With the beginning of the New Year came the expiration of the biggest subsidy for corn ethanol, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit. Friends of the Earth campaigned against the tax subsidy, nicknamed VEETC, a $6 billion-a-year handout to the oil and corn ethanol industries, for over three years. We won a huge victory for the environment and taxpayers when Congress adjourned without renewing the tax subsidy in late December. VEETC had…
At the end of every year, we tend to pause and reflect about the past 12 months, stopping to examine trends and to remember important events -- usually in list form. And with all the year in, worst of, best of, top five and top ten lists appearing throughout the internet and in newspapers, I couldn’t help but think of what my favorite moments were as a staffer at Friends of…
Nigerians wait, helpless, for the massive spill from Shell’s Bonga offshore oil field to hit the coastal waters, shorelines and swamps. Telephone links to some of the coastal communities are tenuous at best and most people will not know what has hit them until they are down and out. Nigerian regulatory agencies, ill equipped to handle independent monitoring of spills of this nature, tell the world they are on top of the situation. That is…
There have been lots of “d” words used to describe the Durban climate talks that recently ended in South Africa -- disaster, debacle, delusion, devastation.
A private firm is planning to release potentially harmful genetically engineered mosquitoes in the Florida Keys as early as January, endangering human health and the environment in what would become the first-ever U.S. release of these engineered bugs.
The genetically engineered mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, are produced by UK-based biotechnology company Oxitec so their offspring will die at a young age in an effort to lower mosquito populations and limit the spread of dengue fever. While…
The first rule of Keystone XL: don’t underestimate the vice grip of Big Oil on our democracy, especially when it comes to its marquee project.
A month ago, we were celebrating—skeptically. We had gotten the welcome news that the Obama administration hit the reset button on the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, announcing it will explore a new route and seek a new environmental review potentially stopping this dirty and dangerous project. The…
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it's final round of funding earlier this week, and once again put the interest of corporate polluters before the environment or taxpayers. In 2011 alone, $4.28 dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on almost 400 "blender pumps" for corn ethanol under the guise of clean energy subsidies.
Yesterday morning, the Senate Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard held a hearing on the environmental risks posed by genetically engineered salmon (archived webcast of the hearing available). As you may remember, the Food and Drug Administration announced in August 2010 that it was close to finalizing its approval of a genetically engineered salmon produced by AquaBounty Technologies – which would make it the first-ever generically engineered animal to be…
"¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!,” or “the people united, will never be defeated,” resounded outside World Bank headquarters yesterday in downtown Washington, D.C. Friends of the Earth staff joined about 75 people to protest a lawsuit that provides one of the most egregious examples of how our current trade policies let corporations trample democracy and people’s rights to a healthy environment. In the suit, being considered by a little-known tribunal housed inside…
If I looked up the accepted UN policies and procedure, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t find a “huddle” anywhere in there as a usual means to craft international law, but sure enough, in the wee hours of the Durban climate talks that had run late by nearly 36 hours, perhaps the most important negotiation shaping the future of the UN climate talks happened in large scrum in the middle of main plenary hall. Developed…