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EU to Criminalize Acts ‘Comparable to Ecocide’

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Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“With this agreement, the European Union adopts some of the most ambitious legislation in the world,” one MEP who backed the measure said.

In what one proponent called a “fundamental victory,” the European Union agreed late Thursday to set new penalties for acts of environmental destruction “comparable to ecocide.”

The update to an E.U. directive, which targets wide-scale actions like habitat destruction and illegal logging, makes the bloc the first multinational group to criminalize these acts, The Guardian reported.

“Environmental crime is exploding around the world, it is now considered just as lucrative as drug trafficking, and is helping to destroy living conditions on Earth,” Marie Toussaint, a French lawyer and member of European Parliament who helped steer the negotiations, said in a statement. “With this agreement, the European Union adopts some of the most ambitious legislation in the world. We will continue to fight so that we can never again harm living things in the name of profit.”

“Our health depends on the state of the environment in which we live, so we must deter criminals willing to destroy ecosystems for profit.”

The new offense comes in the wake of a growing movement to have ecocide recognized as an international crime. The original call from the Stop Ecocide Foundation was for it to be added to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on equal footing with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. In 2021, the group assembled legal experts to draft a definition, which has generated interest on the national level as well. Bills have been introduced in Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

“We’re one step closer to stopping the destruction of our planet,” Giulio Carini, communications manager at WeMove Europe, said in a statement Friday. “With today’s proposal we’ve secured a text that paves the way to ensure we can protect nature through criminal law. This progress is a result of people-powered pressure—after more than 600,000 people across Europe have asked the E.U. to make ecocide a crime.”

Thursday’s agreement comes after the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee unanimously proposed in March that “member states shall ensure that any conduct causing severe and either widespread or long-term or irreversible damage shall be treated as an offense of particular gravity and sanctioned as such in accordance with the legal systems of the member states.”

This then led to months of negotiations between the parliament, the European Council, and the European Commission that have resulted in the decision to update the “directive on protection of the environment through criminal law” to include new penalties for especially devastating environmental harms.

“We are thrilled to see this result,” Jojo Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International, said in a statement. “The approved text is a hugely important step and a massive win for nature, significantly strengthening environmental protection through criminal law throughout the E.U.”

The actions singled out by the text include destroying the ozone layer, introducing or spreading invasive species, water abstraction, and shipping pollution and recycling, The Guardian reported. The agreement does not mention carbon credit scams, fishing, or exporting dangerous waste to developing countries. It also does not cover crimes committed by E.U. companies abroad, though individual states may chose to penalize them.

The updated directive could also penalize permitted activities if those permits were acquired through bribes, falsehoods, or threats, or violated legal agreements. Penalties include prison time for individuals or barring companies from receiving public funds in the future. E.U. countries can also chose to fine companies with a set amount of up to €40 million Euros ($43.6 million) or up to 5% of their income.

“Our health depends on the state of the environment in which we live, so we must deter criminals willing to destroy ecosystems for profit,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, E.U. commissioner for environment, oceans, and fisheries, as The Guardian reported.

The E.U. will officially pass the new directive in the spring of 2024, after which member states have two years to enshrine it in their own legal codes.

“This is highly significant and to be wholeheartedly commended, and we can see from the rapidly growing momentum of the ecocide law initiative that European states will not be long in engaging more deeply with it in their own jurisdictions,” Mehta said. “Indeed, I have no doubt that with this direction of travel being rapidly established, it is only a matter of time before ecocide is recognized in criminal law at every level.”

Continue ReadingEU to Criminalize Acts ‘Comparable to Ecocide’

Probe Demanded Over ‘Absurd’ Israeli Narrative About Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital

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2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

A human rights monitor in Geneva on Friday called on the United Nations to help get to the bottom of Israel’s claim that its bombing and raid of Gaza’s largest medical complex this week was necessary to stop Hamas from running a vast military compound beneath it—an allegation that more than two days after the attack began, has been backed up only by images Israel released of a small cache of weapons.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the time has come for an independent international investigation into “Israel’s absurd narrative” about al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, and noted that administrators at the facility are also demanding a probe “that includes a United Nations inspection.”

Israel did extensive damage to al-Shifa’s cardiac care department, surgical ward, and a pharmaceutical warehouse when it began bombing the hospital at dawn on Wednesday in just one of more than 245 attacks on medical facilities in Gaza since October 7. Israeli officials said they expected to find “the beating heart” of Hamas’ military operations in the hospital.

But after searching basement areas and several health departments as well as conducting a “violent interrogation campaign” targeting displaced people and medical personnel, Euro-Med said, Israel has so far produced only a video showing a small number of weapons.

“The absence of any neutral international party’s involvement in the Israeli military raids and searches of al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the strip raises widespread doubts about the Israeli narrative,” said Euro-Med. “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians.”

“We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

Separately, the BBC aired a segment on Friday in which the network noted the Israel Defense Forces first released a seven-minute video displaying the weapons it found—a video that appeared to be edited despite IDF claims that it was filmed in a single shot with no edits, and that raised several other questions.

“This IDF video was posted, then deleted, then reposted, this time without a section referring to an Israeli soldier who’d been held hostage,” reported the BBC.

Reporters from the network arrived at al-Shifa a few hours after the IDF released the original video, and were shown a different selection of weapons than those that appeared in the military’s video.

“What we see in this IDF video doesn’t equate Israel’s description of an ‘operational command center for Hamas,'” the BBC reported.

The footage, released late at night “after long hours of searches and fruitless inspections,” said Euro-Med, “raises a lot of questions, especially since no gunman has been arrested and no evidence has been found to back the previous claims about the presence of tunnels beneath the hospital.”

The IDF has also claimed that Hamas “knew we were coming” and had likely “made off with or hidden traces of their presence” at al-Shifa, The New York Times reported.

Israel’s narrative about al-Shifa has also drawn scrutiny from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, who said that even if the hospital were being used as a command center for Hamas, “protecting [patients] is paramount.”

“Even if health facilities are used for military purposes, the principles of distinction, precaution, and proportionality always apply,” Tedros said.

The director of al-Shifa, Muhammed Abu Salmiya, toldAl Jazeera Friday that staff are still trying to save as many of the 7,000 patients and refugees in the hospital as they can amid Israel’s ongoing siege, but they “lost all those who were in the intensive care unit” following the attack on Wednesday.

“We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water,” said Abu Salmiya. “With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

The Biden administration, which has continued supporting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as the death toll has grown to at least 11,470 in less than six weeks, said this week it believed the IDF’s claims about al-Shifa, with President Joe Biden saying it was a “fact” that Hamas has “their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.”

A day after the bombing, as observers awaited evidence of an extensive command center beneath the hospital, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller appeared less confident in Israel’s narrative, telling reporters that the White House “never said there were command posts in every hospital in Gaza.”

“We don’t want to see hospitals struck from the air,” said Miller. “We understand that Hamas continues to use hospitals in places where they embed their fighters.”

After the BBC reported on the IDF’s changing video documentation of its findings, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft called Israel’s “propaganda” supporting its onslaught in Gaza “increasingly clownish.”

“Only Joe Biden seems to believe it,” said Parsi.

Journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out that Israel itself is known to have built “an underground operating room and tunnels under the hospital” in 1983.

“This is not a secret,” Scahill wrote on social media, noting that Israel has claimed Hamas expanded the tunnels in recent years.

Allegations of a Hamas command center, supported by the U.S., said Scahill, “should be backed up by clear evidence, not a Geraldo Rivera/Al Capone’s vault-style video presentation featuring an English-speaking IDF soldier.”

“No matter what is or is not found, there is no justification for the repeated attacks against civilian hospitals—in fact al-Shifa is the largest hospital treating the most vulnerable people in Gaza, including NICU babies,” he added. “The mere existence of tunnels, originally built by Israel, does not prove the specific allegations made by the U.S. or Israel. The standard for such evidence should be very, very high.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingProbe Demanded Over ‘Absurd’ Israeli Narrative About Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital

Big Oil’s Big Lies Are Catching Up With Them

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Climate protestors march in Washington DC
Climate protestors march in Washington DC

Original article by Cassidy Dipaola republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

The American public believes fossil fuel companies should pay for their deceit. Our job is to make sure they do.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has misled the public about the climate impacts of its products. Internal documents prove companies like Exxon knew since the 1970s that burning oil and gas drives catastrophic global warming. Yet rather than warn society, they denied the science and obstructed climate action at every turn.

This corporate deception continues today, but the public is catching on in a big way. New polling from Data for Progress reveals 70% of Americans support making Big Oil pay for the climate damages their products have caused. With climate disasters growing in frequency and severity, people are fed up footing the bill for Big Oil’s greed.

Such greed should disgust us all. But outrage alone achieves nothing.

Critically, the American public believes Big Oil should pay for their lies. The new polling reveals that 77% of Americans agree that if oil and gas companies misled the public about climate impacts, they should help cover resulting climate costs. This consensus crosses political divisions. Agreement spans 91% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 63% of Republicans—an exceptionally high level of bipartisan agreement.

The poll also shows a sharp rise in support for making polluters pay over time. Similar polls in 2021 and 2019 found roughly 60% and 57% of Americans backed accountability, respectively. In just a few short years, support for accountability has jumped nearly 20 percentage points. Now near three-quarters of Americans are in agreement around the belief that Big Oil should pay for the harms it sowed through decades of deception.

The costs of warming are no longer abstract statistics. They can be seen in the devastation of communities across America. In 2021 alone, extreme weather fueled by climate change inflicted over $165 billion in damages nationwide. Floods, wildfires and storms killed hundreds and displaced countless more. Low income and minority communities suffered most, abandoned by the very corporations who caused this crisis.

At the same time these climate impacts accelerate, the fossil fuel industry is raking in massive profits. Just last quarter, Chevron pocketed $11.2 billion and Exxon secured $19.7 billion. Rather than invest in renewables or pay for the harms they’ve caused, they’re doubling down on fossil fuels, scooping up sister-companies and stoking fears of monopolization in the public and leadership alike.

New lawsuits are seeking damages for Big Oil’s climate deception, and they’re gaining traction.

By misleading the public on climate science for so long, the industry secured decades of unchecked emissions to swell its bottom line. But now, the deadly consequences of its lies are coming to bear. Record heat, drought and near-weekly hurricanes make clear we rapidly must transition from fossil fuels to avert utter climate catastrophe.

The public correctly realizes these corporations should pay for the crisis they knowingly fueled. Our leaders must stand up to polluters and enact policies to rein in their abuses. A future free from fossil fuels is possible, and we now have the political will to make it happen.

Original article by Cassidy Dipaola republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Cassidy DiPaola is the Spokesperson and Campaign Manager for the Stop The Oil Profiteering Campaign at Fossil Free Media.

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Continue ReadingBig Oil’s Big Lies Are Catching Up With Them

IEA Report Makes Clear the Urgent Need to ‘Rapidly Replace and Phase Out All Fossil Fuels’

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Wind turbines are shown in front of a coal-fired power plant operated by energy giant RWE near Niederaussem, Germany on October 5, 2022.  (Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)

The International Energy Agency warned that while renewable energy use is surging, fossil fuel production worldwide remains “far too high” to prevent catastrophic warming.

The International Energy Agency warned Tuesday that governments aren’t moving with nearly enough urgency to phase out fossil fuels, leaving the world on a perilous track toward 2.4°C of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

While the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) report celebrates “the phenomenal rise of clean energy technologies such as solar, wind, electric cars, and heat pumps,” it makes clear that the continued burning of oil, gas, and coal is undermining global renewable energy progress.

“As things stand, demand for fossil fuels is set to remain far too high to keep within reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C,” the IEA said. “The costs of inaction could be enormous: despite the impressive clean energy growth based on today’s policy settings, global emissions would remain high enough to push up global average temperatures by around 2.4°C this century, well above the key threshold set out in the Paris Agreement.”

The IEA released its annual report just over a month before the COP28 summit in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s top oil producers.

Kelly Trout, research director at Oil Change International, said in a statement Tuesday that the IEA’s analysis provides a “roadmap for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change COP28 negotiations: limiting warming to 1.5°C requires a clear decision on a fast, fair, and fully funded end of fossil fuels as well as a rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency, with wealthy countries in the lead and paying their fair share for a just energy transition.”

“We can’t solve the climate crisis by adding renewable energy on top of new fossil fuels—we need to rapidly replace and phase out all fossil fuels, including gas,” said Trout. “There is a massive and deadly gap between current policies, which still lead to higher oil and gas use in 2030 than today, and the rapid declines in fossil fuels required to stave off runaway climate disaster. Every investment in new oil and gas infrastructure is an investment in more methane leaks, more warming, and more of the extreme heat, floods, fires, and drought destroying communities and ecosystems.”

“We need a fast and fair plan to phase out polluting fossil fuels that are killing us.”

The IEA report comes on the heels of the hottest summer on record as well as the warmest September on record—unprecedented heat that scientists say was made possible by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

The energy agency said the rapid emergence and deployment of renewable energy—including wind and solar power and electric vehicles—are keeping alive hopes of preventing catastrophic warming.

“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said Tuesday. “It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’—and the sooner the better for all of us.”

https://twitter.com/fbirol/status/1716666060399685942?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1716666060399685942%7Ctwgr%5Ea311239002a4ef220c6a74979653d040ffaa8efb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fiea-report-fossil-fuels

But the agency cautioned that even major increases in clean energy use won’t be enough to limit planetary warming if fossil fuel use doesn’t sharply decline. A recent NASA-led study found that keeping warming below 2°C by century’s end is “critical to limiting dangerous and cascading impacts” of climate change.

The IEA’s report notes that the world is currently set for “an unprecedented surge” in new liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, which are heavily polluting. The agency observed that “more than half of the new projects are in the United States and Qatar.”

Kaisa Kosonen, policy coordinator at Greenpeace International, said in response to the new report that “every new fossil fuel project is in stark violation of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit—leaders simply cannot claim to be in support of global action on climate change while supporting fossil fuel expansion.”

“We need a fast and fair plan to phase out polluting fossil fuels that are killing us,” said Kosonen. “Those who’ve polluted and profited the most must be made accountable and financially support the most vulnerable people, communities, and countries in their transition to clean, renewable energy.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIEA Report Makes Clear the Urgent Need to ‘Rapidly Replace and Phase Out All Fossil Fuels’

Gaza facing ‘immediate possibility of starvation,’ UN warns

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https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/gaza-facing-immediate-possibility-of-starvation-un-warns

Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli air strike destroys a building, November 17, 2023

PEACE campaigners slammed Israeli authorities and world leaders today after the United Nations warned Gaza faced the “immediate possibility of starvation.”

Even before the fast approaching winter Palestinians are already struggling to survive in desperate conditions created by a lack of fuel, which means aid agencies are unable to transport urgently needed food and medical supplies to the besieged people of the territory.

UN World Food Programme (WFP) Mideast regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said that, since the beginning of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’s October 7 uprising, Gaza has received only around 10 per cent of its required food supplies each day. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing as a result, with nearly all residents in need of food.

Speaking from Cairo, Egypt, Ms Etefa said: “Food production has come to an almost complete halt, markets have collapsed, fishermen cannot access the sea, farmers cannot reach their farms.

WFP executive director Cindy McCain said: “With winter rapidly approaching, shelters unsafe and overcrowded and a lack of clean water, civilians face the immediate possibility of starvation.”

…

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/gaza-facing-immediate-possibility-of-starvation-un-warns

Continue ReadingGaza facing ‘immediate possibility of starvation,’ UN warns