Today the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the ethanol industry, released a report claiming corn ethanol reduces gas prices at the pump.
It is no surprise that a report bought by the corn ethanol corporations champions their industry. The Renewable Fuels Association claims are dubious at best. The real cost of ethanol is being born by the American public and the environment.
Consumers are paying more at the grocery checkout line and…
Dateline Dallas: I arrived Tuesday, May 8, in this north Texas city for ten days of intense activity around a new regional trade pact called the Trans Pacific Partnership. During this week and a half, we have scheduled formal and informal meetings with negotiators, public teach-ins, civil society meetings and a major demonstration. Currently, Singapore, Malaysia, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam and the United States are participating in talks, but…
The San Onofre nuclear power plant, located between Los Angeles and San Diego, has been kept shut for the past three and half months by Southern California Edison, after radioactivity leaked into the atmosphere.
Last weekend the Keynoter newspaper in the Florida Keys reported that plans to release genetically engineered mosquitoes in Key West “remain on indefinite hold.” But Oxitec has submitted an application to the FDA for approval of its mosquitoes as an investigational new animal drug, meaning approval could come at any time and the public would have no warning or input.
Today Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act, legislation that goes further than any previous bill to unwind the web of government subsidies for the fossil fuels industry. If enacted the bill would save taxpayers over $10 billion a year.
There has been a lot of momentum behind ending subsidies for the fossil fuels. For example, shortly after taking office President Obama joined the other G20-…
Friends of the Earth has long been at the forefront of the effort to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. These subsidies perpetuate our dependence on the dirty energy sources of the past, rob us of our capacity to fund energy solutions of the future, and undermine any attempts to implement smart climate policy. Friends of the Earth supports the eventual elimination of all fossil fuel subsidies. But as we point out in a new position…
U.S. model for Trans Pacific trade pact will generate investment lawsuits threatening the environment In 2001 William Greider, the famed progressive journalist, wrote about the North American Free Trade Agreement’s investment chapter in The Nation: “Multinational investors can randomly second-guess the legitimacy of environmental laws or any other public-welfare or economic regulation, including agency decisions, even jury verdicts…NAFTA's arbitrators cannot overturn domestic laws, but their huge damage awards may be nearly as crippling--chilling governments…
Bob Alvarez serves as a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and as a senior analyst at Friends of the Earth, focusing on nuclear disarmament, the safety risks of nuclear reactors and, in particular, the vulnerability of radioactive spent fuel that is piling up at reactor sites across the U.S.
Last weekend he wrote a piece for Huffington Post about the threats posed by spent reactor fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi…
Yesterday morning the White House released its National Bioeconomy Blueprint which “outlines steps that agencies will take to drive the bioeconomy—economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences—and details ongoing efforts across the Federal government to realize this goal.”
Unfortunately, this new bioeconomy is not as green as the Obama administration is making it out to be. The so-called bioeconomy is dependent primarily on the risky, unregulated field of synthetic biology…
Friends of the Earth International released a new report earlier this week, titled Land, Life and Justice, revealing the environmental degradation and human rights violations that are the result of land grabbing occurring in Uganda. The report focuses on the impact land grabs are having on communities in the forested islands of Kalangala, where a corporation called BIDCO is leveling forests used by subsistence farmers and converting it into massive plantations for palm oil,…