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Not $300. Not $600. $1,200 at a Minimum. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 10 December 2020 13:53 |
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Sanders writes: "I am writing to share with you two reasons this COVID-relief debate is so important: one which is easy for everyone to understand, and one no one is talking about."
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, greets supporters after speaking at James Madison Park in Madison, Wisconsin, Friday, April 12, 2019. (photo: Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal/AP)
Not $300. Not $600. $1,200 at a Minimum.
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
10 December 20
 am writing to share with you two reasons this COVID-relief debate is so important: one which is easy for everyone to understand, and one no one is talking about.
First, we are obviously in an unprecedented moment in American history with extraordinary suffering happening all across the country. One out of four workers are either unemployed or making less than $20,000 a year, more than 90 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured, tens of millions of people face eviction, and hunger in America is exploding. And the American people understand that in a democratic civilized society, we cannot have more desperation out there than at any time since the Great Depression.
So Congress cannot leave unless we get at least $1,200 in direct payments for every working class adult and at least $500 for their children. Not $300. Not $600. $1,200 at a minimum. More than that, we must extend supplemental unemployment benefits and get adequate aid for cities and states.
Here in Washington, there’s endless amounts of money for war. Congress is about to pass a $740 billion defense spending bill and no one seems to care about the price tag there. Tax breaks for billionaires? Endless amounts of money. Corporate welfare? Endless amounts of money.
Now when children are going hungry in America and so many families are struggling, suddenly we don’t have enough money? Wrong.
Further, this isn’t the $900 billion bill everyone is claiming it to be. It includes $560 billion passed and unused from the CARES Act. Which means there is only around $360 billion of “new money” in this bill.
Remember, several months ago the Democratic House passed the HEROES Act of $3 trillion. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin offered $1.8 trillion for an agreement, but now somehow we have been reduced to accepting $360 billion in “new money.” That is not acceptable.
Secondly, here is something else not many people are talking about:
And that is that this bill will set the agenda for the first two years of the Biden administration. Are we going to have austerity economics, or are we going to have a progressive agenda that meets the needs of the working people of this country?
When Trump was president, spending money was not an issue. But now my Republican colleagues are so deeply worried about the national debt once again.
If we are concerned about the debt, we need progressive taxation, we need to end corporate welfare, we need to end the bloated military budget, but we do not need, in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, to punish working families who are hurting so badly today.
And if we allow Republicans to set the agenda, to set the parameters of the debate, the next two to four years will be a disaster.
If you want a Green New Deal or even support for Biden’s climate proposal, where is the money going to come from? If you want to expand health care or rebuild our infrastructure, where is the money going to come from?
So the question is, are we going to return to Mitch McConnell’s austerity politics, or are we going to build a dynamic economy that works for everyone and not just the 1 percent?
So it is our job, today, to send a message to the Republican and Democratic leadership that we must stand tall and fight for the working people of this country, because they need us more than ever:
Sign my petition: tell the Republican and Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate we want a COVID-relief bill that includes at least $1,200 in direct payments for every worker and $500 for their children, extended supplemental unemployment benefits and adequate funding for cities and states.
If there is any hope in this terrible pandemic, I hope that it shows us how far behind the rest of the world we are in taking care of our people, and that it inspires us to stand up and make our voices heard on issues like Medicare for All and paid family and medical leave.
Once again, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and the Senate to significantly improve this bill. The American people need our help, and what happens next will set the agenda for the next two years.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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A Tipping Point for the Defeat of Fossil Fuels? How to Stop Big Energy in Its Tracks (Quite Literally) |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=57414"><span class="small">Richard Lachmann, Michael Schwartz and Kevin A. Young, TomDispatch</span></a>
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Thursday, 10 December 2020 13:53 |
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Excerpt: "As Donald Trump gave in to the demand that the transition process to the Biden years officially begin, the administration and its fossil-fuel allies doubled down on their efforts to implement destructive environmental policies that President Biden might try to reverse."
An oil and gas refinery. (photo: Kanenori/Pixabay/The Wilderness Society)
A Tipping Point for the Defeat of Fossil Fuels? How to Stop Big Energy in Its Tracks (Quite Literally)
By Richard Lachmann, Michael Schwartz and Kevin A. Young, TomDispatch
10 December 20
“Pristine” is (or was) the word that usually went with any descriptions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a coastal plain in northeast Alaska that's represented the rarest of all things these days: wilderness all the way (and not to the bank either). No more. Not, at least, if that eternal promoter of a fossil-fuelized future, Donald Trump, has anything to say about it. His administration is now rushing to auction off leases to parts of that refuge to oil companies just before Joe Biden can take office. This latest hurried move by the world’s greatest pyromaniac and his administration should surprise no one, not from a crew which has already overturned more than 100 environmental regulations of every sort (particularly those that put limitations on oil, gas, and coal companies).
Leave aside for a moment the fact that all of this is sure to be challenged in court by environmental groups and by the Biden administration on coming into office, because there’s another possibility that may come up first and, given our history, it couldn't be odder. It's possible that no major oil companies will actually turn up to bid on that coastal plain filled with migrating caribou and other animals. As NPR News put the matter recently: “It's an open question how much interest there will be. For one thing, the coronavirus pandemic and an oil price war have both hit the oil industry hard. Prices are still low, and it's expensive and difficult to explore for oil in the Arctic, says Mark Myers, a geologist and former natural resources commissioner in Alaska.”
And count on something else, as with so many other controversial oil and natural gas projects in these (increasingly dis-) United States, any energy companies that do turn up for that auction will almost certainly face opposition and active resistance (and not just in court either). That, as Richard Lachmann, Kevin Young, and former TomDispatch regular Michael Schwartz point out today, has been the history of big (and controversial) energy projects in this country (and Canada) in recent years -- and thank god for that!
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
 s Donald Trump gave in to the demand that the transition process to the Biden years officially begin, the administration and its fossil-fuel allies doubled down on their efforts to implement destructive environmental policies that President Biden might try to reverse. Those initiatives have included a campaign to jump-start oil drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; the approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of the long-delayed Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota; and a push by utility companies to obtain funding and permits for the construction of 235 gas-fired power plants, each with a 30-year life expectancy.
In response, horrified progressives have sought to pressure the president-elect to appoint officials committed to blocking these and other similar projects. But the strategy of pressuring leading Democrats hasn’t worked particularly well for environmentalists in the past and doesn’t seem to be working now. Despite the movement’s full-court press for a real environmentalist presence in the administration, Biden designated Congressman Cedric Richmond as his “liaison” with that very movement. Richmond voted in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline and, among Democrats in the House, he was the fifth-largest recipient of fossil-fuel cash.
Fortunately, a more promising strategy for defeating new fossil-fuel projects has been quietly bearing fruit, even in the Trump era. Climate and Indigenous organizers have been attacking Big Energy companies and their investors, using economic pressure, boycotts, lawsuits, and disruptive direct-action tactics to impede drilling, interrupt the transportation of oil and gas, and choke off the flow of financing to, and insurance for, such projects. This multipronged strategy has been so surprisingly successful that the companies themselves -- especially their sources of funding -- have begun divesting from fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure. As our desperately overheated planet continues setting records, understanding the largely unnoticed success of recent resistance movements is crucial if we hope to prevent total ecological collapse.
Why the Fossil-Fuel Industry Is Vulnerable, But the End of Fossil Fuels Isn't Inevitable
The fossil-fuel industry and its champions in Congress recently complained that financial institutions were “discriminating against America’s energy sector.” Specifically, banks were “folding to activist environmental groups’ pressure” by adopting “policies against investing in new oil and gas operations.” Trump’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) responded by trying to force Wall Street to fund drilling in the Arctic Refuge and undertake other new fossil-fuel initiatives.
Why have the banks suddenly become so unwilling to invest in a longtime favorite sector of theirs? One reason is that easy-to-access fossil fuels are getting scarcer. In this era of “extreme” energy, companies have found themselves investing striking amounts of Wall Street capital (and wreaking environmental devastation) to find, extract, and transport hydrocarbon deposits from deep oceans, the Arctic, oil sands, and shale. At a time when oil prices were reliably above $80 per barrel, such projects were enormously profitable. But the fracking boom of the Obama years burst that bubble, with oil prices dropping as low as $40 per barrel by 2015 and remaining well under $80 during the first three years of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, renewable energy sources (especially wind) were growing cheaper by the month and siphoning off investment capital, further reducing the demand for carbon-based power.
The global spread of Covid-19 tanked energy demand, turning the drop in oil prices into a nosedive. The pandemic itself, the economic lockdowns, the lack of travel that went with them, and a Saudi-Russian price war drove oil to a calamitous low of $19 per barrel in April 2020. The result was widespread bankruptcies among shale producers and weakening viability among major banks saddled with $300 billion in shaky hydrocarbon loans. To prevent further losses, those banks started to withhold funding for new projects, while oil companies wrote down the value of their reserves, implicitly acknowledging that many of them may never be extracted. A number of experts are now predicting that the “fracking revolution” has entered a period of terminal decline.
This potentially dire situation helps explain the latest Trump initiatives. In order to lock in the next generation of major fossil-fuel projects, the industry’s partisans must convince the major oil companies to borrow and invest the many billions of dollars needed to complete them. They must also convince or coerce increasingly reluctant banks to fund the projects and induce insurers to underwrite ventures that are enormously risky.
This is a daunting but not impossible undertaking. The history of capitalism is strewn with the carcasses of major industries that fell into terminal crisis and were overtaken by new competitors. When it came to manufacturing, water power was replaced by electric power, just as fossil-fueled transportation replaced horses. But history is also littered with industries that somehow survived the challenge of apparently superior substitutes. The nuclear power industry, for instance, has survived despite its monumental costs, poor performance, and the environmental catastrophes associated with it. The reason: the U.S. government invested vast resources in it, forced other institutions to do the same, and suppressed political and economic resistance to it.
The same thing could happen with fossil fuels. The major carbon corporations wield so much power and remain so deeply embedded in the U.S. economy that they can call on governments for subsidies to keep them afloat, no matter the economic (let alone environmental) irrationality of continued fossil-fuel production. Trump’s gambit in the Arctic Refuge, like his entire energy policy, has been anchored by attempts to increase such subsidies and so prolong the fossil-fuel era. The industry giants are also using the current crisis to acquire bankrupt competitors at low prices and consolidate production into a ruling oligopoly. The survivors could emerge even more powerful and so potentially even more capable of demanding handouts from the public.
Why Fossil Fuels Might Be Defeated
Ironically, the Trump administration’s latest initiatives on behalf of fossil fuels also reveal how the industry can be defeated. Because investors are increasingly reluctant to fund troubled extraction and infrastructure projects, the industry has enlisted the U.S. government to force them to do so. The Arctic Refuge, a pristine wilderness area in Alaska where the Trump administration’s OCC and the industry have, absurdly enough, invoked anti-discrimination law (alleging discrimination against both fossil-fuel producers and Indigenous Alaskans) to try to compel the banks to invest, is the most obvious case of this.
Their desperation reflects just how effective the resistance to fossil-fuel projects has been in recent years. All across the U.S. and Canada, climate and Indigenous organizers have successfully raised the level of risk attached to such investments. The industry is highly vulnerable to delays in both drilling and the construction of the transportation infrastructure necessary to deliver oil and gas. Delays raise production costs, while creating long-term uncertainty about the competitiveness of fossil fuels. Green resistance movements have created a credible threat of chronic delays to and interruptions of such projects, leading major lenders to begin shifting from reluctance-to-invest to outright refusal.
The OCC’s efforts to strong-arm lenders are based on its recent finding “that some of the nation’s largest banks had stopped doing business altogether with one or more major energy industry categories.” As Alaskan lawmakers put it grimly, the banks were increasingly “folding to activist environmental groups’ pressure.”
Why has that pressure worked? By obstructing drilling and the construction of infrastructure (especially pipelines and power plants), the green movement has added to the industry’s operating costs in increasingly bad times, while leaving investors fearing the risks now associated with those projects. In this way, it's won victories, even in a moment when the Trump administration was aggressively promoting fossil fuels, when a far-right majority controlled the Supreme Court, and when most congressional Democrats were sitting on their hands.
The movement has applied four mutually reinforcing strategies that, together, have often succeeded in blocking or at least delaying such projects and, in doing so, have rendered them ever less viable.
First, resistance groups mounted disruptive protests at extraction sites and along the routes of proposed oil and natural gas pipelines. Actions against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access (DAPL) pipelines, led by Indigenous communities seeking to protect their lands from devastation, have been the most visible examples of this. In addition to forcing months of delays in construction, these on-site protests inspired a broader movement against fossil fuels and gave added impetus to demands for regulators, judges, and politicians to intervene.
Second, the movement targeted regulators in an effort to prevent or postpone the issuing of permits for the projects. Even during the Obama era, federal regulators had mostly acted as “rubber stamps” for new fossil fuel projects. But the Standing Rock Sioux campaign against DAPL successfully pressured the Army Corps of Engineers to announce a new environmental review of the pipeline, delaying it until Trump took office.
Third, the movement has filed lawsuits based on industry violations of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other laws. Such suits often challenged the validity of permits already issued, which slowed down industry operations and provided the movement with an alternative choke point when regulators and politicians proved unresponsive.
Finally, it targeted the “money pipeline,” pressuring banks, insurers, and other large institutions to divest from fossil fuels. Initially, this strategy was largely symbolic, but no longer. It's now adding to the financial difficulties of Big Energy. Shell Oil Company, for instance, recently labeled the divestment movement a “material risk.” In the case of the Arctic Refuge, the movement’s pressure on Wall Street has made big loans harder to obtain and also led investment firms to put pressure on insurance companies to steer clear of projects there.
This four-pronged strategy has yielded many victories and now poses a credible threat to future fossil-fuel projects. In July 2020, for instance, the business media announced a cascade of ominous news affecting four important pipelines:
- A federal judge ruled that the DAPL permit was in violation of NEPA and ordered a time-consuming full environmental review. Though the pipeline had been successfully built in North Dakota despite much resistance, it is now at risk of being permanently closed anyway.
- An Indigenous landowners’ lawsuit arguing that a second North Dakota pipeline, Marathon Oil’s Tesoro High Plains line, illegally trespassed on their territory led the Bureau of Indian Affairs to order its closing after 67 years of operation.
- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling by a Montana district court judge that had stopped construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
- Dominion Energy and Duke Energy cancelled their Atlantic Coast pipeline project “after years of delays and ballooning costs.”
In response to that last cancellation, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette complained that “the obstructionist environmental lobby has successfully killed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.” His attitude reflected a growing exasperation among industry leaders who have recently decried the “rising tide of protests, litigation, and vandalism” against pipelines and warned that the movement is reaching a new “level of intensity” with “more opponents” who are “better organized.”
Indeed, the resistance has increased pessimism among industry executives and their investors. According to Bloomberg News, typically a gauge of Wall Street sentiments, the core big energy companies are ever more often concluding that “the mega-projects of the past are no longer feasible in the face of unprecedented opposition to fossil fuels and the infrastructure that supports them.”
A Tipping Point?
The July decisions on the two North Dakota pipelines were especially significant since they threatened already operating projects. As one former pipeline executive put it, this meant that even projects that successfully weathered a storm of protests and secured the necessary permits to operate remained vulnerable and might be shuttered long before repaying their immense debts. With that prospect, “I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult for anybody to invest in any kind of [fossil-fuel] infrastructure.” Echoing his view, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum warned that the DAPL ruling might be “a tipping point, which actually could really cripple production in North Dakota.”
Even if the industry ultimately wins some of its current battles, it might not be able to keep investors on board. The prospect that some future judicial decision could imperil their existing investments deprives them of “certainty from the government,” as one industry lobbying group warned in March. This threat is compounded by the prospect that, in the Biden years to come, other parts of the government may finally begin taking action to stop climate destruction, which could leave fossil-fuel assets "stranded."
If the green movement can continue to disrupt the certainty that investing in oil fields and pipelines will return big profits, count on this: capitalists will begin to desert fossil fuels big time. Billionaire investment strategist Jeremy Grantham predicts a tipping point in the near future. He expects that investors will respond to the mounting threats to the fossil-fuel industry “very slowly” for a while and then "all at once." The point of resistance, then, is to increase the delays, closures, and disruptions that make fossil fuels a risky investment, therefore ensuring that the “all at once” tipping point arrives before humanity crosses the threshold of irreversible catastrophe.
What does all this mean for the current movement to win a Green New Deal? Electing pro-GND candidates has helped place it on the legislative agenda, but the movement must avoid the trap of investing all its energy and resources in electoral campaigns and lobbying. The Democratic Party leadership, including President-elect Biden, has mocked the Green New Deal and committed itself instead to a dangerous “all of the above” energy policy that includes plenty of oil, gas, and nuclear power. Even if Democrats were to win a Senate majority from the two January run-off elections in Georgia, Green New Deal legislation would remain a hard lift at best.
The environmental movement can, however, still move this country closer to a Green New Deal through the very same strategy that brought it victories during the Obama and Trump eras. By obstructing fossil-fuel projects at every turn, it can deprive the industry of the Wall Street investments it needs and lead private investors to view renewables, ever cheaper to produce, as a safer option. The government itself will be forced to invest in renewables in order to meet society’s energy needs and provide jobs to replace those lost when fossil-fuel projects are blocked, as the climate movement has long demanded. Direct resistance to fossil fuels is the shortest and surest path to a renewable energy transition. When you make the building of more pipelines and gas-powered plants so much harder, you also make the Green New Deal and a livable planet so much more possible.
Richard Lachmann is professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Albany, and author of First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020). Michael Schwartz is distinguished teaching professor of sociology (emeritus) at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Kevin Young is associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Schwartz and Young are the co-authors, with Tarun Banerjee, of Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It (Verso, 2020).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
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550 Groups Urge Biden to Become #PlasticFreePresident With 8 Executive Actions |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=57412"><span class="small">#PlasticFreePresident</span></a>
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Thursday, 10 December 2020 13:53 |
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Excerpt: "Plastic is causing serious environmental problems at every step of its lifecycle. President Biden can tackle this crisis with the stroke of a pen."
Plastic bottles makes up almost one sixth of the world's annual plastic production. (photo: Jeff Morgan/Alamy)
550 Groups Urge Biden to Become #PlasticFreePresident With 8 Executive Actions
By #PlasticFreePresident
10 December 20
The world faces an indisputable plastic pollution crisis. More than 99% of plastic is created from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels, including an oversupply of fracked gas, which is spurring a global boom in new plastic production. That plastic is causing serious environmental problems at every step of its lifecycle. President Biden can tackle this crisis with the stroke of a pen.
 lastic production fuels the climate crisis with increased greenhouse gas emissions and damages local communities where plastic is made with toxic air and water pollution. Plastic is also a threat to human health: As we increasingly consume more and more of our food and drinks from single-use plastic wrappers and containers, we're exposed to chemicals linked to many of the known public health crises of our time, including obesity, ADD/ADHD, and many forms of cancer.
Once discarded, plastic clogs our rivers and oceans, harms wildlife, infiltrates our drinking water, and persists in the environment for centuries. Half of all plastics ever manufactured have been made in the last 15 years, and annual plastic pollution into rivers, lakes and oceans could surpass 50 million tons within the next 10 years unless significant policy changes are made. Banning bags and straws are important first steps taken by state and local governments, but we need bold new federal policies to address the plastic pollution crisis.
And despite false and misleading claims by the makers of plastics, we cannot recycle our way out of this problem. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. plastic recycling rate is an anemic 8%. Instead, more than 90% of plastics in the United States is buried, burned or released into the environment.
The solution to plastic pollution is simple: Reduce the amount of unnecessary plastic produced.
We can transform our extractive, throwaway economy to a regenerative, inclusive one that's good for our environment and creates American jobs. We need to stop plastic contamination at its source before it enters the marketplace, while improving our waste-management systems, developing new business models, phasing out the worst plastic offenders, and shifting to reusable non-plastic alternatives. The federal government needs to be a catalyst for innovation.
There is time to make this transition, but the question remains: How can we make this large-scale transition quickly enough?
President Biden can take the following eight key steps without any action from Congress. These actions will immediately set the nation on a pathway to a plastic pollution-free future while longer-term measures that require action at all levels of government and society develop.
Each of the actions described requires the president to prioritize support for communities that historically have been harmed "first and worst" by the petrochemical industrial sector and the waste it creates: communities of color, Indigenous communities, and impoverished communities. Moreover, these actions will provide an opportunity to drive job growth in a new green economy providing unionized jobs with family-sustaining wages in communities that need them the most. Workers in the petrochemical sector and related industries will find their jobs fundamentally transformed, but not abandoned, in an economy and workforce that is inclusive, fair, and just for all people.
In 2021, we will urge President Biden to take these actions in the first year in office, in addition to the ten steps proposed by #ClimatePresident. The actions called for in #ClimatePresident, such as keeping fossil fuels in the ground by ending fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and waters and banning fracking, are inextricably linked to #PlasticFreePresident. Acting together, these plans will lead to a safer, healthier, and more equitable world for everyone.
8 PRIORITY PLASTIC ACTIONS PRESIDENT BIDEN CAN TAKE WITHOUT CONGRESS
1. Use the purchasing power of the federal government to eliminate single-use plastic items and replace them with reusable products.
The federal government is the single largest purchaser of goods and services in the United States, spending more than $450 billion on products and services each year. That means the government is likely the country's largest consumer of disposable plastic products. By altering its product specifications to give preference to reusable products, the federal government could both significantly reduce the amount of plastics going to landfill and incinerators each year and spur demand for alternatives to single-use plastic products.
- Appoint a Plastic Pollution Czar to coordinate plastic reduction efforts amongst federal agencies and internationally.
- Direct the head of each federal agency to ensure that it does not purchase single-use plastic products, or allow them to be sold on federal property, with limited exemptions. Require each agency to submit a plan within the first six months of the administration detailing what it will do to eliminate single-use plastic products.
- Issue an Executive Order immediately prohibiting all federal agencies and federal contractors from purchasing or selling single-use plastic water bottles in national parks or other federal facilities.
- Direct the EPA to update its Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program to clarify agencies must not acquire single-use plastics.
- Work with federal agencies to develop and implement a strategy to phase out single-use plastic products across the federal government. The new strategy should have numerical goals, timelines to achieve them and sufficient funding for any new capital costs, such as installing dishwashing equipment, water fountains, and other improvements.
- In any new stimulus or other spending bills, include funding for projects that reduce the use of plastic by the federal government and other federally funded projects or entities.
2. Suspend and deny permits for new or expanded plastic production facilities, associated infrastructure projects, and exports.
In the next 10 years, the petrochemical industry plans to increase plastics production by at least 35%, with more than 300 new projects slated for the United States alone. Using cheap fracked gas, the new and expanded facilities planned by the industry produce raw material for an endless deluge of throwaway plastic, approximately 40% of which is discarded within minutes. This dirty industry disproportionately fouls the air and water of poor communities and communities of color.
- Urge all federal agencies to use all existing legal authorities to deny permits for new plastics production and infrastructure projects, including but not limited to refineries, ethane crackers, propane dehydrogenation facilities, polymerization facilities, pipelines, gasification and pyrolysis facilities, natural gas liquid storage facilities and hubs, fraction-ation facilities, import and export terminals, and facilities that repolymerize plastic polymers into chemical feedstocks for use in new products or as fuel.
- Support a bill that bans fracking and bans new petrochemical infrastructure.
- Direct all federal agencies to use their full existing legal authority to object in writing to any new permit issued to plastics production and infrastructure projects by a State delegated authority under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or any other relevant federal statute.
- Halt the export of gas liquids, monomers, and polymers used for plastic production to the fullest extent allowed under federal law.
- Use the president's authority under the National Emergencies Act to reinstate the crude oil export ban.
3. Make corporate polluters pay and reject false solutions.
Plastic producers must be held accountable for the plastic pollution they have created. Voluntary measures like Operation Clean Sweep, small scale financial contributions like the industry-backed Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and the plastics industry's promotion of "chemical recycling" and "waste to energy" are all dangerous distractions from the massive, global plastic pollution problem we need to face. We need to place the responsibility where it belongs: on the industry that generates the waste.
- Support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which, among other things, would make plastic product manufacturers accountable for wasteful products and phase out unnecessary single-use plastic products.
- Ensure that stimulus or other bills supported by the administration do not fund industry's false solutions that exacerbate the plastic pollution crisis, such as chemical recycling, waste-to-fuel, waste-to-energy, incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc, which are harmful to human health and the environment and violate the principles of environmental justice. Veto any section of spending bills that fund the false solutions listed above.
- Direct the Attorney General to investigate all violations of law by plastic producers, transporters, and molders/formers impacting the environment and prosecute them to the maximum extent of the law for the damages they have caused.
- Direct the Federal Trade Commission, in its "Green Guide" on environmental marketing claims, to prohibit companies from falsely claiming their plastic products are recyclable.
- Direct the EPA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to set minimum recycled content standards for beverage containers and other items.
- Impose tariffs on the import of single-use plastics, with exemptions for medical and personal protective equipment and accessibility options for persons with disabilities.
- Establish a moratorium on the construction of any new garbage incinerators and direct each state to develop a schedule to close existing municipal incinerators and develop a plan to close and remediate all incinerator ash landfills.
- Direct the EPA to develop new data collection methodologies to accurately report waste reduction, recycling, and composting rates throughout the United States. Require consistent reporting from local and state governments and the private sector.
- Direct the Department of Commerce to establish a new office on Recycling Market Development and Waste Reduction Innovation.
4. Advance environmental justice in petrochemical corridors.
Petrochemical companies continue to locate new and expanded plastics facilities near existing fossil fuel infrastructure, which means they are targeting the Gulf Coast, Appalachia, the Ohio River Valley, and other communities that already shoulder a heavy burden of oil, gas, and plastic industry pollution. Across the United States, these facilities are often located in and have a disproportionate impact on low-income and minority neighborhoods.
- Direct all federal agencies to ensure that communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-income communities have access to public information and opportunities for meaningful public participation in all petrochemical permitting decisions.
- Direct EPA to promulgate regulations requiring continuous emissions and fenceline monitoring of pollutants for all plastics facilities, accurate and continuous recordkeeping, as well as the provision of records to the public.
- Direct EPA to conduct cumulative risk assessments to human health in all petrochemical and disposal industry permitting decisions, and as part of any National Environmental Policy Act processes.
- Develop measures that will increase clean and green long-term economic investment in communities, workers and economies.
- Direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish a petrochemical displacement fund to enable families facing immediate health risk to access funds to assist with relocation.
- Direct federal agencies to strengthen their relationship with Indian tribes, and ensure tribes are actively involved in the consultation process for all proposals affecting tribal lands and other properties that attach traditional religious and cultural significance.
- Direct the Department of Treasury, Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General to commence a study for mitigation and payment of damages to those deliberately and disproportionately exposed to and harmed by industrial facilities that produce petrochemicals and plastics.
- Direct the Attorney General to investigate the linkages between petrochemical corridors and human trafficking, sexual violence, and the incidence of murdered and missing Indigenous women.
5. Update existing federal regulations to curtail pollution from plastics facilities by using best available science and technology.
The EPA has the authority and obligation to ensure that our nation's air, waterways, wildlife, and communities are not polluted by emissions and discharges from industrial facilities. To meet its obligations, it is tasked with developing and implementing pollution standards that reflect the best available technology and changing nature of the industries it regulates. Nevertheless, the agency continues to rely on decades-old standards when permitting plastics facilities and infrastructure, putting public health and the environment in harm's way.
- Direct EPA to update its Clean Air Act new source performance standards (NSPS) regulations and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) regulations that apply to plastics facilities and require they use only zero-emissions energy sources; direct EPA to initiate a rulemaking to designate ethane and methane as volatile organic compounds.
- Direct EPA to update its decades-old Clean Water Act regulations for plastics facilities to reflect the best available technology for conventional, non-conventional, and toxic pollut-ants from new and modified sources and establish a zero plastic standard for wastewater and stormwater discharges. Direct EPA to update Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for new and expanded facilities to eliminate the discharge of toxic priority pollutants from wastewater and stormwater streams.
- Direct EPA to promulgate regulations to prevent the discharge of plastic from other entities that transport, make, and package plastic materials.
- Direct EPA to initiate rulemakings under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to (1) consider listing plastic as hazardous waste due to its public health and environmental harms, which would result in waste reduction measures, recordkeeping in transit, and strict criteria for disposal and export; (2) ensure proper disposal of plastic hazardous waste that does not include incineration; and (3) require the inclusion of best management practices for the disposal of plastics in state and regional solid waste plans.
- Direct EPA to conduct risk evaluations of plastics and update its Toxic Substances Control Act regulations to regulate plastics that pose an unreasonable risk to public health or the environment, and for those plastics (1) prohibit production of single-use products, except as necessary to supply medical and personal protective equipment, and accessibility options for persons with disabilities; (2) require manufacturers to track and ensure proper disposal or recycling of those plastics; and (3) require zero discharge of plastic pellets and powders in the generation, storage, and transportation of those plastics.
- Direct EPA to enter into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct a study and report on the environmental, public health, and environmental justice impacts of the plastic industry and its planned expansion, including the production, entire supply chain, end uses, disposal fate, and lifecycle impacts of plastic products. The study and report must also assess the best available technologies and practices that reduce or eliminate the environmental justice and pollution impacts of plastics facilities and associated infrastructure. These will inform EPA's revision of environmental regulations to mitigate these impacts.
- Direct the Food and Drug Administration to fund a nationwide study on the presence of microplastics in water and food products, including fish, fruits, and vegetables.
- Direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fund a nationwide study on the presence of plastics in the human body and to determine how the presence of plastics in human blood and organs is affecting human health.
6. Stop subsidizing plastics producers.
For too long, the United States has subsidized the fossil fuel industry. It's time to stop the flow of financing to the petrochemical industry and the oil and gas industry that supplies its feedstocks.
- Direct the Department of Energy to end all loan and guarantee financing programs that increase plastics production, from extraction, pipelines, storage to manufacturing and export.
- Direct all federal agencies to ensure that polluters who enter into settlement agreements in connection with their violations of laws and regulations are not able to deduct the payments from their taxes.
- Direct the Department of Commerce to include alternatives to plastics as a cornerstone of its next Strategic Plan, including mechanisms for shifting federal financing and other support from the petrochemical industry to financing for alternatives to plastics, including reusable products as well as sustainable waste reduction and management technologies.
- Direct the EPA to enforce financial assurance obligations under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Remediation Act (Superfund) for oil refining and chemical manufacturing industries to ensure that companies are not self-bonded and are fully funding closure costs.
- Direct the Department of Commerce to advocate globally for the selection of U.S. suppliers of plastic alternatives in foreign government procurement opportunities, to provide assistance to green investors that want to do business in and with the United States, and to produce other opportunities to promote plastics solutions that reduce impacts to public health and the environment.
7. Join international efforts to address the global plastic pollution crisis through new and strengthened multilateral agreements.
For many years, the U.S. government has hindered the work of a growing number of countries to enact new and strengthen existing global governance structures to address the plastic pollution crisis. It is time for the U.S. to become a proactive partner with key allies to address the global plastic crisis by targeting production, consumption, and disposal.
- End the objection process to block the incorporation of the updated Basel Plastic Amendment into the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Decision Annexes.
- Work with Congress to ratify the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and finalize implementing legislation for the Convention and Basel Ban.
- End the export of plastic wastes (including for "recycling") to non-OECD countries.
- Publicly acknowledge the full life cycle impacts of plastic pollution and microplastics on human health and marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the need for new global governance to address those harms.
- Negotiate in good faith a new legally-binding convention on plastic pollution that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics, building on and complementing existing regional and global frameworks while addressing key gaps around global objectives, market restrictions, and a just and safe circular economy for plastics.
- Negotiate in good faith a new legally-binding treaty to eliminate fossil fuel extraction, which provides the raw material of 99% of plastics.
- Convene a Major Economies Forum on Plastics to bring together the countries most responsible for consumption of plastic that ultimately ends up as waste, as well as the United Nations, to spur cooperative action to combat the plastics crisis.
8. Reduce and mitigate the impacts of discarded and lost fishing gear.
Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear, including gillnets and fishing traps/pots causes ecological and economic harms. This fishing gear is often called "ghost gear" because long after it is lost it entangles, captures, and kills sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, and fish. It changes the marine environment, poses navigational hazards, introduces plastic into the marine food web, and creates a persistent marine debris and pollution problem, with high cleanup costs.
- Direct the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in consultation with the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to develop regulations for reducing litter and the environmental impacts of U.S. commercial and recreational fishing gear that is lost or abandoned. These regulations must include (1) reporting, labeling, traceability, and monitoring measures and (2) measures to eliminate or substantially reduce the impacts of lost and abandoned fishing gear on wildlife, including gear retrieval projects.
- Commit to working with NOAA, the states, and Congress to complete a plan and allocate new federal funding to eliminate abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear from U.S. vessels and in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
- Revise the NOAA "Fishing for Energy" program that collects derelict fishing gear at 31 ports in 9 states, which recycles a limited amount of metal and sends the rest of the collected material to garbage incinerators. The incinerator element of this program should be eliminated.
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FOCUS: Xavier Becerra Supports 'Medicare for All,' as HHS Secretary He Would Have an Opportunity |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=57411"><span class="small">Sarah Kliff, The New York Times</span></a>
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Thursday, 10 December 2020 13:22 |
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Kliff writes: "Xavier Becerra has long supported moving the United States to a 'Medicare for all' system. As President-elect Joe Biden's pick to run Health and Human Services, he may have opportunities to speed up such a transition."
Xavier Becerra onscreen as President-elect Joe Biden introduced members of his health team on Tuesday. As secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Becerra would have the power to broaden access to health care in ways he has long supported. (photo: Hilary Swift/NYT)
Xavier Becerra Supports 'Medicare for All,' as HHS Secretary He Would Have an Opportunity
By Sarah Kliff, The New York Times
10 December 20
Waivers can expand health care offerings without need for congressional approval, but the challenge will be how to pay for them.
 avier Becerra has long supported moving the United States to a “Medicare for all” system. As President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to run Health and Human Services, he may have opportunities to speed up such a transition.
The Health and Human Services secretary oversees an array of waivers that states can use to cover new groups or provide different types of health plans. Because these waivers do not require congressional approval, they could become a crucial policymaking tool for the Biden administration if Republicans retain control of the Senate.
“Without a Senate majority, it will be hard to advance some of the fundamental planks of the administration’s plans,” said Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “That’s where the waiver authority becomes important.”
The health system’s future was a major dividing point in the Democratic presidential primary. President-elect Biden has supported the idea of a public option: a government-run health plan that all Americans could choose to buy into — but not the Medicare for all system proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, which would eliminate private coverage and move all Americans into a public plan.
Some of the waivers can work through the Medicaid program, which has authority to allow states to cover additional groups or to provide enhanced health benefits.
Others can go through the Affordable Care Act, which has a section that allows states to bundle their different sources of health law funding — such as the individual premium subsidies that residents would receive, or tax credits that would go to small businesses — and take those dollars as a lump sum to finance a different type of health system. States do have to meet certain requirements: They cannot increase the uninsured rate, and their plan cannot require additional federal money.
Which types of waivers get approval often depends on the policy preferences of the administration and the Health and Human Services secretary. The Trump administration has typically approved waivers that tighten eligibility for public health programs, such as those requiring Medicaid recipients to work to receive health coverage.
The waivers approved by Mr. Becerra as part of the Biden administration would most likely be different, and could reflect his long track record of supporting single-payer health care. He endorsed the idea as a first-term congressman in 1994 and sponsored Medicare for all legislation four times during his 12 terms in Congress. In 2017, he reiterated that he “absolutely” supports a policy that would move all Americans to one government-run health plan.
“He’s been on the record as a supporter from his time in the House,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat and a prominent advocate of Medicare for all. “He was sponsoring this at a time when it was not very popular to support it.”
“Waivers are discretionary for the secretary,” said Patricia Boozang, a senior managing director at the consulting firm Manatt Health. “There’s a lot of innovative ideas that states have around expanding coverage and making it more affordable.”
Illinois, for example, applied in November 2019 for a waiver to give mothers of newborns Medicaid coverage for one year after giving birth. The Trump administration has not acted on the request, but some observers expect it to get a fresh look and quicker approval after Mr. Becerra takes over the health agency.
States will also have the opportunity to pursue more experimental and larger coverage expansions. Many experts believe that Mr. Becerra’s waiver authority would easily allow a state-level public option to move forward. Nevada, Colorado and Connecticut have all considered the idea in recent years, and President-elect Biden supported the idea in his 2020 campaign.
“I think a lot of states are dusting the cobwebs off some old plans and thinking about, how can we use these waivers,” Ms. Boozang said.
An enterprising health secretary, working in partnership with a state, could also go even further. Some experts believe that a combination of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act waivers could allow a state to build a single-payer plan with all of its federal health dollars.
Vermont had planned to do that in the early 2010s, and had identified waivers to create a state health plan to cover all Vermonters. The state held monthly meetings with the Obama administration to hammer out how to use federal waivers to set up its new health system.
“They gave us all the waivers we needed to get it done,” said Peter Shumlin, the former governor of Vermont who led the state’s effort. “I hope the Biden administration will work with states to innovate, too.”
The state’s plan fell apart, however, when it concluded that the tax increases necessary to create the program were politically infeasible.
This speaks to one weakness of much of the waiver process: Though states can use their federal funding in new ways, they typically cannot receive additional money. Any extra dollars they need would have to come either from raising taxes or cutting something else in their budget.
In the case of Vermont, the small state estimated it would need $2.5 billion in additional funds to start a single-payer health system — an amount larger than its annual budget.
“When health costs are often rising two or three times faster than income, there is no magical way to pay for the system,” Mr. Shumlin said. “That is what we ran into.”
The hardest part of moving single-payer health care forward this way may be finding a state that wants to step up and try again. The coronavirus has significantly strained state budgets; many states are now exploring cuts to their Medicaid programs rather than thinking about ways to expand coverage.
“The math is very tough,” Ms. Hempstead said.
A few states have shown at least some interest in taking on the issue, but none are poised to pursue a federal waiver.
In its 2018 session, the New York State Assembly passed a bill to create a single-payer system, but the effort died in the Senate. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom ran his most recent campaign on a single-payer platform and established a commission on the issue in January. One of his first acts as governor was writing a letter to President Trump trying to ascertain what federal flexibility existed for states that wanted to create universal coverage.
But Governor Newsom had to turn his focus this year to fighting the coronavirus pandemic, and has scaled back budget proposals meant to expand coverage to more Californians — a sign of how challenging major health reform may prove as states continue to battle a public health crisis.
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ccasionally presidents have a chance to make choices that change the way we view things – one of those opportunities comes in the next few days, when Joe Biden is expected to name the next secretary of the interior.
