Earlier this year, the Obama administration released the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are widely promoted to the public and help guide nutrition education programs and menu planning for government institutions, including schools, prisons, military facilities and federal cafeterias.
Despite strong scientific evidence presented by its own Advisory Committee on the need for Americans to eat less meat for health and environmental reasons, the guidelines failed to provide clear guidance to the public…
Californians and global citizens are coming to soberly understand that California’s climate leadership may not be designed to protect people and the planet, but rather to protect polluters and their profits.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation provides financing to projects in the name of helping countries develop. The problem is that often these projects seem to help large corporations more than the average person in the developing world. Too often local communities bear the brunt of the environmental and social impacts of projects that come into their community with little consultation, let alone consent. Meanwhile, U.S. companies receive taxpayer dollars to support…
On February 3 and 4 across the nation and around the world, Friends of the Earth, Flush & the TPP, the Citizens Trade Campaign and other allies coordinated rallies to protest the signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal in New Zealand.
From Washington D.C. to Auckland, thousands demanded the legislative rejection of a TPP deal that gives corporations more power, ramps up climate destruction and increases environmental and health risks.
To read more about…
Yesterday, Friends of the Earth was joined at the White House by over a dozen other environmental groups and grassroots community leaders to deliver over 2 million petitions to President Obama that call for no new offshore drilling.
Here’s what’s going on: last year the Obama administration released a draft five-year offshore drilling program for 2017-2022 that proposes 10 new sales of publicly owned oil and gas to fossil fuel empires like BP, Exxon and Shell. The draft…
More than two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lacks electricity, with that number growing to more than 85 percent in rural areas. The Electrify Africa Act of 2015, a legislative initiative that purports to aim to reduce those numbers, has now passed through both chambers of Congress and is headed to the President’s desk for signature. This bill aims to promote first-time energy access for…
Towards the end of 2015, we posted this video of landless farmers in Nigeria telling global palm oil giant Wilmar International that they oppose the large scale land deal that sold off their livelihoods to this multinational corporation. That land purchase was and is part of the expansion of industrial agribusiness in Nigeria promoted by the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition -- a program that provides aid money from rich countries like…
Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources…And that’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.
– President Obama, State of the Union, 2016
President Obama is absolutely right, and the best place to start that transition is with publicly owned fossil fuels on federally managed lands…
Listen in with AM950's The Daily Report and Marissa Knodel, our climate change campaigner, as they discuss the future of President Obama's role in offshore drilling. Check out the time between 28:26-39:30 for her comments:
The reality is that we've leased more fossil fuels onshore and offshore than we can safely burn. About 38 million acres along the outer continental shelf has been leased and about 6.5 million of those are producing. 21 million of…
The 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change officially opened on November 30, 2015 with about the amount of pomp you might expect for the 150 world leaders – and Prince Charles – in Paris for the opening ceremony. Security is understandably very tight, with parts of the Boulevard Peripherique closed and a highly visible police presence.
Listening to President Obama speak, you could be forgiven for…