Monthly Archives: June 2023

As Insurers Cut Coverage Due to Climate Disasters, Senators Probe Continued Backing of Fossil Fuels

“By underwriting and investing in new and expanded fossil fuel projects, U.S. insurers are helping Big Oil bring us closer to the worst runaway climate scenarios,” said Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

By Kenny Stancil. Published 6-9-2023 by Common Dreams

Storm damage from Hurricane Ian. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife/flickr/CC

As insurance giants limit coverage in hundreds of disaster-prone areas across the United States, a Senate panel on Friday launched an investigation into seven major carriers’ continued backing of planet-heating fossil fuel projects that are driving increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent letters to the executives of seven companies—American Insurance Group (AIG), Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb, Liberty Mutual Group, Starr Wright USA, State Farm, and Travelers Insurance—demanding that each firm disclose how it underwrites, invests in, and profits from coal, oil, and gas.

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Big Oil Shill Tells Fox Viewers There Is ‘No Health Risk’ From Inhaling Toxic Smoke

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Fox News brought on a contributor with a history of downplaying the dangers of secondhand smoke and dismissing climate science to tell viewers that particulate matter is “innocuous.”

By Jake Johnson Published 6-8-2023 by Common Dreams

Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, speaks during a Fox News appearance on June 8, 2023. (Photo: Fox News/Screengrab)

As smoke from massive wildfires in Quebec blanketed much of the eastern U.S., forcing millions to stay indoors as state governments issued code-red air quality alerts, a longtime shill for the fossil fuel and tobacco industries falsely told Fox News viewers late Wednesday that there is actually “no health risk” associated with inhaling such polluted air.

“Look, the air is ugly, it’s unpleasant to breathe, and for a lot of people, they get anxiety over it. But the reality is there’s no health risk,” Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told Fox‘s Laura Ingraham. “We have this kind of air in India and China all the time—no public health emergency.”

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House Dems Revive Bill to Make Poverty-Eradicating Child Tax Credit Permanent

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“In 2021 alone, the expanded Child Tax Credit reached more than 61 million children and lifted nearly 4 million of them out of poverty.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-7-2023 by Common Dreams

As congressional Republicans intensify their assault on vital social programs, a trio of House Democrats on Wednesday reintroduced legislation that would make permanent the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit—a policy credited with lifting millions of U.S. children out of poverty.

The American Family Act—reintroduced by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and backed by 204 House Democrats—would ensure the permanency of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) as established in the American Rescue Plan, the sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021. The expanded CTC expired at the end of 2021 amid the Omicron surge of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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‘People Didn’t Listen’: Complete Loss of Arctic Summer Sea Ice Now Inevitable, Warn Scientists

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“As scientists, we’ve been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades,” said one researcher.

By Julia Conley. Published 6-6-2023 by Common Dreams

The last bit of rotted sea ice melts on the shore of Cape Krusenstern in early June. Photo: Western Arctic National Parklands/flickr/CC

Scientists on Tuesday warned that the planet is rapidly headed toward the consequences of the climate crisis that they have been warning about for decades as researchers published a new study showing that a complete loss of Arctic sea ice in the summer months is now unavoidable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in 2021 alarmed many with its warnings that if high or even intermediate planet-heating fossil fuel emissions continued, the Arctic would be ice-free by the 2040s—but its authors implored policymakers to focus on their finding that the region would retain its summer ice if decisive action was taken to limit an increase in global temperature rises to 2°C or less.

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Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against Poland’s Authoritarian Right-Wing Government

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“We are now at a crossroads between being an authoritarian and a democratic country,” said one activist.

By Jake Johnson. Published 6-5-2023 by Common Dreams

People take part in a march against Poland’s right-wing government in Warsaw on June 4, 2023. Photo: Germany Today/Twitter

An estimated 500,000 people took to the streets of the capital Warsaw and other Polish cities on Sunday to protest the nation’s far-right government, which has assailed reproductive freedoms, attacked the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and cracked down on critical civil society groups and media outlets.

Sunday’s march against the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party—which has held power since 2015—was called by former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who is leading the Civic Platform opposition party into an expected October general election.

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Millions of US Women at Risk After ‘Regressive’ Attack on Abortion Rights by Supreme Court: UN Experts

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Abortion bans in 14 U.S. states since the 2022 Dobbs decision “have made abortion services largely inaccessible and denied women and girls their fundamental human rights to comprehensive healthcare including sexual and reproductive health.”

By Jon Queally. Published 6-4-2023 by Common Dreams

Abortion Rights Rally in response to Supreme Court Roe vs Wade Reversal Decision at Washington Square Park in NYC on Friday evening, 24 June 2022. Photo: Elvert Barnes/flickr/CC

High-level experts with the United Nations have issued a joint statement condemning the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that reversed decades of legal precedent protecting abortion rights for women.

“The regressive position taken by the US Supreme Court in June 2022, by essentially dismantling 50 years of precedent protecting the right to abortion in the country, puts millions of women and girls at serious risk,” said the 13 experts, all appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, on Friday.

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‘Utterly Absurd’: Rich Nations Spending Climate Dollars on Coal Projects and Chocolate Shops

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“Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance,” said one developing nation’s lead climate negotiator.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-2-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists including members of frontline communities protest Japanese financing of international fossil fuel projects including coal plants in Matarbari, Bangladesh and Indramayu, Indonesia on October 4, 2021 in Tokyo. (Photo: @market_forces/Twitter)

Wealthy nations are spending money under the guise of “climate finance” to fund projects that have little or nothing to do with tackling the climate crisis and—as in the case of three Japanese-backed coal plants—are sometimes fueling the planetary emergency, according to a Reuters investigation published Thursday.

While media outlets including Reuters have recently reported that rich countries are on track—albeit long overdue—to finally meet their 2009 pledge to invest $100 billion annually in climate financing by 2020, the new Reuters investigation shows that governments are funding climate-harming projects and counting the expenditures toward their giving total.

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EPA Sued Over Failure to Regulate Neonic-Coated Seeds Harmful to Bees and Songbirds

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“For too long, EPA has allowed pesticide-coated seeds to jeopardize threatened and endangered species across the country,” said one advocate.

By Julia Conley. Published 6-2-2023 by Common Dreams

Oilseed rape fields are sprayed with neonicotinoids. (Photo: Chafer Machinery/flickr/cc)

Two public health groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, demanding that the agency close a regulatory loophole that has allowed insecticide-coated seeds to proliferate across 150 million acres of cropland in the United States.

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, which pertains to seeds coated in neonicotinoids, often called neonics.

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Like Tobacco and Big Oil, Secret Docs Show Chemical Companies Knew PFAS Dangers

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“These documents reveal clear evidence that the chemical industry knew about the dangers of PFAS and failed to let the public, regulators, and even their own employees know the risks.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists protest PFAS outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston on June 16, 2022. (Photo: Seaside Sustainability Inc./Twitter)

An analysis of previously secret documents published Wednesday sheds new light on how chemical corporations aped Big Tobacco by conspiring to conceal the extreme toxicity of a class of synthetic compounds contaminating the Earth’s air, water, soil, plants, and animals—including most of the world’s people.

Commonly called “forever chemicals” because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—which include PFOS, PFOA, and GenX—have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. According to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PFAS is linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. It is found in the blood of 99% of Americans and a similar percentage of people around the world.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Two GOP Abortion Bans Are Unconstitutional

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The court found that two bans passed in 2022 conflicted with the Oklahoma Constitution’s guarantee of a pregnant person’s “inherent right” to life.

By Julia Conley. Published 5-31-2023 by Common Dreams

The Oklahoma state Supreme Court on Wednesday became the latest state-level court to rebuke Republican legislation passed in recent months to bar residents from accessing abortion care, ruling that two laws signed by GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt are unconstitutional.

The court found that S.B. 1603 and H.B. 4327 both conflict with an earlier ruling in March, when five of the nine justices ruled that the Oklahoma Constitution guarantees the “inherent right of a pregnant woman to terminate a pregnancy when necessary to preserve her life.”

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Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Monthly Archives: June 2023

Big Oil Shill Tells Fox Viewers There Is ‘No Health Risk’ From Inhaling Toxic Smoke

Fox News brought on a contributor with a history of downplaying the dangers of secondhand smoke and dismissing climate science to tell viewers that particulate matter is “innocuous.”

‘People Didn’t Listen’: Complete Loss of Arctic Summer Sea Ice Now Inevitable, Warn Scientists

“As scientists, we’ve been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades,” said one researcher.