Blog
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
Gas Flaring in Nigeria
An Environmental Health Nightmare Gas flares are created when oil companies burn off extra gas that escapes as a result of oil drilling. Read More
EPA Petitioned to Update Sewage Standards for Ships
Friends of the Earth issued a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urging the EPA to update standards governing sewage dumping from large ships. The current, outdated standards, adopted in 1976, allow the use of 30-year-old treatment technology and fail to protect water quality. Far better treatment technology exists and has been in use in some cruise ships for years. Read More
Forests On the Chopping Block In Energy Policy
As Congress debates how to build a clean energy future, one policy proposal threatens our nation's forests: The Renewable Electricity Standard. While a Renewable Electricity Standard -- which would require a set percentage of U.S. Read More