Blog
Safeguards in Biofuels Policy Endangered by Climate Bill Hostage Situtation
The last week’s deliberations on climate legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee did not leave environmental safeguards from biofuels unscathed. Read More
International Negotiations and U.S. Climate Legislation
The nations of the world expect U.S. leadership this year in international climate negotiations, which will culminate in the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark in December. These negotiations in Copenhagen will be our best opportunity to forge a strong and fair international agreement to solve the climate crisis, and what happens in the United States prior to these negotiations will influence whether such a solution can be achieved. Read More
The American Clean Energy and Security Act
On Wednesday, we released a joint statement with Greenpeace and Public Citizen to express our concern about disturbing changes to the new climate bill currently being discussed in Congress: Read More
Ready or Not?
Mobilizing Activists, Congress, and the Administration to Help Communities Build Resilience to Climate Change As part of a powerful coalition of international development agencies, faith-based groups, and environmental agencies, Friends of the Earth helped organize a series of events on April 30 – May 1, 2009 to highlight the impacts of climate change and how communities can adapt to these changes. Read More
Ship Shape: Bring Ship Discharge Standards into the 21st Century
Right now, cruise ships and other large ocean going vessels are getting a free pass because the standards for dumping their sewage are over 30 years old! We recently submitted a petition to the U.S. EPA urging it to bring large ship sewage dumping standards into the 21st century. The EPA’s standards were set in 1976, based on pollution treatment technology available at the time. More than 30 years later, those standards have yet to be updated to take into account modern technology. Read More
Friends of the Earth Staffer Recognized as “Grassroots Activist of the Year”
At its annual pilgrimage to lobby in Washington, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), an umbrella organization of public interest organizations working on U.S. Read More
Friends of the Earth International Food Sovereignty Meeting
There are millions of hungry people in the world and someone has to feed them. Small farms that seek to provide healthy food for their surrounding areas are being threatened by large-scale industrial agriculture. To make matters worse, genetically modified foods and emerging technologies, like nanotechnology and synthetic biology, continue to threaten the extinction of small farms and hurt the consumer by removing the power of choice. Read More
EPA Releases Draft Biofuels Rules: Today’s Biofuels Worse than Gasoline
Early May, EPA released draft rules for the Renewable Fuels Standard. In this massive, 1000 page document, is EPA's assessment of the global warming impact of biofuels. The Renewable Fuels Standard, which mandates the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by the year 2022, includes in it a few critical environmental protections, such as a require Read More
Report: ‘A Boon to Bad Biofuels’ released
Friends of the Earth released a report in May 2009 that examined the extent to which biofuels are subsidized by the tax credits as well as the Renewable Fuels Standard. The report found that biofuels received enormous benefits from these policies, particularly when combined. Read More