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Tag: United States

  • UK court to hear Assange’s final appeal against extradition in February

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    Original article by Anish R M republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    In the hearing, two judges will review an earlier decision to reject Assange’s appeal against his extradition to the US

    The High Court of Justice in London has decided to hear what could be Julian Assange’s final appeal against his extradition to the United States. A statement released by Wikileaks on Tuesday, December 19, announced that the High Court has confirmed a two-day hearing on February 20-21, 2024.

    The two-day hearing will be held before a bench of two judges and review the decision by Justice Jonathan Swift of the High Court to reject Assange’s plea against his extradition. In this last ditch attempt by Assange’s defense, the two judges will decide whether the Wikileaks founder will have any further chance to appeal his case in a British court or prepare for the looming extradition.

    The 3-page long decision by Justice Swift handed down on June 6 this year, rejected all eight grounds of appeal raised by Assange’s defense team. The appeal, if approved by the High Court, will challenge the extradition sanctioned by the UK Home Office in June 17, 2022

    Immediately after the court announced the dates, supporters and press freedom advocates called for a protest demonstration to be held outside the courthouse in London and in cities around the world, on the first day of the hearing.

    John Rees of the Free Assange Campaign said in the Wikileaks statement that if the US is allowed to “get away with [their attempts to prosecute Assange], they will have succeeded in redefining journalism as spying.”

    Stating that the extradition and a federal trial will have an impact on all journalists and broadcasters, Rees said that “every journalist will be intimidated. Every newspaper and journalist will look at material critical of the government and feel significant pressure not to publish for fear of prosecution and imprisonment.”

    “This is the most important press freedom case of the 21st century and we need to ensure we don’t lose any hard-won freedoms.”

    If extradited, Assange will stand trial before a federal grand jury in the US on 18 charges that carry a combined prison sentence of 175 years. Of the 18 charges leveled against him, 17 are under the infamous US Espionage Act.

    Stella Assange, advocate and Julian’s wife, raised concerns of his safety and the nature of the looming trial in the event the US does succeed in his extradition. She, along with other members of Assange’s family and his colleagues, have been campaigning for his release ever since he was arrested in April 2019.

    “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2019, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited,” she said. “The persecution of this innocent journalist and publisher must end.”

    Read more: Julian Assange case: 4 things that the media doesn’t tell you

    Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, also echoed these concerns. “There is no press without the protection to operate freely,” Hrafnsson said. “Julian’s case is a landmark moment; the UK needs to decide if it wishes to be a haven for free press or if it wishes to be complicit in the degradation of a core value of our democracy.”

    The US indictment against Assange, initiated under the Donald Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden, is the first time ever a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act.

    In the meantime, Assange has remained imprisoned without charges since April 2019, in a high-security prison in Belmarsh on the outskirts of London, at the behest of the extradition request by the US.

    His extradition was initially rejected by a district judge in London in January 2021 on grounds of Assange’s mental health and the risk of suicide and other bodily harm if he was extradited.

    This decision was overturned by the High Court in London in December that year based on diplomatic assurances given by the US after the district court’s decision. In June 2022, the UK Home Office sanctioned the extradition based on the High Court’s decision.

    US lawmakers call for Assange’s release

    Even as the UK prepares for the court hearing in February, calls for Assange’s release have reached the US Congress.

    A bipartisan resolution was introduced on December 16, in the US House of Representatives by Republican representative Paul Gosar, and co-sponsored by eight congress members seeking to drop all charges against Assange.

    The draft resolution seeks to drop all charges against Assange and reinforce the fact that his journalistic activities, including the publication of classified government documents and diplomatic cables to expose US war crimes and other wrongdoings, were protected under the First Amendment rights of the US Constitution.

    The resolution, co-sponsored by the likes of James McGovern, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ilhan Omar, also highlighted that the successful prosecution of Assange “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis.”

    Similarly on November 14, another bipartisan group of members of Congress, led by McGovern and Massie, sent a letter to president Biden calling for the charges to be dropped. Aside from co-sponsors of the House draft resolution mentioned above, the signatories to the letter include the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Presley, and Rand Paul.

    Original article by Anish R M republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    https://dontextraditeassange.com

  • Israel Is Starving Gaza Civilians as ‘Method of Warfare’: Human Rights Watch

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

    A view of empty shelves are seen at a supermarket amidst Israel’s bombardments as Palestinians have trouble finding necessary food in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 11, 2023.  (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation,” said one campaigner. “It is Israeli government policy.”

    From bombing food production hubs and systematically razing crop fields to halting aid deliveries, Israel is waging a multi-pronged effort to starve the people of Gaza amid the Israel Defense Forces’ bombardment of the enclave, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday—with evidence drawn from the Israeli government’s own statements as well as survivors’ accounts.

    The group demanded that countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and others that have provided Israel with military aid and other support since the country began its latest escalation against Gaza in October speak out against the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

    “For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”

    HRW pointed to satellite imagery it has collected in northern Gaza since the IDF began its air and ground assault in retaliation for an attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.

    The images have shown orchards, greenhouses, and farmland that have been razed over the last two months, “apparently by Israeli forces, compounding concerns of dire food insecurity.”

    Only sand and dirt have been left behind where farmers in northeastern Gaza grew citrus, potatoes, dragon fruit, and prickly pear since Israeli forces took control of the area in mid-November and “systematically razed” the fields, said the group.

    Palestinians in Gaza, home to about 2.3 million people, have lost the ability to grow their own food as Israel has refused to allow food, water, and fuel deliveries into the enclave, leaving bakeries and grocery store shelves empty.

    Before the Israeli bombardment began, about 500 aid trucks filled with food and other goods entered Gaza on a daily basis to provide sustenance amid Israel’s unlawful occupation and its land, air, and sea blockade that began 16 years ago. Israel has allowed only 100 aid trucks to cross through Egypt’s Rafah crossing since October 7. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, said earlier this month that fuel deliveries—needed for farming, cooking, water desalination, healthcare operations, and other necessities—have been “utterly insufficient.”

    Prior to the current escalation, about half of Gaza’s population was facing acute food insecurity and 80% were reliant on humanitarian aid.

    The World Food Program (WFP) at the U.N. said earlier this month that 9 in 10 households in northern Gaza and 2 in 3 homes in the south had been without food for at least one full day and night since Israel’s assault. It also warned that 38% of families who had been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza were experiencing “severe levels of hunger” and that the enclave faces a “high risk of famine.”

    “It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation. It is Israeli government policy,” said Andrew Stroehlein, European media and editorial director for HRW.

    In addition to the halting of aid and the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural sector, the last operational wheat mill was bombed on November 15 ensureing “that locally produced flour will be unavailable in Gaza for the foreseeable future,” said HRW.

    The group interviewed 11 civilians who described their struggles with finding sufficient food in recent weeks.

    A man identified as Taher said that after his family fled south to Gaza City in November, they resorted to eating “just once a day to survive.”

    “The city was out of everything, of food and water,” he told HRW. “If you find canned food, the prices were so high… We were running out of money. We decided to just have the necessities, to have less of everything.”

    Majed, who left his home in the north after his house was bombed, killing his six-year-old son, said he, his wife, and their four surviving children had no way of making bread for more than a month when they temporarily stayed in Gaza City.

    “In those 33 days we didn’t have bread because there was no flour,” he said. “There was no water—we were buying water, sometimes for $10 a cup. It wasn’t always drinkable. Sometimes, [the water we drank] was from the bathroom and sometimes from the sea. The markets around the area were empty. There wasn’t even canned food.”

    HRW noted that the Israeli government itself has made numerous statements in recent weeks pointing to the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s food access and the starvation of civilians.

    Defense Minister Yoav Gallant infamously called Palestinians in Gaza “human animals” when he announced the “complete siege” and cutting off of aid into the enclave on October 9.

    “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel—everything is closed,” Gallant said.

    Col. Yogev Bar-Shesht, deputy head of the Civil Administration, said in an interview that eliminating Palestinians’ ability to grow food is a deliberate tactic.

    “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth,” he said. “No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”

    HRW’s report came as the death toll in Gaza hit at least 19,453, with more than 50,800 injured and thousands believed to be buried underneath rubble.

    Article 54(1) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions and Article 14 of the Second Additional Protocol both prohibit starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

    “Although Israel is not a party to Protocols I or II, the prohibition is recognized as reflective of customary international humanitarian law in both international and noninternational armed conflicts,” said HRW.

    The worsening humanitarian catastrophe, and Israel’s refusal to operate within the bounds of international law, “calls for an urgent and effective response from the international community,” said Shakir.

    “The Israeli government is compounding its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians and the blocking of humanitarian aid,” he said, “by its cruel use of starvation as a weapon of war.”

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

  • “It is clear that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” UN-Panel concludes

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    Original article by Pavan Kulkarni at peoples dispatch republished under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    While the ‘physical element’ of genocide is being documented and broadcast daily, the ‘mental element’ – i.e the intent behind the mass killing – which is more difficult to establish, has been repeatedly clarified by the leaders of Israeli government and military.

    Israeli forces in Gaza. Photo: IDF

    Amid the growing international consensus that the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza amount to genocide, a UN panel ahead has also concluded that “genocide is already happening” in Gaza.

    The UN-mandated Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) convened this panel at UN headquarters in New York City on December 12, ahead of the vote in the General Assembly on the resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.

    Tasked to “examine the legal implications of Israel’s military offensive against Gaza since 7 October and shed light on the applicability of key legal frameworks including those defining Genocide”, the panel was titled “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide”.

    “But sadly it is clear that genocide is already happening, so our question now is the responsibility to stop the ongoing genocide,” Hari Prabowo, Indonesia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN who chaired the panel discussion, said at its conclusion.

    On the same day, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also adopted a resolution recognizing that “Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people constitute an unfolding genocide.”

    From November onwards UN experts, including several Special Rapporteurs and members of Working Groups on various issues, have been warning that there was “a genocide in the making” in Gaza.

    Consensus on the genocidal nature of Israel’s war on Gaza has been consolidating since its early days. As early as October 15, just over a week after Israel started its bombardment, nearly 900 “scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies” from around the world had warned of a “potential genocide in Gaza.”

    In the two months since this warning, the death toll has increased by over seven-fold, with over 19,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) as of December 17. Thousands more remain buried under the rubble of the buildings Israel has bombed.

    But the number of the killed is not the factor determining whether or not the mass killing amounted to genocide, Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights, explained in her presentation at the UN panel discussion.

    Pointing out that several Bosnian Serb political and military leaders were convicted of genocide for the “killing of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica” in 1995, she added that it is the deliberate nature of the targeting of a group, “the intent, coupled with action”, that determines that a mass killing amounts to genocide.

    By “killing” and “causing serious bodily or mental harm”, and “deliberately inflicting” on Palestinians in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, Israel has committed three of the five acts listed under the Genocide Convention.

    These acts, which constitute the “physical element” of the genocide, have been documented thoroughly, shared widely on social media and broadcast on television daily – even hourly. However, these acts qualify as genocide only when the “mental element” is also demonstrated – namely that they were “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

    “The intent is the most difficult element to determine,” explains the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.

    “But in this case, the intent” has been made “explicit” in the statements “by the Prime Minister, the President, by senior cabinet members and by the military leaders. These statements clearly constitute the mental element of the crime of genocide,” Hannah Bruinsma, a legal advisor at Law for Palestine, said at the panel discussion.

    “We have collected so far 500 statements that demonstrate” the genocidal intent, “often of those in the chain of command,” she added. Such statements of genocidal intent have been made since the early days of the war on Gaza and systematically repeated time and again.

    “Not mere rhetoric, but an admission of criminal intent”

    Army’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who bragged of dropping “thousands of tons of munitions” on Gaza within the first couple of days of Israel’s campaign, had no qualms admitting that “we’re focused on what causes maximum damage”, rather than “accuracy”.

    Referring to Palestinians as “human animals”, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who prided in having “released all the restraints” on the military, had said in the early days of the war that “we will eliminate everything” in Gaza.

    Israeli tank in Gaza.

    Doubling down that “human animals must be treated as such”, the army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian told Palestinians in Gaza that, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction.”

    Legitimizing the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog had declared that “an entire nation out there is responsible” for the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, arguing that the “rhetoric” about innocent civilians is “absolutely not true.”

    “This practice of casting an entire population as enemies, as legitimate military targets, is a common genocidal mechanism,” Raz Segal, a prominent Jewish Israeli scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said in his remarks at the panel discussion.

    Late in October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to compare Palestinians with the biblical enemy of the Jews. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” he quoted from the Old Testament which prescribes, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

    These statements, which “have been given effect” must be understood to be “not mere rhetoric, but an admission of criminal intent”, Gallagher argued. “Israeli officials have done what they said they would do.”

    Journalists guilty of inciting genocide

    “These expressions of intent need to be understood also in relation to the widespread incitement to genocide in Israeli media since 7 October,” said a statement on December 9 by over 55 scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

    From the calls to turn Gaza “into a slaughterhouse” and “violate all norms on the way to victory” to saying “let there be a million bodies” of dead Palestinians, there are “dozens and dozens of examples of incitement in Israeli media”, said Segal, one of the signatories of the statement.

    “It is worth reminding” that in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, journalists who had been encouraging the crime when it was unfolding were “put on trial and convicted.. of incitement to genocide, which is a separate crime under Article 3 of the UN Genocide Convention,” he added.

    “US is complicit in Genocide”

    Also listed as a separate crime in the same article is “complicity in genocide”, of which the US is guilty, argued Gallagher. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which she represented in the panel discussion, has filed a legal complaint in a California District Court against US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for their complicity in Israel’s genocide.

    “This unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza has so far been made possible because of the unconditional support given” to Israel by the US in breach of its “responsibilities under customary international law…to prevent, and not further, genocide,” states the complaint.

    The US, which is Israel’s “largest provider of military, economic and political assistance, and I would argue, political cover.. has the ability to use its considerable influence and unique position to take all measures to stop Israel’s unfolding genocide,” Gallagher argued.

    “Instead”, she said, it “has done the opposite.” Biden, Blinken and Austin have “pledged and continue to pledge all support to Israel. They have rushed military support, ammunition, precision-guided munitions, 2,000-pound bunker bombs, and they’ve been flying drones overhead. The US military advisers have been in (Israel’s) war cabinet sessions.”

    US is Israel’s biggest financial and military backer. Photo: IDF

    In addition to the annual 3.8 billion dollars it hands out to Israel every year, it is now coughing up “an additional 14.5 billion dollars, without conditions.” US officials have reiterated in multiple press conferences that “there are no red lines or conditions for these weapons”, she said.

    The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Israel has dropped more than 22,000  US-supplied bombs on Gaza within the first month and a half of the war. This amounts to almost one US bomb per every 100 of the 2.3 million Palestinians who are practically imprisoned in the 365 sq. km strip of land that Israel has held under siege for 17 years, which itself has been described by Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe as an “Incremental Genocide”.

    “Forced displacement…has figured in genocidal processes”

    Situating “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” in the “broader context of Israel’s violent settler colonialism and occupation of Palestinian land,” Jehad Abusalim, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund, said “this process began in 1948” with the establishment of Israel.

    The Nakba, the Arabic word meaning catastrophe, refers to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land within a year of the establishment of this settler colonial state on 78% of Palestine. The process of the Nakba, he said at the panel discussion, never stopped.

    “The Nakba was not just an event in the distant past”, but “continues to unfold in Gaza today. It is a process of continuous displacement and ethnic cleansing.”

    “Forced displacement, what is commonly called ethnic cleansing, is not in itself an act of genocide, but we know that historically it has figured in genocidal processes,” added Segal, who describes Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide”.

    “It took the Nazis two and a half years… of experimenting with various schemes of forced displacement of Jews” before implementing the “Final Solution”, he said.

    Original article by peoples dispatch republished under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • ‘This Genocide Must End Now’: Jewish-Led Protests Demand Gaza Cease-Fire

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    Original article by Jake Johnson at Common Dreams shared under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Jewish activists and allies hold a protest demanding a cease-fire in Gaza on December 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace)

    “As the descendant of people who have survived pogroms, I know my ancestors would want me to do everything in my power to stop the U.S.-funded genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said one activist.

    On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Jewish activists and allies took to the streets of eight U.S. cities on Thursday to demand an end to the bloodshed in Gaza, blocking traffic on bridges and highways in a show of opposition to the Biden administration’s continued support for the Israeli military’s atrocities.

    “It is horrifying to watch the U.S. government fully fund the Israeli government’s relentless bombing campaign and the destruction of the people of Gaza,” said Sara Bollag of the Washington, D.C. chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which helped organize the protests in Seattle; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Atlanta.

    “I am here, as the great-granddaughter of a victim of the Holocaust, doing everything in my power to stop another genocide unfolding before our eyes,” Bollag added.

    In the nation’s capital, demonstrators holding signs that read “Cease-Fire Now” and “Never Again for Anyone” and singing Hanukkah prayers shut down an overpass.

    In Chicago, more than a dozen Jewish demonstrators were arrested for obstructing the Washington Street bridge.

    “As the descendant of people who have survived pogroms, I know my ancestors would want me to do everything in my power to stop the U.S.-funded genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said Millie Hartenstein of JVP Chicago.

    The nationwide demonstrations came amid growing domestic and international outrage over the Biden administration’s decision to keep arming the Israeli government and opposing global efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza spirals out of control, leaving most of the territory’s population without adequate food, clean water, humane living conditions, and sufficient medical treatment.

    “Everywhere you look is congested with makeshift shelters. Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry, and terrified,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said in a speech on Thursday. “People—and this is also something completely new—people are stopping aid trucks, taking the food, and eating it right away. This is how desperate and hungry they are. I witnessed this firsthand.”

    President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with Israeli leaders on Thursday and reportedly urged them to “switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks” in an attempt to “communicate that American patience with widespread civilian deaths is running out.” According to one human rights monitor, more than 90% of the people killed so far by Israel’s latest aerial and ground assault on Gaza have been civilians.

    A U.S. intelligence assessment reported by CNN on Wednesday found that nearly half of the munitions Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 have been so-called “dumb bombs,” unguided weapons whose use in densely populated areas could violate international law.

    The U.S. has provided Israel with both guided and unguided munitions, as well as artillery shells and other weaponry. Just last Friday, the State Department bypassed a congressional review process to push through the sale of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel.

    Earlier this week, top humanitarian aid leaders implored the U.S. government to urgently change its approach to halt Gaza’s “apocalyptic free fall” and dozens of Biden administration staffers held a vigil outside the White House demanding an immediate cease-fire, the latest sign of mounting internal dissent.

    “We have seen refugee camps, hospitals, schools, and entire neighborhoods bombed,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in October over the Biden administration’s unconditional arms transfers to Israel, said during Thursday’s vigil. “We have seen dead men, women, and children pulled from the rubble in their pajamas. We have seen harassment, humiliation, and degradation of many kinds. This is unacceptable.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson at Common Dreams shared under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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  • 73% of US Voters Want Emissions Cut in Half by 2030: Poll

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

    Climate protestors march in Washington DC
    Climate protestors take part in a march on April 29, 2023 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

    One expert expressed hope that Democrats “realize that strong positions on abortion and climate change are no longer ‘partisan’ or ‘divisive’—religious freedom, bodily privacy, and saving the world are BIG TENT, winning issues.”

    Polling results released Friday by CNN show that 73% of U.S. voters across the political spectrum believe the government should design policies to meet its commitment to cut planet-heating emissions in half by the end of this decade.

    End Climate Science founding director Genevieve Guenther noted on social media that the overall figure includes 95% of Democrats, 76% of Independents, and even 50% of Republicans.

    She expressed hope that the Democratic Party will now “realize that strong positions on abortion and climate change are no longer ‘partisan’ or ‘divisive’—religious freedom, bodily privacy, and saving the world are BIG TENT, winning issues.”

    The survey was conducted by SSRS last month and the results were revealed during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) set to run through Tuesday—which U.S. President Joe Biden has been criticized for blowing off.

    As CNN detailed:

    Americans give Biden a 43% approval rating for his handling of environmental policy, which is several points above his overall approval rating and well above his numbers for handling the economy. But few Americans, only 2%, see climate change as the most important issue facing the country, giving higher priority to the economy and cost of living.

    But climate change and clean energy are increasingly intertwined with the economy. Climate change-fueled disasters don’t just impact commerce, they also strike at the heart of the American dream: homeownership.

    The approval and disapproval responses strongly correlate to political party, with far more Democrats backing Biden’s environmental policy.

    Most Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of environmental policy

    (Graphic: Matt Stiles/CNN)

    Pollsters found that 58% of voters worry about the effects of extreme weather, 68% worry about the risks of climate change, and 79% think that climate change contributed to extreme weather in their area.

    Large majorities of voters from the partisan spectrum agreed that humanity as a whole, the energy and automobile industries, and the U.S. and Chinese governments have some or even a great deal of responsibility to try to reduce climate change. Slightly smaller majorites said that those entities are doing “too little” to address the emergency.

    Two-thirds of voters said that “requiring that all electricity in the U.S. be produced using renewable sources like solar and wind by the year 2035” as well as “offering federal tax credits for purchasing and installing home solar panels should be important, or even top priorities.

    Even more (71%) noted the importance of “offering federal tax credits for purchasing and installing ultra-efficient home heating and cooling systems” along with “prioritizing investments in clean energy sources over energy from fossil fuels.” A slim majority (54%) prioritized “offering federal tax credits for purchasing an electric vehicle.”

    While Biden—who is seeking reelection next year—campaigned on the promise of being a “climate president,” during his first term so far he has faced criticism from campaigners and frontline communities for declining to declare a national climate emergency, supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, backing the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, and continuing fossil fuel lease sales for public lands and waters.

    The president has also had to contend with Republicans and right-wing Democrats in Congress who want to kill or water down climate policies. For example, this week, the House GOP has voted to block a proposed Biden administration rule meant to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and advance various fossil fuel industry-friendly bills, including one that would saddle taxpayers with the cost of cleaning up oil and gas wells on federal lands.

    This article’s headline has been corrected to say 73% of voters want U.S. emissions cut in half by 2030. A previous version stated voters want the emissions slashed by 2023.

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