Senate Climate Report full of backwards, false solutions
Friends of the Earth urges bolder action to combat the climate crisisWASHINGTON – The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis released its final 200-page report on the climate crisis today.
In response to the report, Karen Orenstein, Climate and Energy Program Director at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement:
Friends of the Earth is deeply disappointed in this report. Instead of embracing bold climate solutions endorsed by the climate movement it relies on backward-looking propositions that prop up the dying fossil fuel industry.
The report fails to call for even the most widely accepted solutions like ending leasing on public lands. Instead, it protects dirty polluters’ market share with technology-neutral policy gimmicks designed to keep us drilling and mining for decades to come. Moreover, the report fails to include the hard targets or commitments necessary to end the fossil fuel subsidies doled out by the U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
Despite proof from more than a decade of carbon trading that carbon markets are gamed to benefit polluters, fail to reduce emissions, and increase pollution hot spots in low-wealth and communities of color, the report still pushes for their proliferation, especially soil carbon. Soil carbon markets would primarily benefit the largest agricultural producers and incentivize, rather than combat, agricultural consolidation while failing to support farmers in making the essential transition to resilient ecologically regenerative agriculture.
The Special Committee needs to go back to the drawing board and start again, but this time taking their cues from climate science and the Climate Movement.
Communications contact: Aisha Dukule, [email protected], 202-893-3502
Expert contact: Karen Orenstein, [email protected]