the-paris-climate-change-deal/?utm_term=.04b30471f5cb" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a>, however, the Chamber and ACCF cooked the books. As the AP put it: "The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects."</p><h3>American Enterprise Institute: Undue Faith in the Market</h3><p>The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an 80-year-old free-market think tank in Washington, DC, has received more from ExxonMobil than any other climate science denier organization. In 2017, ExxonMobil gave AEI $160,000, bringing its total to $4.49 million since 1998.</p><p>Economist Benjamin Zycher, the only AEI staff member who writes regularly about climate issues, <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-absurdity-that-is-the-paris-climate-agreement/" target="_blank">rejects</a> mainstream climate science, <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-carbon-tax-is-not-just-political-its-ineffective-too/" target="_blank">insists</a> a carbon tax would be "ineffective," and has <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-absurdity-that-is-the-paris-climate-agreement/" target="_blank">called</a> the Paris agreement an "absurdity." He not only disagrees with ExxonMobil's professed climate policy positions, he has <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/exxonmobil-endorses-paris-climate-agreement/" target="_blank">attacked the company</a> for taking them.</p><p>Zycher's colleague Mark Thiessen, a regular contributor to The Washington Post, also <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-left-wing-climate-outrage-machine-needs-some-new-talking-points/" target="_blank">dismisses</a> the Paris accord, maintaining that "free enterprise, technology, and innovation—not pieces of parchment signed in Paris and Kyoto—will revolutionize how we produce and consume energy." Never mind that it often takes regulations to drive innovation and force corporations to adopt cleaner technology. Without federally mandated air pollution controls, for example, power plants and other industrial facilities would be emitting considerably more toxic pollution than they do today.</p><h3>Manhattan Institute: Propaganda Masquerading as News</h3><p>Another free-market think tank, the Manhattan Institute, received $115,200 from ExxonMobil last year for its Center for Energy Policy. Since 1998, it has received $1.25 million. Like Zycher and Thiessen at AEI, Manhattan Institute fellows oppose a carbon tax and the Paris accord.</p><p>Earlier this year, the New York City-based organization hired longtime TV newsman John Stossel, former host of Fox Business Network's <em>Stossel</em> and ABC's <em>20/20,</em> to interview Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass for a slickly produced, 4-minute <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=103&v=AkoP6bNj-Yg" target="_blank">YouTube segment</a> titled <em>The Overheated Costs of Climate Change</em>.</p><p>Cass, who regularly testified before Congress against Obama administration climate efforts, told Stossel that the Paris climate agreement "was somewhere between a farce and a fraud." Stossel wholeheartedly agreed. "The Earth is warming," Stossel intoned in his wrap-up. "Man may well be increasing that. But the solution isn't to waste billions by forcing emissions cuts here while other countries do nothing. Well, pretend to make cuts. Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty."</p><p>Waste billions while other countries do nothing? Besides the fact that it is now <a href="https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/" target="_blank">cheaper to produce electricity</a> from utility-scale solar and wind energy in the U.S. than nuclear, coal and even natural gas, as of last November—a year after the Paris agreement officially went into effect—China, India and other major carbon emitters were already making <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/han-chen/implementing-paris-agreement-first-year-progress-report" target="_blank">significant progress</a> in meeting their Paris accord commitments.</p><p>The other glaring problem with the segment is it's a prime example of fake news. With a former network news show host playing anchor, viewers could easily mistake the piece as a clip from of a legitimate newscast. At least one member of the conservative echo chamber treated it that way. The Washington Free Beacon, an online news organization funded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer, ran a news <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/manhattan-institute-thrashes-paris-climate-agreement-farce-fraud/" target="_blank">story</a> about the Stossel-Cass interview on March 19.</p><h3>American Legislative Exchange Council: Fossil fuel Industry 'Bill Mill'</h3><p>On July 12, ExxonMobil <a href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/12/stories/1060088919" target="_blank">announced</a> it had ended its longtime membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after a disagreement over the corporate lobby group's climate policy. From 1998 through last year—when Exxon Mobil reported it gave the group $60,000—ALEC received $1.93 million from the oil company.</p><p>Over the last two decades, ALEC has routinely featured climate science deniers at its conferences and supplied state lawmakers with a range of fossil fuel industry-drafted sample legislation, including bills that would restrict investment in renewables, eliminate incentives for electric vehicles, and hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to residential and business customers.</p><p>Since 2012, more than 100 corporations, including BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and electric utilities Entergy, Pacific Gas & Electric and Xcel Energy, have <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Corporations_that_Have_Cut_Ties_to_ALEC" target="_blank">severed ties</a> with ALEC, in many cases because of its regressive policy positions.</p><p>ExxonMobil's exit from ALEC came just months after the company fought to defeat a <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/363389-exxon-opposes-alecs-attempt-to-fight-epa-climate-policy" target="_blank">draft resolution</a> sponsored by the Heartland Institute—an ExxonMobil grantee from 1998 through 2006—calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to "reopen and review" its "flawed" conclusion that climate change poses a threat to human health. The EPA's "endangerment finding" requires the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions as hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act.</p><p>After ExxonMobil and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a utility trade group, objected to the resolution, the Heartland Institute withdrew it and accused the two of being in league with the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.</p><p>"Big corporations like ExxonMobil and trade groups like EEI have long been members of the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement," Heartland's president, Tim Huelskamp, said in a Dec. 7 <a href="https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/heartland-institute-statement-on-alec-endangerment-finding-resolution" target="_blank">press release</a>. "They've put their profits and 'green' virtue signaling above sound science and the interests of their customers."</p><p>Huelskamp's ludicrous assertion notwithstanding, some might construe ExxonMobil's exit from the American Legislative Exchange Council as a welcome change in direction. The company's money trail, however, clearly shows that it is still financing climate science denier groups that denigrate any and all climate policy options and <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobils-climate-disinformation-campaign-is-still-alive-and-well" target="_blank">provide cover</a> for Congress and the current administration to do nothing. Until ExxonMobil stops funding these groups, its avowed support for a carbon tax, the Paris agreement and other climate initiatives can't be seen as anything more than a cynical PR ploy.</p>
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Report Uncovers 88 Revolving Door Cases Between European Public Servants and Fossil Fuel Companies
07 May 2018
Politics
The debating chamber of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg in 2014. DAVID ILIFF / CC-BY-SA 3.0
The "revolving door" between politicians and the fossil fuel industry has long been a concern in U.S. politics. Perhaps the most "blatant" case, as Kelle Louaillier pointed out in an Alternet article published by EcoWatch, was former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to the post after serving as the CEO of ExxonMobil. But it was a problem during the Obama administration, too. A report published in 2014 found that the turnover between public servants and fossil fuel industry workers facilitated four permits for liquified natural gas export facilities.
<p style="">Now, a <a href="https://www.greens-efa.eu/files/doc/docs/3d2ec57d6d6aa101bab92f4396c12198.pdf" target="_blank">May 2018 report</a> reveals that it's not a problem unique to this side of the pond. </p><p style="">The report, "Revolving Doors and the Fossil Fuel Industry: Time to Tackle Conflicts of Interest in Climate Policy-Making," was commissioned by the Green/European Free Alliance (EFA) group in the European Parliament. It found 88 cases of the revolving door phenomenon between fossil fuel companies and the public sector in the 13 European countries it studied. </p><p style="">According to the Executive Summary, the Green/EFA group undertook the report in response to claims that members of the European Union were not engaging seriously with other countries who wanted to draft a conflict of interests policy for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).</p><p style="">"Perhaps the extent of the revolving door phenomenon across Europe is one of the reasons why the European Union and its Member States have been siding with other large polluting economies such as the USA and Canada in their attempts to block discussions on conflicts of interest, despite the fact that governments from across the globe have raised this as an issue at the UN level," the report's introduction said.</p><p style="">The report also expressed concern about the impact of fossil fuel lobbying on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_self">climate change</a> policy overall. </p><p style="">"[I]t is hard to deny that the fossil fuel industry has been fiercely fighting effective climate policies over the past couple of decades. This industry is not only highly influential, but it is also an effective recruiter of former regulators in the energy sector, as shown in this report. And its political influence stands out," the report's introduction said. </p><p style="">The report found that the revolving door operated differently in different countries. In Spain, Austria and Denmark, the fossil fuel sector tended to hire high-level politicians. For example, in 2016 in Spain, 26 former ministers and senior party officials had jobs in private energy companies.</p><p style="">In other countries, like the UK, France, Belgium and Norway, companies tended to hire ex-policy advisers.</p><p style="">For example, in the UK, Patrick Erwin went from head of Energy Markets and Infrastructure Strategy and Programme Office at the Department of Energy and Climate Change to working for the biggest UK fracking company, INEOS shale. </p><p style="">Overall, 28 of the cases found by the report involved former ministers or secretaries of state, 28 involved high-placed civil servants or cabinet members, 22 involved members of parliament and 10 involved former members of government regulatory agencies. </p><p style="">The report said that it was beyond its scope to assess the impact of these revolving door instances on climate change policy overall and called for more research to be done. </p><p style="">It recommended European countries adopt a three-year "cooling off" period before any former public servant took a job in a sector they formerly regulated, publicly available "lobbying transparency registers" so that citizens could track potential influence in politics, "machine readable declarations of interest" published by new office holders detailing past careers and financial interests and "codes of conduct" that would prevent public servants from having any conflicts of interests while serving.</p><p style="">The report further backed the creation of a UNFCCC conflict-of-interest policy.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="dc8ee" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="67RCR61576663421"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="984816892195024902" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Former Coal Lobbyist Confirmed as No. 2 at EPA https://t.co/517hmbCOxk @NRDC @ClimateNexus @UCSUSA @350 @SierraClub</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/984816892195024902">1523633618.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Andrew Wheeler during his confirmation hearing to be deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Media Punch Inc / Alamy
By Jeff Turrentine
Scott Pruitt's long record of misdeeds and malfeasance finally seems to have caught up with him. Whether his numerous scandals, recently making headlines, will cost him his job as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still an open question.
<p style="">President Trump has been <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/trump-delivers-full-throated-tweet-of-support-to-embattled-epa-chief-pruitt.html" target="_blank">tweeting his support</a> of his EPA administrator, doing whatever he can to dispel growing rumors of an imminent firing or an abrupt resignation. But given the drip-drip-drip of near-daily revelations, it's safe to assume that news editors already have their Pruitt postmortems written, copyedited and ready to publish at a moment's notice. In this administration, a statement of support from the White House shouldn't be taken as a sign that one's job is safe. (Indeed, it's often <a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/974468508074565632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thewrap.com%2Fsarah-sanders-denied-mcmaster-fired%2F&tfw_creator=brianwelk&tfw_site=thewrap" target="_blank">an ominous prelude</a> to termination. Just ask H. R. McMaster or Rex Tillerson.)</p><p style="">Meanwhile, there's another big EPA story that's deserving of our attention but getting far less of it. Thursday, a slim majority of senators <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-senate-is-about-to-confirm-a-coal-lobbyist-as-top-epa-deputy/2018/04/12/b1bb6844-3dbe-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.99022dcc9959" target="_blank">approved</a> Andrew Wheeler to be the EPA's deputy administrator―the person who could end up running the agency should the current administrator suddenly decide (as so, so many Washingtonians before him have decided) that he really wants to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/nine-who-said-they-resigned-to-spend-more-time-at-home--and-one-who-was-even-believed/2012/01/10/gIQA7LiWpP_blog.html?utm_term=.df94e2316bfd" target="_blank">spend more time with his family</a>.</p><p style="">If you're hoping Wheeler could represent some sort of departure from Pruitt's (literal) scorched-earth agenda, he wouldn't. While it may be impossible to imagine anyone worse than Pruitt to lead our nation's environmental policy, plenty of individuals could be just as bad. And as he's shown us on numerous occasions, President Trump has a sixth sense for ferreting these people out and putting them on the executive-branch payroll.</p><p style="">So who is <a href="https://www.faegrebd.com/andrew-wheeler" target="_blank">Andrew Wheeler</a>? And what is it about his particular career trajectory that makes the White House, energy-company executives and assorted climate deniers think he's a perfect fit for the Trump-era EPA?</p><p style="">Well, for starters, his most recent job was as an energy lobbyist. His biggest clients included <a href="http://www.murrayenergycorp.com/" target="_blank">Murray Energy Corporation</a>, which proudly bills itself as the largest coal mining company in America, and whose CEO, Robert E. Murray, vigorously fought the Obama administration's attempts to reduce carbon emissions and strengthen environmental and public health laws. Shortly after Trump took office, Murray, an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-coal-executives-action-plan-for-trump-is-made-public/" target="_blank">unabashed climate denier</a>, presented Vice President Mike Pence with a ridiculously pro-coal "<a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4345546/Murray-Energy-s-Action-Plan-for-the-Trump.pdf" target="_blank">action plan</a>" that called for doing away with the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating federal tax credits for renewable energy, and—yes—halving the EPA's workforce.</p><p style="">In his spare time, Wheeler serves as the vice president of the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Washington_Coal_Club" target="_blank">Washington Coal Club</a>, a powerful yet little-known federation of more than 300 coal producers, lawmakers, business leaders and policy experts who have dedicated themselves to preserving the uncertain future of our dirtiest fossil fuel. Wheeler clearly loves coal, but he's also made time to lobby the U.S. Department of the Interior to <a href="http://westernpriorities.org/2017/12/11/documents-when-a-uranium-mining-company-lobbied-for-bears-ears-national-monument-action-the-trump-administration-acted/" target="_blank">open portions</a> of the Bears Ears National Monument to <a href="https://assets.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/uranium-development-potential-in-bears-ears-national-monument_2017-12-4.pdf?_ga=2.53236394.367150249.1523468490-2007561907.1523468490" target="_blank">uranium mining</a>.</p><p style="">It gets worse. Before joining his current K Street lobbying firm, Wheeler worked as a legislative aide to Oklahoma <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-james-inhofe-is-upending-the-nations-energy-and-environmental-policies/2017/03/14/2bebdbfa-081c-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.6d47f5ff8b91" target="_blank">Senator Jim Inhofe</a>. Inhofe is without question the most virulent climate denier on Capitol Hill—a man who regularly refers to the science of climate change as "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Hoax-Warming-Conspiracy-Threatens/dp/1936488493" target="_blank">the greatest hoax</a>" ever perpetrated on the American people and who <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-inhofe-our-kids-are-being-brainwashed-in-school/" target="_blank">told one radio interviewer </a>that educating schoolchildren on the basics of climate science was tantamount to "brainwashing." When Wheeler's nomination was announced last year, Inhofe <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/andrew-wheeler-nominated-epa-deputy-administrator" target="_blank">effusively praised</a> the decision, saying that "there is no one more qualified than Andrew to help Scott Pruitt restore EPA to its proper size and scope." </p><p style="">In that same statement, Inhofe referred to Wheeler as his "close friend"; indeed, the two are close enough that Wheeler thought it perfectly appropriate to organize a fund-raiser for Inhofe last May, an act that many believe <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/senate-panel-approves-andrew-wheeler-377ed6dd2dbf/" target="_blank">crossed ethical lines</a>.</p><p style="">The line on Wheeler from people in the know is that he's essentially Scott Pruitt's ideological twin—but that his many years as a Washington insider have endowed him with a <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/04/if-scott-pruitt-gets-fired-from-the-epa-this-coal-lobbyist-will-take-his-place/" target="_blank">political savvy</a> that Pruitt sorely lacks. Were the increasingly embattled Pruitt to leave, few believe that this replacement would deviate from Pruitt's path of rolling back protections, propping up the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">moribund coal industry</a> and putting energy company profits ahead of public health.</p><p style="">From all accounts, Wheeler doesn't appear to be a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-epa-chief-pruitt-doing-great-job-totally-under-siege-n863361" target="_blank">paranoid</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/climate/pruitt-epa-challenge-coin.html" target="_blank">self-aggrandizing</a> <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141954/everyone-epa-wildly-depressed" target="_blank">morale destroyer</a> with a highly developed taste for taxpayer-funded <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/climate/whitehouse-pruitt-security-letter.html" target="_blank">first-class travel</a>. He has more friends than enemies in Washington and seems unlikely to shoot himself in the foot or otherwise self-destruct. In the end, that might actually make Wheeler even more dangerous than Pruitt—not less.</p>
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Pompeo Changes Tune on Climate After Green Groups Oppose Top Diplomat Nomination
13 April 2018
Politics
Gage Skidmore
When Mike Pompeo was director of the CIA, there were concerns that his climate change waffling would prevent him from taking it seriously as a national security threat.
A Politico analysis of the Trump team's climate views, reported on by EcoWatch in March, pointed out that the Pentagon had excluded climate change from the 2018 National Defense Strategy, and quoted a 2013 interview in which Pompeo hedged on climate science.
<p>"There's some who think we're warming, there's some who think we're cooling, there's some who think that the last 16 years have shown a pretty stable climate environment," he had said. </p><p>But now that Pompeo is seeking Senate confirmation to replace <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson" target="_self">Rex Tillerson</a> as Secretary of State, a role for which an accurate assessment of national security risks is also essential, he is changing his climate tune somewhat. </p><p>"[I] believe that the climate is changing, that there's a warming taking place. I'm happy to concede there is likely a human component to that," Pompeo said during his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, <a href="https://qz.com/1251137/mike-pompeo-now-believes-manmade-climate-change-exists/" target="_blank">Quartz</a> reported. </p><p>He also said that the State Department should work to meet climate-based security threats. </p><p>"You're heading in the right direction," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who he had been addressing, said, according to Quartz.</p><p>But an Associated Press live-update of the proceedings printed in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/the-latest-protesters-interrupt-as-pompeo-hearing-begins/2018/04/12/212fd25a-3e5f-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.c9ca1b65c44c" target="_blank">Washington Post</a> reported that Democrats found his remarks "insufficient." </p><p>During his 2017 Senate hearing to be named CIA director, Pompeo had refused to "get into the details of climate debate and science," Quartz reported. </p><p>His most climate-accurate remarks to date come two days after more than 200 environmental groups sent a letter to senators asking them to reject Pompeo for the secretary of state position due to his history of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">climate change denial</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/382476-green-groups-ask-senate-to-reject-pompeo-nomination" target="_blank">The HIll reported</a>. </p><p>"Any Senator who votes in support of his nomination to the important position of Secretary of State is complicit in advancing the Trump/Pompeo pro-fossil fuel, anti-climate agenda," The HIll reported the letter read, in part. </p><p>Tillerson, who Pompeo would replace if confirmed, ended up being one of the more climate-friendly members of the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump</a> administration, despite his former role as CEO of ExxonMobil. He supported staying in the Paris agreement, though he also <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/mike-pompeo-climate-denier-2546931171.html" target="_self">cut the position</a> of U.S. climate envoy. </p><p>Pompeo's updated views on climate might not be enough to win him Tillerson's old gig. Since Republican Senator Rand Paul has already said he would not recommend Pompeo for secretary of state, if the two Democratic senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee join him, Pompeo would not get a favorable recommendation overall. Republicans could still bring Pompeo's nomination to a Senate vote without the recommendation of the committee, but it would be an unusual move, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/mike-pompeo-hearing-april-12-18/" target="_blank">CNN reported Thursday</a>. </p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="c3486" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="RL2LZL1576663441"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="984550507447496709" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Earth to Senate: Hell No, Pompeo! https://t.co/52QAcQi5mG @Public_Citizen @DeSmogBlog</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/984550507447496709">1523570107.0</a></blockquote></div>
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By Kelle Louaillier
As Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was one of the most blatant revolving-door cases in the Trump administration and a clear sign that Trump's government was of, by and for the fossil fuel industry. But make no mistake: Mike Pompeo could be far worse.
<p>Once again, this administration has proven that just when you think things can't get any worse, Donald Trump and his cronies will find a way. Now, instead of having a former fossil fuel CEO at the helm of foreign policy, the United States will have an Islamophobic <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Koch-brothers">Koch brothers</a> shill who built his own business using Koch money and owes his political career first and foremost to their deep pockets.</p><p>In Congress, Pompeo received more money from the Koch brothers than any other member, and more than twice the Kochs' next highest benefactor, Paul Ryan. And if that weren't bad enough, Pompeo has expressed extremist, bigoted and Islamophobic views and has defended torture programs and supported unconstitutional surveillance by the federal government. He is one of the most dangerous Trump appointees yet and will lead U.S. foreign policy down the same dark, bigoted path of Donald Trump's Twitter feed.</p><p>If Pompeo is confirmed, Charles and David Koch will now have a direct line to the State Department, including its already obstructionist positions at the UN Climate Treaty. At the next round of treaty negotiations, the U.S. delegation may as well be called the Koch delegation, as their agenda—dirty fossil fuels—will again be the centerpiece of U.S. climate policy.</p><p>Whether it's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon-mobil">Exxon Mobil's</a> golden child or the Koch brothers' puppet at the helm of State Department, no amount of dirty coal money and bought-off politicians can stop the movements of people resisting this administration. Nor can it stop the millions of people, institutions, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-fossil-fuel-divestment-2524494059.html">cities and states</a> standing up to the fossil fuel industry. Big polluters are running scared, and this administration is their Hail Mary pass.</p><p><em><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/why-mike-pompeo-could-be-even-worse-environment-rex-tillerson" target="_blank">AlterNet</a>.</em></em></p>
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Trump Taps Climate Denier Pompeo to Replace Exxon CEO Tillerson as Secretary of State
13 March 2018
Popular
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday morning that he is nominating CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as U.S. Secretary of State.
"We got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things," Trump said today. The president noted that the Iran nuclear deal was a point of contention, but there were other issues where the two famously clashed, including Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
<p>
However, it appears Tillerson found out about his firing like this rest of us—via Twitter.
</p><p>
"The Secretary did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling and not to be regretted," Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein said in a statement.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="d25ee" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="NABEEE1576683839"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="973540316656623616" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to… https://t.co/bQrfIvM6iT</div> — Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/973540316656623616">1520945073.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>
The Trump administration has gone through several high-level personnel changes during the president's first year in office. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/fossil-fuels-advocate-mike-pompeo-may-replace-exxonmobil-ceo-rex-tillerson-as-secretary-of-state-2514044018.html">Earlier reports</a> suggested that the former <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon" target="_blank">ExxonMobil</a> CEO—who <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/374463-tillerson-again-refuses-to-say-whether-he-called-trump-a-moron" target="_blank">reportedly</a> called his boss a "moron"—would soon be on his way out.
</p><p>
During his short tenure at State, <a href="http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/03/13/climate-deal-critic-pompeo-replace-tillerson-us-secretary-state/" target="_blank">Tillerson focused</a> on cutting costs and eliminating staff, including the crucial position of U.S. climate envoy. Many positions at the department remain unfilled.
</p><p>
<span></span>"Although the Trump administration is packed with billionaires and industry lobbyists, we can't say we're surprised to see Rex Tillerson's stilted and awkward tenure as Secretary of State end," said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of <a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/" target="_blank">Food & Water Watch</a>. "America's premier oil and gas booster should have no role in U.S. diplomacy at a time when we urgently need to transition off of fossil fuels."
</p><p>
Critics have previously spoken against Tillerson's personal and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tillerson-trump-exxon-saudia-arabia-2426730392.html">business ties</a> with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his company's storied <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-science-2476585995.html">history of climate deception</a>—even though Exxon <a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-policy/climate-perspectives/our-position" target="_blank">admits</a> climate change is real now.
</p><p>
While Pompeo does not head a giant fossil fuel corporation, he has received millions in <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00030744&newMem=N" target="_blank">campaign funds</a> from the billionaire <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/koch-brothers">Koch brothers</a>, criticized the Paris climate deal as a "costly burden," and described the assertion that climate change is a national security threat as "ignorant, dangerous and absolutely unbelievable."
</p><p>
"Mike Pompeo is a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">climate denier</a> and should not be leading the State Department," Hauter noted. "He's been referred to as 'the Koch Brothers' Congressman.'"
</p><p>
Naomi Ages, <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/" target="_blank">Greenpeace USA</a> Climate Director, similarly added: "Donald Trump has now somehow picked someone even worse than Rex Tillerson to run the State Department. Greenpeace has been opposed to Tillerson as Secretary of State from the moment he was nominated, and we continue to believe that the U.S. government cannot and should not be run by fossil fuel industry flunkies. Mike Pompeo, though, is uniquely unqualified to be Secretary of State in an entirely different way than Rex Tillerson was. In addition to being a climate denier, like his predecessor, Pompeo is a Koch brothers' shill and a dangerous choice who will continue to denigrate the United States' reputation abroad and make us vulnerable to threats at home."<span></span>
</p><p>
Hauter also denounced the former Kansas congressman for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rep-pompeo-to-introduce-koch-funded-monsanto-backed-voluntary-gmo-food-1881884972.html">authoring legislation</a> that preempted state <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/gmo-genetically-modified-organism/">GMO</a> labeling laws, "and would likely continue the U.S. state department's role in promoting genetically modified crops around the world."
</p><p>
"We urge the Senate to reject his nomination," Hauter said.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="bcfce" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="JO9BPQ1576683839"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="973558810118950912" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Tillerson was ineffective at State but Pompeo could be even worse. I served with him in the House – he denies the r… https://t.co/bz35XdznAM</div> — Rep. Barbara Lee (@Rep. Barbara Lee)<a href="https://twitter.com/RepBarbaraLee/statuses/973558810118950912">1520949482.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Trending
Christine Irvine / 350.org
By Jamie Henn
Let's talk for a moment about how the climate movement is going to fight back in 2018.
But first, a public service announcement.
This Jan. 31, movement leaders like the one-and-only Bernie Sanders, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Jacqueline Patterson of the NAACP, and more, are coming together for an event called "Fossil Free Fast: The Climate Resistance," to lay out a movement game plan for 2018.
<p>If you're in the DC area you should attend the event (<a href="http://bit.ly/fossilfreetickets" target="_blank">tickets here</a>). If not, <a href="http://bit.ly/fossilfreefast" target="_blank">you can host or join a house party</a> to tune into the broadcast with fellow activists in your community. There are more than 100 parties already registered nationwide. This isn't an evening you want to miss.<br></p><p>OK. Now let's get down to the business of resistance.</p><p>After a year of watching the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump</a> administration wreck havoc on our communities and the climate, we know that 2018 is going to bring an onslaught of new assaults. On the climate front, those attacks will take the form of cutting environmental protections and easing the way for more <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels">fossil fuel</a> extraction.</p><p>We got a preview of horrors to come in January, when the administration announced it would be opening up our coastlines for <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/offshore-oil-drilling">offshore drilling</a>. That's on top of plans to expand mining on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands">public lands</a>, allow for drilling in the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic">Arctic</a> National Wildlife Refuge, and rubber stamp any and all new fossil fuel projects the industry can come up with.</p><p>Even more insidious is the way in which <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa">U.S. Environmental Protection Agency</a> Administrator <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt">Scott Pruitt</a> is attempting to dismantle decades of environmental regulations. If there's a rule in place to protect public health or the environment, you can bet Pruitt is taking a hatchet to it. At the top of his kill list for 2018 is the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-power-plan">Clean Power Plan</a>, the Obama-era policy to limit pollution from <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">coal</a> fired power plants and one of our most important tools to combat rising emissions.</p><p>But there's an Achilles heel to Trump and his cronies' plan to smother the nation with <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines">pipelines</a> and smog, because no matter the actions they take in Washington, DC, these fossil fuel projects need to get built in towns, cities and counties across America. Trump can crow all he wants about coal, oil and gas, but ultimately, it's not his little hands doing the construction. Even with the full backing of the White House, the only way a fossil fuel project moves forward is if it can secure all the necessary permits and local support. That can be tough for new mines and it's especially difficult for major pipelines, which often run through multiple states and dozens of towns and counties along their proposed routes.</p><p>Which brings us to the first way that we're going to fight back in 2018: organizing in our communities to stop all new fossil fuel projects.</p><p>Right now there isn't a project in North America that doesn't face some form of community resistance. From British Columbia to Pennsylvania, local groups are building alliances to resist any new project the industry throws our way. By working together, we can hold back fossil fuel projects long enough so that <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/">renewables</a> take over and the economic case for building these pipelines and mines disappears. We're not going to win every fight, but so far, the resistance is working and even the most inevitable seeming projects are now facing stiff opposition.</p><p>Take the case of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/keystone-xl">Keystone XL</a>. One of Trump's first actions when he was elected was to approve the federal permit for the project. Since then, he's been bragging that they " built the Keystone XL pipeline." Meanwhile, the actual pipeline is still rusting above ground somewhere in the Dakotas waiting to be assembled. In the real world, Keystone XL is still miles away from construction. TransCanada, the company building the project, may have a permit, but they're still struggling to line up enough buyers for the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/tar-sands">tar sands</a> oil they want to ship down to Texas (the company announced last week it had secured two-thirds of the commitments it needs, but even those pledges are shaky and had to be propped up by the government in Alberta). TransCanada also hasn't secured construction rights from farmers and ranchers along a new route they've been forced to take through Nebraska.</p><p>There's even a bolder roadblock facing Keystone: you. Over the past few months, nearly 15,000 people have signed the <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-the-promise-to-protect?source=direct_link&referrer=group-198-methods" target="_blank">Promise to Protect</a>, a pledge to travel to the route of the pipeline if TransCanada attempts to start building and peacefully resist construction in every way we can. The Promise to Protect should send a chill down the spine of TransCanada and any of their financial backers. Our organizing has held this pipeline back for over seven years and Trump can't do anything about it. You could have the CEO of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon">ExxonMobil</a> in the White House (oh wait, he's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson">secretary of state</a>) and Keystone still wouldn't get built. This resistance isn't going anywhere.</p><p>Even if you don't live near a pipeline or a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/fracking/">fracking</a> well there's still a way to contribute to stopping projects. Just like in the fight against Big Tobacco or <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/nuclear">nuclear power</a>, we're going to be using the model of local resolutions to beat back the fossil fuel industry everywhere they rear their head. Our goal is to pass hundreds of "Fossil Free" resolutions in cities and towns across the country that ban the construction of new fossil fuel projects. In doing so, we'll help tie up the industry in a web of resistance and helping protect our communities in perpetuity.</p><p>That's job number one: stop all new fossil fuel projects. But playing defense isn't enough—we also want to go on offense to build the world that works for all of us, not just a wealthy few. Which brings us to job number two.</p><p>The second way we're going to fight back in 2018 is driving forward a fast and just transition to 100 percent renewable energy for all.<br></p><p>Together, we're going to use 2018 to build a groundswell for 100 percent renewable energy in cities and towns across America. By the end of the year, our goal is to have won at least 100 commitments from communities to go to 100 percent renewable in a just and equitable way. More than that, we want to show the inevitability of the entire country moving in this direction. That means a lot of public education to show people this world is possible, and a lot of political pressure to make sure that every candidate for elected office has signed onto our goal of 100 percent for all.</p><p>For many climate advocates, the 100 percent piece will seem clear. Over the last decade, advances in renewable energy technology have made it possible to get all of our power from the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/solar">sun</a>, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wind">wind</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hydropower">water</a>. New breakthroughs in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/battery-storage/">battery storage</a> mean that old concerns about the "reliability" of renewables are quickly fading away. The vision of a carbon-free world is quickly coming into focus.</p><p>But what about the justice and equity piece? We know that our current fossil fuel-based energy system, and all the pollution that comes with it, didn't just get built on a whim. It was enabled by and has perpetuated deep social inequality. While predominantly white, affluent communities can flip on the light switch and still enjoy clean air and water, poorer communities of color are often stuck with a power plant or oil refinery polluting their neighborhoods and threatening their <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/childrens-health">children's health</a>. Meanwhile, because of corporate monopolies and a lack of worker protections, the vast wealth being created by the fossil fuel economy has flowed in one direction: upwards. As fossil fuel billionaires have pocketed ever more profits, workers and entire communities have been left behind. Climate change just exacerbates these pre-existing inequalities. The same communities who have born the brunt of our pollution-based economy are often on the frontlines of climate impacts.</p><p>With the transition to 100 percent renewable energy, we have perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity to rebuild our economy in a more just and equitable way. Through public investments, we can guarantee that it's not just the rich who can afford to put up solar panels, but those who live in public housing or rental units who are first in line for retrofits and upgrades. With worker training programs and the right incentives, we can make sure that there are enough jobs created so that both workers in the fossil fuel industry and those who never had a shot at a good paying, union job, can get employment in the renewables sector. By making sure that everyone has a seat at the table, we can design transition plans that make sure we truly have 100 percent "for all" rather than just the 1 percent.</p><p>That's the work we need to continue in 2018. There are already great 100 percent efforts underway, from <a href="http://sierraclub.org" target="_blank">Sierra Club</a>'s "Ready for 100" campaign to the NAACP's "Solar For All" effort. Our job is to double, triple, and quadruple these efforts. Remember those "Fossil Free" resolutions I mentioned above? This is the second piece of that puzzle. As we call on our cities and towns to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure, we'll also ask them to commit to "100 percent for all" and then work with them to make sure they're implementing these plans.</p><p>These two pieces of local resistance, fighting projects and promoting renewables, can make up the bulk of our efforts in 2018, but there's another key way we need to make progress. That's because as beautiful and brilliant our distributed resistance is going to be, we still need a way to strike at the heart of the fossil fuel industry. As we work from the bottom up to flip our energy mix, we also need to hit the industry where it hurts: their pocketbooks.</p><p>The third way we're going to fight back in 2018 is by continuing the fossil fuel divestment movement and ensuring that not a penny more goes to new fossil fuel projects.</p><p>Over the last five years, the fossil fuel divestment campaign has grown from a handful of college campuses to the largest divestment effort in history. By now, nearly 700 institutions representing $6 trillion in assets have made some form of divestment commitment. In December, the trillion dollar Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund announced that it was expanding its coal divestment to include oil and gas. Soon after, the World Bank announced that it was no longer going to finance new oil and gas development.</p>
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</p><div id="be92d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="PX5TKD1576661702"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="951176884292857856" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">'Tide Is Turning': Cheers Erupt for NYC's Suit Against Fossil Fuel Giants and Divestment https://t.co/KaBVYn0JmN… https://t.co/hspjQtAHy6</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/951176884292857856">1515613215.0</a></blockquote></div>
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<p>Perhaps the most amazing series of announcements came just a couple weeks ago. Governor Andrew Cuomo kicked things off by announcing that New York State was going to pursue fossil fuel divestment. Not to be outdone by Albany, Mayor Bill de Blasio took an even bolder step forward, announcing that New York City would not only be divesting from fossil fuels, but also suing the five largest publicly held oil companies for damages caused by climate change. It's hard to overstate the significance of this move. The world's most iconic city and heart of the global financial industry has declared war on fossil fuels.</p><p>It feels like fossil fuel divestment may be reaching a tipping point. With New York city and state taking a steps forward, the excuses for others to hold back are looking increasingly lame, and risky. Oil, coal and gas are quickly becoming the guns and tobacco of the 21st century: investments-non-grata for institutions with a conscience. Even those without a conscience are dropping their stocks, however, since nobody wants to be the last one holding onto fossil fuels when the rest of the world realizes the industry is doomed.</p><p>Our job in 2018 is to push divestment over the top. Every new city, state and institution that makes a divestment commitment helps hasten the day when the entire economy moves away from fossil fuels and into clean energy. Forget trying to engage with fossil fuel companies—we've had three decades of those sorts of efforts and little show for it—it's divestment that will send a clear signal that business as usual is no longer possible. As fossil fuel stocks become increasingly tainted, it will becomes less and less acceptable for banks (who worry deeply about their brands) to finance new coal, oil and gas development, putting the industry in even more of a precarious situation.</p><p>Bring these three pieces together—stopping fossil fuels, building momentum towards 100 percent, and divestment—and we've got ourselves a game plan for 2018. Now here's the timeline. This year, we've got two key dates to work towards.</p><p>The first is Sept. 8, 2018. That's the weekend before the Global Climate Action Summit, a major conference being held in San Francisco to drive forward local action on climate change. The summit is connected with the United Nations climate talks, but instead of focusing on national governments, the meeting in September will focus on the commitments from "non-state actors," i.e. cities, states, investors, businesses and other institutions.</p><p>Our goal is to leverage this summit as a way to drive forward the three demands above: no new fossil fuel infrastructure, 100 percent renewable energy for all, and fossil fuel divestment. Since every one of our mayors and governors is being invited to make a commitment for the summit, every one of them can be pressured to meet our demands before that September deadline. Just to make sure, we're planning a mobilization the weekend before, on Sept. 8, at city halls and state houses across the country. Whether those rallies are a celebration of the commitments our elected officials have made, or a protest demanding they do more, will depend on them.</p><p>After we take to the streets in September, we'll focus on the next key date on the calendar. You guessed it: Nov. 8. If it isn't abundantly clear by now, elections have consequences. We need to make sure that this election day, every single person that cares about climate justice is registered to vote and knocking on doors to send a clear signal to the establishment that we need elected officials who don't just believe in climate change, but are ready to do something about it. Nonprofits that can't engage in electoral activity will be investing in public education and voter registration, while political organizations will be promoting climate champions and taking down deniers and industry puppets. As activists, our job will be to figure out how we can make the biggest difference locally and support any and all national efforts that support our end goals.</p><p>So, let's get to work. <a href="http://bit.ly/fossilfreefast" target="_blank">Fossil Free Fast</a>, the event on Jan. 31, is when the action begins. It's also the perfect opportunity for you to get a group together in your community, or meet up with an existing crew, and lay out your game plan for working on the goals above (and whatever other priorities you want to take on) over the coming year.<br></p><p>2018 isn't a year to sit on the sidelines or behind the comfort of your screen. It's a year to get out and organize. The resistance is everywhere and it's brilliant and beautiful and brave. The deepest thanks to all of your who are already deeply involved in driving it forward. To the rest of you, join us.</p><p><em>Jamie Henn is co-founder and director of strategic communications for the international climate campaign <a href="http://www.350.org/" target="_blank">350.org</a>. </em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/25/fossil-free-fast-climate-resistance-game-plan-2018" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>
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Naomi Klein: 'New York City Is Taking a Game-Changing First Step in Turning the World Right Side Up'
12 January 2018
Climate
The following is a speech given by Naomi Klein in New York City on Jan. 10.
I want to thank Mayor de Blasio for this historic announcement that New York is divesting from fossil fuels and suing five oil majors.
<p>What's happening here is not only about changing the economics of energy, speeding the transition from dirty to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/">clean</a>. It's also about justice.<br></p><p>And it represents a collective victory for the amazing climate justice movement around the world and in this city.</p><p>Groups like <a href="https://www.uprose.org/" target="_blank">Uprose</a>, the <a href="http://www.nyc-eja.org/" target="_blank">New York City Environmental Justice Alliance</a> and <a href="http://www.nyrenews.org/" target="_blank">New York Renews</a>, some of which are here today, as well as global groups like <a href="https://350.org/" target="_blank">350.org</a>, which helped kick off the fossil fuel divestment movement about five years ago.</p><p>For a very long time, our movements have been insisting that principles of justice need to be at the center of the response to the climate crisis—a crisis that plays out in the most perversely unjust ways right now.</p><p>Justice means that people who did the least to create this crisis but are bearing the heaviest risks and most toxic burdens need to be first to benefit from green economic development and job creation.</p><p>Justice also means that workers in polluting industries are not sacrificed or left behind. And justice means something else too, something most politicians are loath to talk about because the wealth and power of fossil fuel companies is so vast.</p><p>It means that the corporate interests that did the most to get us into this mess—with their pollution and with their campaigns of willful misinformation—are going to have to pay their true share of the tremendous costs of climate disruption, and of delayed transition. Because right now we have it upside down and backwards.</p><p>As it stands, the costs of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a> and ferocious and unprecedented <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">weather</a> events are offloaded on to the public, with taxpayers stiffed with the ballooning bills. And as governments absorb these costs, there is less money for schools, for affordable transit and housing, for health care. And, in yet another bitter irony, this hurts the people who are already impacted by <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> the most.</p><p>This city saw all this in dramatic fashion during Sandy, when it was the people in public housing who were left for weeks in the cold and dark.</p><p>Meanwhile, the extravagant profits from destabilizing our planet's life support system, earned from ignoring and suppressing the scientific consensus—well, those are systematically privatized.</p><p>Earlier this decade, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon">ExxonMobil</a> alone made $45 billion in profits in a single year– more than any company in history. Enough to pay <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson">Rex Tillerson</a>, then its CEO, $100,000 a day.</p><p>In short, the status quo means the poor are paying again and again for the polluters to get even richer. It's a world upside down. But that starts to change today.<br></p><p>By suing these five oil majors who knowingly deepened the climate crisis, and simultaneously beginning the process of divesting $5-billion from fossil fuel companies, New York City is taking a game changing first step in turning the world right side up. And not to overstate the case, but I actually think this could change the world.</p><p>There have been lawsuits before that have tried to sue the fossil fuel giants for climate damages. The tiny Arctic community of Kivalina, population 383, which attempted to recover the costs of having to relocate. Some citizens of the low-lying Pacific Island of Vanuatu—population 300,000—that began a similar suit. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/peruvian-farmer-german-energy-giant-2509404797.html">A lone Peruvian farmer</a>, suing a German <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">coal</a> giant for the risks to his home. A small group of Gulf Coast Mississippi homeowners, with the help of a scrappy lawyer, who tried to sue the fossil fuel companies after Hurricane Katrina.</p><p>These have been valiant attempts, but in every case, the industry has relied on the relative weakness and poverty of its accusers, sometime managing to quash suits before they were filed.</p><p>And that is why today's news is so historic. Because bullying isn't going to work here the way it has in the past. This lawsuit is coming from the largest city in the most powerful country on the planet, a city which also happens to be the financial capital of world.</p><p>And now that New York City has thrown down in such a big way—on divestment, on polluter pays—it's going to embolden all kinds of other actors to step up as well. Other cities around the world. Universities. Foundations. Other states. Even entire nation states.</p><p>As of today, everyone needs to up their ambition. Be bolder. Move faster. It's what our planet requires. And it's what justice demands. No politician on the planet is doing enough. But there can be no doubt that the bar for what it takes to call yourself a climate leader has just been dramatically raised.</p><p>A few years ago, an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $19-billion in damages for an oil disaster known as the "Rainforest Chernobyl." A spokesperson for the company responded by pledging that it would "fight this until hell freezes over. And then we'll fight it on the ice."</p><p>Well, New Yorkers know how to fight. They even know how to fight on the ice, as the New York Rangers occasionally show. I want to thank all the fighters in this room for reminding us of that.</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://gofossilfree.org/naomi-klein-new-york-city-is-taking-a-game-changing-first-step-in-turning-the-world-right-side-up/" target="_blank">Fossil Free</a>, a project of <a href="https://350.org/" target="_blank">350.org</a>.</em></p>
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Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park, a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site. Ken Thomas / Wikimedia Commons
By Giovanni Ortolani
The U.S. is quitting UNESCO, the United Nations organization that coordinates international efforts to foster peace and sustainable development, and to eradicate poverty. The Trump administration made the announcement on Oct. 12. The withdrawal takes effect Dec. 31, 2018, and the U.S. will remain a full member until then.
"This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO," said Heather Nauert, a U.S. State Department spokesperson in a press statement.
<p>The U.S. does, however, say it will seek to stay engaged with the organization as a non-member observer state in order to "contribute U.S. views, perspectives and expertise on some of the important issues undertaken by the organization," including the protection of World Heritage Sites and the promotion of scientific collaboration.</p><p>Trump isn't the first U.S. president to have antagonism toward the organization. Although America has played an important role in UNESCO since its creation after World War II, Trump's predecessors have been quarreling with it since the 1970s.</p><p>"We were in arrears to the tune of $550 million or so, and so the question is, do we want to pay that money?" Nauert said at a <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2017/10/274769.htm" target="_blank">news briefing</a>, making clear that "with this anti-Israel bias that's long documented on the part of UNESCO, that [U.S. relationship] needs to come to an end."</p><p>But what does the Trump administration's withdrawal mean for UNESCO environmental programs worldwide? And will the loss of U.S. money matter?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjY2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMDIwNzcyNn0.7pCvpkAGa9zDcEC9WZoUQPIILrZxYgwJY6NWIM83q7k/img.jpg?width=980" id="1d5ed" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0c256fd3da5d7c7cd05cb3127c545845" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">A moment of great hope when UNESCO declared 2015 the International Year of Light at the Paris Climate Summit. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://visualhunt.com/author/d5bf01" target="_blank">Athalfred DKL</a> on <a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/ebc67f" target="_blank">VisualHunt.com</a> / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-NC-ND</a></small></p><p><strong>UNESCO environmental and science programs</strong><br></p><p>The UN Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization was founded in 1945, and is a catalyst for far-reaching and important environmental and sustainable development initiatives. Today it's the only UN organization with a clear <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> mandate, and it works on a broad scope of environmental issues, directing projects from a scientific, cultural, social and educational perspective.</p><p>UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector, headquartered in Paris, has a staff of 120, <a href="https://en.unesco.org/countries/field-offices" target="_blank">with 54 field offices</a> around the world, and it hosts major international programs in the freshwater, ecological, earth and basic sciences.</p><p>Its activities deal with the ecological sciences (Man and the Biosphere Programme and World Network of Biosphere Reserves), water security (International Hydrological Programme and World Water Assessment Programme), and earth sciences (International Geoparks and Geoscience Programme, and disaster risk reduction).</p><p>Man and the Biosphere (MAB) is one of UNESCO's best-known programs, with its World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). Launched in 1971, MAB seeks to improve relationships between people and their environments by protecting areas nominated by national governments. MAB reserves remain under sovereign jurisdiction of the states where they're located, but enjoy international recognition.</p><p>"Biosphere Reserves are learning places for sustainable development whose aim is to reconcile <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity">biodiversity</a> conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources," read a recent UNESCO press statement when it added <a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/23-new-sites-added-unesco-s-world-network-biosphere-reserves" target="_blank">23 new sites to WNBR</a>. The Trump administration is voluntarily <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/unesco-new-biosphere-reserves-us-withdraws-reserves/" target="_blank">withdrawing 17 sites</a> from the program. However, withdrawal isn't unusual and other countries including the UK, Austria, Australia, Norway, Bulgaria and Sweden have withdrawn MAB sites in the past. Among those being withdrawn by the U.S. currently is the Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire, U.S. Forest Service reserve, where groundbreaking <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/forests">forest</a> ecosystem and climate research has been ongoing for decades.</p><p>Today WNBR encompasses 669 sites in 120 countries, including 16 transboundary biosphere reserves, covering over 680 million hectares (2.6 million square miles) of inland, coastal and marine areas, and representing all major ecosystem types and diverse development contexts. These areas are home to approximately 207 million people ranging from rural and indigenous communities to urban dwellers.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjY2NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjM2MTg3M30.tViPA94TxtxgB2NZ1uw4yiktCVvZIyw_xLgKcWfxMsc/img.jpg?width=980" id="a94b9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="962e335465305043ded83f2677865215" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">UNESCO launched an international campaign to save the Abu Simbel Temple monuments in Egypt in the 1960s from being flooded by Lake Nasser. The project drew unprecedented international attention and praise for UNESCO's protection of the world's cultural heritage.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/f95bbb" target="_blank">VisualHunt.com</a></small></p><p><strong>Water programs</strong><br></p><p>The International Hydrological Programme (IHP) does scientific, educational and capacity building around <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/water">water</a> issues. IHP promotes an interdisciplinary, integrated approach to watershed and aquifer management, and does international research in the hydrological and freshwater sciences.</p><p>It also assists UNESCO member states in water security efforts, addressing challenges such as <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002451/245181E.pdf" target="_blank">water-related disasters and hydrological changes</a>, <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002451/245182E.pdf" target="_blank">groundwater</a>, <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002451/245183E.pdf" target="_blank">water scarcity and quality</a><u>,</u> and <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002451/245185E.pdf" target="_blank">ecohydrology</a>—the study of the interrelationships between hydrological and biological processes required to enhance water security and lessen ecological threats.</p><p>The <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/about/" target="_blank">World Water Assessment Programme</a> (WWAP) produces an annual <a href="http://www.unwater.org/publications/world-water-development-report-2017/" target="_blank">World Water Development Report</a>, a coordinated effort achieved across the UN system and provides a clear picture of the state of the world's freshwater resources to member nations.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjY4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Njg1NzEyMX0.iiB5NNdEBXcYhVkbcGh-IHfJo5g0pk1F6g0uW8J9UAM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2be9e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4568213ea6b56e0972c190b96389d50f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Pamukkale, Turkey, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its hot springs and enormous white terraces of travertine, a carbonate mineral sediment left by flowing water. <a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/f95bbb" target="_blank"></a></small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/f95bbb" target="_blank">Visualhunt.com</a></small></p><p><strong>Earth science programs</strong><br></p><p>UNESCO's <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/" target="_blank">programs in earth sciences</a> support research that informs current challenges such as evidence of global change from the geological record, geoscience of the water cycle, or environmental geodynamics.</p><p><a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/earth-science-education-in-africa/earthscienceeducation02/" target="_blank">The Environmental and Health Impacts of Mining Activities in Sub-Saharan African Countries</a> is a good example of how valuable this knowledge can be. This program in fact does not only aim to understand how the mining activities (and particularly abandoned mines) negatively affect the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/soil">soils</a>, animals, plants and fungi, surface and groundwater, and the health of neighboring communities. It also experiments with the most appropriate mining rehabilitation technologies, and provides science-based data to governments and local authorities on both land-use planning and technologies to mitigate environmental disaster in contaminated regions.</p><p>UNESCO Global Geoparks are areas where landscapes and sites of international geological significance are managed via a holistic approach to protection, education and sustainable development. As of today, there are 127 Geoparks in 35 countries, ranging from Vietnam to Brazil.</p><p>The organization also supports the meaningful inclusion <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/links/" target="_blank">of local and indigenous knowledge</a> in biodiversity conservation and management, especially <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> assessment and adaptation via the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).</p><p>UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has its own membership and a separate chapter in the organization's program and budget. IOC is the only body devoted to marine science within the UN system, and the U.S. has been involved in it since its establishment in 1960, mainly through the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The future of that relationship is uncertain now.</p><p>The U.S. has played an important role in many IOC programs critical to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans">ocean</a> health and the wellbeing of coastal communities. For instance, the <a href="http://www.ioc-tsunami.org/" target="_blank">Global Tsunami Warning System</a> that covers four major ocean basins (Pacific, Indian, Caribbean, and Mediterranean/North Eastern Atlantic), or the <a href="http://hab.ioc-unesco.org/" target="_blank">Harmful Algal Blooms</a> program, which develops research and provides guidance to address "red tides" now threatening a wide range of coastal economic sectors (fishing, tourism, navigation, aquaculture).</p><p>NOAA and NASA are also pivotal to IOC's Global Ocean Observing System: the U.S. has in particular been leading the deployment of Argo floats around the globe to enhance measurements of ocean temperature, salinity and currents. The U.S. is a key contributor to observations of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea-level rise</a>, ocean water acidification and a number of other variables to enhance understanding and predict trends and impacts of climate change, El Niño, and other ocean-related phenomena. It is uncertain precisely how that relationship will function in future.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjY4Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNTk4MTAwOX0.iFcYX4vMVoqPIg8JX82kazKwAbX-sbMlKXexWDqPHeA/img.jpg?width=980" id="595fc" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="95cae1f8a33b0ace3f506d8f23367e59" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> The Okavango Delta, Botswana, World Heritage Site is home to some of the world's most endangered species of large mammal, including the elephant, cheetah, white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, African wild dog and lion. <span></span></small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Pete Hancock / UNESCO</small></p><p><strong>Who benefits, who gets hurt?</strong><br></p><p>"While the U.S. will remain engaged in many of these programs, the absence of U.S. funding makes it increasingly difficult to meet the challenges that are so vital to the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans," George Papagiannis, UNESCO's Media Services Chief told Mongabay in an email, pointing out that "an ounce of investment is worth a pound of cure."</p><p>Papagiannis stressed a simple fact: UNESCO programs, and the critical environmental problems they seek to solve, do not only result in benefits to countries far from the White House, but instead greatly benefit the U.S. and millions of American citizens.</p><p>"A submerged lower Manhattan during hurricane Sandy, or the blooming red tides that affect the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, are reminders that the U.S. is no safer than most countries from ocean related hazards," he said, adding that no single country, regardless of national capacity, can tackle these cross-border issues on its own.</p><p>"Whether it is about safeguarding coastal economies and jobs, ensuring people's safety and public health, or protecting infrastructures, U.S. investments on IOC activities in ocean science and services create benefits to its citizens that far outweigh the costs," he said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjcwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMDYwNzkxNH0.uYmj2XrWnxU5HOn-5gGKw_gjFHtggt4eNehoJ_vH7Cs/img.jpg?width=980" id="2a4a9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bc47dd4d1b5ed053e43ef0a8f1ddaa9b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico, a World Heritage Site. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Archivo / RBC-CONANP</small></p><p>The IOC also provides an intergovernmental coordination platform for effective collective action, from which all Member States benefit. Of course, that cooperative approach doesn't fit in well with President Trump's "Make America Great Again," go-it-alone approach.<br></p><p>As an example, the UN General Assembly is discussing a proposal by IOC to declare 2021-2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, under the UN's global coordination. "The U.S. government and its scientific institutions stand to benefit enormously from participating in this collective framework for coordinating and consolidating the observations and research needed to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 14 on the ocean," Papagiannis said, pointing out that "it will be the time to bolster innovative technologies and scientific knowledge to bring tangible wellbeing and economic benefits to U.S. citizens."</p><p>It is also worth noting that much of UNESCO's work addresses the root causes of mass human migration, promoting sustainable and equitable management of national natural resources, and providing or fostering livelihoods, notably in Biosphere Reserves.</p><p><strong>Loss of U.S. funding started in 2011</strong></p><p>Strange as it may sound, there will be no immediate financial consequences related to the U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO because the U.S. has not paid its dues since 2011 during the Obama administration when the Palestinian Authority was accepted into the UN agency as a full member. The funding cut then was across the board, resulting in a 22 percent hit to the UNESCO budget more than $80 million per year, according to this <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/11/u-s-to-pull-out-of-unesco-again/" target="_blank">Foreign Policy report</a>. Since then, all parts of the organization have adapted to new financial realities.</p><p>Clearly there have been consequences since 2011, and UNESCO has never fully recovered from the loss. The approved budget allocated to Science and the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC) for the 2010-2011 biennium was <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/so-long-unesco-what-does-u-s-withdrawal-mean-for-the-environment/#_ftn1" target="_blank">$59,074,000</a>, while the approved expenditure plan for the current biennium (2016-2017) for Science and the IOC falls below that amount, coming in at <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/so-long-unesco-what-does-u-s-withdrawal-mean-for-the-environment/#_ftn2" target="_blank">$48,308,400</a>.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjcwNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTA4NDc1N30.e7p84sg5yPdjhh0VoRuCzImDUwK_vUxTIAX9MW6AbYE/img.jpg?width=980" id="0894b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cdffc6247f08260a77c38ab5bc42fe86" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">The Isla Genovesa Booby Sanctuary, Tower Island, Galapagos World Heritage Site. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">David Broad / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0</small></p><p>As a result, the number of permanent science positions has decreased, while less funding has meant a sharp refocusing of the organization's work. For example, Papagiannis said, UNESCO's Basic Sciences efforts were severely impacted, and the organization is no longer directly involved in earth observation and remote sensing projects, with few exceptions. That's a serious problem when one considers the rapid natural changes underway due to climate change. Furthermore, UNESCO no longer spends regular budget on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/">renewable energy</a> activities, and its engineering activities have been strongly curtailed.<br></p><p>In addition to its assessed contribution, the U.S. used to fund projects directly, a procedure known as "extra-budgetary funding." This means that UNESCO received money from the U.S. State Department, USAID, Department of Defense and National Science Foundation for seismicity and earthquake engineering in the Mediterranean and in Northeast Asia, and cooperation with the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering. The last of the funds allocated as extra-budgetary were received in November 2011 and spent by 2014.</p><p>One discontinued project was the Open Initiative with the Space Agencies, which included NASA, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey. This initiative used space imaging to monitor and protect World Heritage sites, and was discontinued five years ago. Interestingly that task has now been taken on by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which seems to value science more than the current U.S administration.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjcwNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDM5Mjc3OH0.Wnwjot5Ai_MvklBnkYuRZ754bJYKpwR_MdHyheRPd8Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="9f5b0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fc8d448a645393eaf33f70247a445bfd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary, Philippines, World Heritage Site. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Roy F. Ponce / UNESCO</small></p><p><strong>Who is the real loser?</strong><br></p><p>According to Papagiannis, "the withdrawal of the U.S. will have an impact on the United States' level of engagement in global science programs, and in the leadership of these program."</p><p>But in statements emailed to Mongabay, a State Department official wrote, "U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO does not alter U.S. policy of supporting international cooperation in educational, scientific, cultural, communication and information activities where there are benefits to the United States. By pursuing non-member observer status, it is our intention to remain participants in UNESCO programs, such as IOC, where non-member observers may have a role."</p><p>However, the statement continues, the dimensions of this observer participation remain to be defined. Currently the U.S. is focused on preparing its request for non-member observer status so that it may remain engaged on "non-politicized issues" undertaken by UNESCO.</p><p>"When it is in the U.S. interest," stressed the official, "the United States will continue to participate in UNESCO and UNESCO-related activities that do not require membership in the Organization."</p><p>Melinda Kimble, Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation, asserts that UNESCO's scientific and environmental programs provide core elements that support national and regional planning for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development"—a commitment to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030 worldwide adopted in 2015 by heads of state and government at a special UN summit.</p><p>"Clearly, an active and fully contributing U.S. could make a difference in sustaining UNESCO's leadership in education, science and culture," she told Mongabay.</p><p>This is not the first time the U.S. has left UNESCO. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/30/world/us-is-quitting-unesco-affirms-backing-for-un.html" target="_blank">Reagan Administration withdrew</a> in 1984 because of concerns over many issues, ranging from Soviet Union disarmament proposals to the organization's request for a budget increase. When the U.S. pulled out then, it was not in arrears and continued supporting UNESCO programs with voluntary financial contributions.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjcxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDI2NTU1Mn0.1TeoL7zwX14-1gntv2pg7V7TlHwV5Z9Rn3-vpw1EdsY/img.jpg?width=980" id="f62db" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="763c33e285cf868087a9dc933da9931b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> Karibik, St. Kitts, Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">giggel / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0</small></p><p>Then after an almost twenty-year absence, the U.S. rejoined the organization in 2003. President George W. Bush announced the move "as a symbol of our commitment to human dignity ... This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning."<br></p><p>As for Trump's planned withdrawal, Kimble agreed that "Clearly, an active and fully contributing USA could make a difference in sustaining UNESCO's leadership in education, science and culture." She noted that while the current pullout underscores U.S. skepticism about the UN system and multilateral action in many spheres, the real damage was done not by Trump but starting in 2011 with the U.S. failure to contribute financially.</p><p>"[T]he failure to pay dues has significantly undermined the capacity of the organization to deliver on its ambitious programs," Kimble concluded.</p><p>Under the terms of the original 1945 treaty establishing the United Nations and UNESCO, the U.S. as a Member State remains obligated to paying its arrears. "But this is not just about the money," said Papagiannis. "This [withdrawal represents] a loss for multilateralism and a blow to universality, which are critical factors to addressing the issues that affect people everywhere in every country."</p><p>In October, after receiving official notification by U.S. Secretary of State <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rex-tillerson">Rex Tillerson</a>, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova expressed profound regret at the decision.</p><p>"In 2011, when payment of membership contributions was suspended at the 36th session of the UNESCO General Conference, I said I was convinced UNESCO had never mattered as much for the United States, or the United States for UNESCO. This is all the more true today, when the rise of violent extremism and terrorism calls for new long-term responses for peace and security, to counter racism and anti-semitism, to fight ignorance and discrimination," she said in a press statement.</p><p>"I believe UNESCO's action to enhance scientific cooperation, for ocean sustainability, is shared by the American people," she added.</p><p>As the world rushes headlong into a century of scientific uncertainty—where the climate, oceans, freshwater, ecosystems and human communities grow increasingly unstable and at risk—it remains to be seen just how long America will want to go it alone, rather than joining with the rest of the world to share in the costs and benefits of international science in order to serve the common good.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxMjcyNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTE3MDMzNH0.YCnuadXbK7pEDmKW3pKS5tlw4ct0FTDpQrOdZDc6dCA/img.jpg?width=980" id="3d92b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="52302af10175b575ba93460c443f964b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve located in the southern Sierra Nevada of California. <a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/9b1de3" target="_blank"></a></small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Photo by <a href="https://visualhunt.com/author/f33974" target="_blank">thor_mark </a> on <a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/9b1de3" target="_blank">VisualHunt</a> / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-NC-SA</a></small></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/so-long-unesco-what-does-u-s-withdrawal-mean-for-the-environment/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>
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