Category Archives: Environmental politics

Berta Cáceres, Honduran activist killed in 2016. (Photo courtesy Goldman Environmental Prize).

As the year 2020 closes, two more environmental activists are gunned down in Honduras. Although it’s outrageous, it’s also business as usual for timber thieves, hydro dam builders, and owners of mining projects.

Honduran authorities say they are investigating, but not much is expected. Following the 2016 murder of Berta Caceres in Honduras, the government arrested eight men linked to right wing military death squads, but in 2018, the courts suspended their trial.

Global human rights and environmental organizations are deeply appalled and outraged at the ongoing slaughter of environmental leaders and the journalists who cover their concerns.

One response has been the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean – known as the Escazú Agreement.  The treaty “aims to combat inequality and discrimination and to guarantee the rights of every person to a healthy environment and to sustainable development”.

But even Chile, where the agreement was first conceived, finds the agreement “inconvenient.”

This is an international human rights issue and, in our view,  the Biden Administration should lead a global investigation, The call to conscience cannot be ignored.

For as full a list as we can make, of names of those murdered while defending the environment, see the page on this Environmental History Timeline.

And in the first few weeks of 2021, another seven names are added to the list.

Joe Biden’s victory in the US 2020 presidential race portends a full 180 degree turn in environmental policy.  The campaign has consistently called climate change the “number one issue facing humanity” and the Biden administration has  vowed a national transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Among the environmental initiatives Biden promised in the campaign:

• Put into place a $2 trillion plan for infrastructure towards a goal of zero carbon pollution from  electricity by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050, the campaign said.
• Establish an Environmental and Climate Justice Division within the U.S. Department of Justice.
• End fossil fuel subsidies
• Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords
• Reverse Trump climate and environment policy rollbacks in EPA, Dept. of Energy, Interior, Defense and other agencies.
• Take a science-based approach to air, water, chemical and solid waste pollution through the Environmental Protection Agency
• Return to fuel efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks
• Establish an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at HHS and Launch an Infectious Disease Defense Initiative.

“The first 100 days of the Biden administration are likely to see a flurry of executive actions addressing climate change, as well as a major push to insert clean energy provisions into legislation that could pass with a bipartisan coalition,” says Lisa Friedman of the New York Times.

The energy ladder: Developing nations first use firewood, then move “up” to coal, then kerosene, then a select few might get oil and gas.  Eventually, lucky developing nations may work their way “up” to nuclear power.

RECENTLY, Barack Obama stopped US government financing of most overseas coal projects due to climate concerns.   The predictable reaction from the  energy industry and its friends was expressed in an opinion by Ken Silverstein  in the Christian Science Monitor:

“Sorry, Mr. Obama; Africa needs coal.”

The underlying philosophy here is that if a developing country is going to move “up” the energy ladder, it needs to develop basic cheap energy sources first, use them to fuel development, then move “up” to more complex fuels, and then finally move “up” to nuclear power.

If Mr. Silverstein had been talking about communications in this same vein, he would have said: “Sorry, Mr. Obama; never mind the cell phones — Africa needs its telegraphs.” Continue reading →