News Releases

STEPHEN ZUNES, [email]
Professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, Zunes recently wrote the piece “The Case Against Kerry,” which states: “John Kerry’s attacks on the International Court of Justice, his defense of Israeli occupation policies and human rights violations, and his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq raise serious questions about his commitment to international law and treaty obligations. His false claims of Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and his repeated denial of human rights abuses by allied governments well-documented by reputable monitoring groups raise serious questions about his credibility.

“In the 1980s, during the early part of his Senate career, Kerry was considered one of the more progressive members of the U.S. Senate on foreign policy. … More recently, however, Kerry became a prominent supporter of various neoconservative initiatives. …

“In 2002, he voted against an unsuccessful resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq only if the United Nations Security Council permitted such force under the UN Charter and instead voted for an alternative Republican resolution, which authorized President Bush to invade that oil-rich country unilaterally in violation of the UN Charter.

“The October 2002 war resolution backed by Kerry was not like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution regarding Vietnam, where there was no time for reflection and debate. Kerry had been briefed by the chief UN weapons inspector and by prominent scholars of the region, who informed him of the likely absence of any of the alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the likely consequences of a U.S. invasion, but he voted to authorize the invasion anyway. It was not a ‘mistake’ or a momentary lapse of judgment. It demonstrated Kerry’s dismissive attitude toward fundamental principles of international law and international treaties that prohibit aggressive war.

“Kerry and his supporters claim he does not really reject international law. They note that, in voting to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Kerry stated at that time that he expected President Bush ‘to work with the United Nations Security Council and our allies … if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.’ He then promised that if President Bush failed to do so, ‘I will be the first to speak out.’

“However, Senator Kerry broke that promise. When President Bush abandoned his efforts to gain United Nations Security Council authorization for the war in late February 2003 and pressed forward with plans for the invasion without a credible international coalition, Kerry remained silent. Indeed, when President Bush actually launched the invasion soon afterwards, Senator Kerry praised him, co-sponsoring a Senate resolution declaring that the invasion was ‘lawful and fully authorized by the Congress’ and that he ‘commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President … in the conflict with Iraq.’”

See video of some of Kerry’s statements on Iraq leading to his war vote as well as the IPA news release “Kerry’s Judgement Questioned Because of Pro-War Vote.“

Following President Obama’s inauguration speech, CNN stated: “His was a call for radical changes even as a divided Congress rules over an undecided nation.”

SHAHID BUTTAR, [email], @bordc
Buttar is executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He said today: “Some critics of Mr. Obama’s inaugural address may describe his comments as radical. But insisting on values as fundamental as ‘equality before the law’ and the ‘enduring strength of our Constitution’ are hardly radical. Indeed, they are simply restatements of principles that have long united America.

“If observers want to criticize the president, they should instead challenge his derogation in practice of the same values he professes in his lofty speeches. The President’s first term unfortunately witnessed a continued extension of the Bush-Cheney legacy, and he seems no more inclined than his neo-con predecessors to heed longstanding constitutional limits on executive power.

“Extrajudicial assassination using armed drone aircraft, the use of unmanned aerial drones to conduct domestic spying without warrants, the NSA’s dragnet warrantless spying program, the FBI’s resurrection of COINTELPRO, the unprecedented crackdown on immigrants under President Obama, the use of immigration enforcement as a pretext to create a national biometric identification scheme for all Americans (including citizens), the continuation of racial profiling in the drug war and the new threat of military detention within the U.S. all reflect a dangerous side to the president’s legacy that undermines the rights of all Americans, regardless of political party or ideology.”

DAPHNE WYSHAM, via Lacy MacAuley, [email]
Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. She said today: “Obama is finally and fearlessly uttering the words ‘climate change’ in the context of needing to take aggressive action. While this is welcome news to climate change activists, the words will be meaningless unless a) the Obama Administration rejects the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline; b) Obama selects a new EPA administrator who is willing to take action under the Clean Air Act to rein in CO2 emissions from all sources; c) he stops pushing for dangerous energy development deep offshore in the Gulf, in the Arctic and via continued fracking for oil and gas; d) he pursues a renewable energy standard for the entire country; and e) he directs our publicly financed development banks and export credit agencies to get out of fossil fuels entirely. ”

While many are drawing parallels between Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama, some activists and analysts state that many of Obama’s policies run totally counter to King’s activism.

The group RootsAction states: “Meticulous researchers have documented that U.S. drones are killing many innocent civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Drones are making the world less stable and creating new enemies. Their remoteness provides those responsible with a sense of immunity.”

The Washington Peace Center has a list of protests and other events around the inauguration.

In King’s 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? he wrote: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.” That same year In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech [see text and audio], King said: “What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call ‘VC’ or ‘communists’? … Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

“I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. … When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. …

“With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

“Perhaps his [Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh] sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of ‘aggression’ as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. … True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.”

LEAH BOLGER, [email]
President of Veterans for Peace, Bolger said today: “King’s legacy is not upheld by increasing troops in Afghanistan and killing in so many other countries as the administration has done — it is violated. Obama put Social Security on the fiscal chopping block instead of the military budget. The main advocate of drone killings, John Brennan, was just nominated by Obama to be head of the CIA. We must clearly judge politicians by the content of their policies, not the effectiveness of their delivery.”

JARED BALL, [email]
Associate professor of journalism and mass communication at Morgan State University and author of I MiX What I Like: A MiXtape Manifesto, Ball said today: “Not even the Hollywood distortions of Lincoln and Django out-perform the political myths being planned for this week’s inauguration. One hundred and fifty years since the Emancipation Proclamation and 50 years after the March on Washington, Barack Obama will use both the bibles of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of a ceremony that is as much about obscuring or preventing progressive change as were the real politics of Lincoln and those falsely ascribed to King. It is as doubtful that Lincoln meant by colonization [of blacks back to Africa] the eventual return of Africans to sit in this country’s highest offices as it is that King meant to fight for an equality that would allow black people the same right to perform drone strikes. Lincoln and King represent important dialectical, hostile and very unequal political opposites. Obama’s symbolic merging of the two in fact works to impose a false unity to what each represented and disrespectfully aligns King with a political tradition he was killed trying to eradicate.”

Forbes reports “‘Aaron’s Law’ Suggests Reforms To Computer Fraud Act (But Not Enough To Have Protected Aaron Swartz).”

Glenn Greenwald recently wrote: “A petition on the White House’s website to fire U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz quickly exceeded the 25,000 signatures needed to compel a reply.” Yesterday, Ortiz finally addressed the case, claiming “At no time did this office ever seek — or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek — maximum penalties under the law,” while making no mention of perusing felonies. Boston station WCVB reports: “Swartz’ lawyer, Elliot Peters, said prosecutors were insisting he plead guilty to all 13 felony charges and serve four to six months in prison or go to trial and face up to 35 years. Swartz rejected that offer, saying he didn’t want to be branded a felon.”

But even individuals who have severely criticized the government for its conduct have not fully backed Swartz’s actions. For example, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig attacked the government’s conduct as “bullying” but also said what Swartz did — download millions of academic articles from JSTOR with the alleged intention of making them free to the public — was “morally wrong.” In 2008, Swartz had released about 20 percent of the entire PACER database of United States federal court documents.

But some noted analysts have questioned the current form of copyright as intolerably burdensome, with Swartz’s actions being tantamount to civil disobedience:

RICHARD STALLMAN, [email]
Visiting scientist at MIT, Stallman said today: “Copyright is unjustly restrictive. People need more freedom in their use of published works. It’s clear that Aaron Swartz was working for that goal in his actions regarding JSTOR and PACER. I’m not for totally ending copyright, but the way it is now implemented does not foster more innovation, it furthers the profits of publishers.” See Stallman’s article “Misinterpreting Copyright — A Series of Errors.”

Stallman has pioneered the notion of copyleft and is founder of the Free Software Foundation. See a speech by Stallman on copyright.

DEAN BAKER, via Alan Barber, [email]
Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He wrote the piece “Aaron Swartz: A Tragic Early Death,” which states: “I knew Aaron because he e-mailed me with questions about some of my writings. After reading my book The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, he asked me why we hadn’t made it available in html. When I told him that no one on my staff had the time, he volunteered to do it himself. We continued to occasionally exchange e-mails and met in person a few times. He clearly was a serious, committed person. …

“It would be an appropriate tribute to Aaron if his death prompted a re-examination of copyright and patent laws. These laws are clearly acting as an impediment to innovation and progress. If economists had the allegiance to efficiency that they claim, and not just serving the rich and powerful, the profession would be devoting its energies to finding more modern mechanisms for promoting creative work and innovation.

“Unfortunately most economists are comfortable with the status quo, regardless of how corrupt it might be. Let’s hope that Aaron’s tragic death can be an inspiration to revamping intellectual property and making a better world.”

Background: See Baker’s piece “The Surefire Way to End Online Piracy: End Copyright.”

Also, see his report “The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights.”

From a speech by Aaron Swartz in 2010 at the University of Illinois: “I am going to give you one example of something not as big as saving Congress, but something important that you can do right here at your own school. It just requires [being] willing to get your shoes a little bit muddy. By virtue of being students at a major U.S. university, I assume that you have access to a wide variety of scholarly journals. Pretty much every major university in the United States pays these sort of licensing fees to organizations like JSTOR and Thomson and ISI to get access to scholarly journals that the rest of the world can’t read. And these licensing fees are substantial. And they’re so substantial that people who are studying in India, instead of studying in the United States, don’t have this kind of access. They’re locked out from all of these journals. They’re locked out from our entire scientific legacy. I mean, a lot of these journal articles, they go back to the Enlightenment. Every time someone has written down a scientific paper, it’s been scanned and digitized and put in these collections.

“That is a legacy that has been brought to us by the history of people doing interesting work, the history of scientists. It’s a legacy that should belong to us as a commons, as a people, but instead it’s been locked up and put online by a handful of for-profit corporations who then try and get the maximum profit they can out of it.” [Audio]

There has been an outpouring for Swartz on the Internet since his reported suicide on Friday, including a torrent of postings by professors of their academic papers in tribute to Swartz. See: PDFtribute.net

JUNAID AHMAD, [email]
Ahmad is assistant professor of law at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan and is currently visiting the U.S. He said today: “Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of the country’s sitting Prime Minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf. This same Supreme Court had removed another prime minister of this PPP [Pakistan People's Party]-led government just six months ago. Although this civilian government has almost completed its five-year term in office, there is a sense that the tensions between the judiciary and the PPP government have finally reached a boiling point — just months before scheduled national elections. And of course the military establishment, the real power broker in Pakistani politics, is always ever-so-ready to ‘manage’ these engineered crises to serve its own interests.

“In the wake of this unfolding precarious scenario, you have extra-parliamentary developments such as the phenomenon of Prof. Tahir-ul-Qadri emerging onto the political scene — joining other would-be ‘messiahs’ such as Imran Khan before him — to rid the country of corruption and ‘evil’ politicians. But it would be a mistake to not take all of these political developments seriously. The Pakistani people are indeed fed up with the plethora of incompetent and corrupt elite actors in the country, and are hungry for some meaningful alternative that advances both social justice and self-respect and dignity for the nation as a whole in the face of ongoing interference in ‘Af-Pak.’”

The Guardian reports in “Aaron Swartz’s Family Condemns MIT and U.S. Government After his Death,” which states: “The family of celebrated Internet activist Aaron Swartz has accused prosecutors and MIT officials of being complicit in his death, blaming the apparent suicide on the pursuit of a young man over ‘an alleged crime that had no victims.’

“In a statement released late Saturday, Swartz’s parents, Robert and Susan, siblings Noah and Ben and partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said the Redditt builder’s demise was not just a ‘personal tragedy’ but ‘the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.’

“They also attacked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for not supporting the Internet activist in his legal battles and refusing to stand up for ‘its own community’s most cherished principles.’

“The comments came a day after the 26-year-old killed himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday night.

“A committed advocate for the freedom of information over the Internet, Swartz had been facing a trial over allegations of hacking related to the downloading of millions of documents from the online research group JSTOR. Swartz pleaded not guilty last year; if convicted, he could have faced a lengthy prison term.

“News of his death resulted in an outpouring of tributes over the Internet. …”

Time magazine notes the president of MIT Sunday night announced an internal investigation to assess MIT’s conduct in the case.

LAWRENCE LESSIG [email], @lessig
Available for a limited number of interviews, Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and author of numerous books on Internet freedom. He was a friend of Swartz and is very familiar with his case. Just after Swartz’s death, Lessig wrote the piece “Prosecutor as Bully.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA [email], @kgosztola
Gosztola wrote the piece “Reactions to the Death of Internet Activist Aaron Swartz,” which states: “JSTOR had settled with Swartz and they were ready to move onward. It was the government that would not let parties put what Swartz did behind them.”

He just wrote the article “How the Government’s Prosecution of Aaron Swartz Pushed Him Toward Death,” and said today: “The government chose to make an example out of him. The government thought there needed to be a case that could become precedent and clearly demonstrate to the public that information was not free. Intellectual property must be respected and individuals cannot be allowed to take advantage of ‘loopholes’ to share knowledge.

“Just as the government sought to make an example out of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, made an example out of former CIA officer John Kiriakou for ‘leaking’ a name of an agent and is making an example out of Pfc. Bradley Manning for allegedly providing classified and non-classified information to WikiLeaks, it pursued Swartz hoping to convict him and set a precedent that would limit Internet freedom and the free flow of information. Meanwhile, banks like HSBC received no jail time for terrorist financing, not a single person from a Big Bank on Wall Street was prosecuted for major financial crimes that led to the 2008 economic collapse and those in the intelligence community who authorized torture were allowed to roam free.

“Do not expect this to change. The government will continue to take up cases against Internet activists who do no real harm, while looking the other way as white collar criminals and war criminals receive accolades, enjoy prestige and success and benefit from government welfare.” Gosztola is co-author of Truth & Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning.

In May, 2012, Swartz gave the keynote address “How We Stopped SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act]” at the Freedom to Connect conference. [Video]

In an editorial today titled “Three years since Haiti earthquake: Learning the art of listening,” The Christian Science Monitor writes: “The third anniversary of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, has not drawn much attention. This is despite the fact that one out of every two Americans donated money to the relief and thousands of people from around the world volunteered to rebuild the Caribbean nation. The reason is that the hope of ‘rebuilding Haiti better’ after this particularly big natural disaster is, well, still largely a hope. The obstacles of reconstructing a new Haiti have proved steep — such as ineffective government, powerful elites, not to mention hurricanes since then. Billions in aid has flowed in. Yet, to cite just one example of slow progress, more than 350,000 people are still living in tents.”

The following human rights advocates emphasize that “building back better” requires investing in the rule of law and including Haitians at all stages of rebuilding:

MARIO JOSEPH, [email]. (in Haiti, speaks French and Creole)
Widely regarded as Haiti’s most prominent human rights lawyer and managing attorney of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Joseph has led several successful initiatives to make Haiti’s justice system more fair and effective since the earthquake. He noted that: “We have seen tremendous progress in the justice system’s ability and willingness to respond to gender-based violence since the earthquake. Our office had trials in seven rape cases in 2012, and all resulted in convictions. These cases worked because grassroots women’s groups made them work. Poor women and girl victims of rape are some of the most marginalized in the world, but they were able to work within a challenged justice system to enforce their own rights. This is what building back better looks like.”

BEATRICE LINDSTROM, [email], (in Haiti, speaks English and French)
Staff attorney with Institute for Justice & Democracy, Lindstrom said today from Port-au-Prince: “The last three years demonstrate that fundamental improvements in Haiti are achievable, but only if Haitians are involved at all stages and the building is done on the foundation of law and justice.

“Housing and cholera are two examples of areas where a failure to invest in the rule of law and to involve Haitians has resulted in slow, and even deadly progress. Instead of using available legal procedures to target the land tenure issues underlying the housing crisis, the international community and Haitian government have targeted IDP [internal displaced person] camp residents through illegal evictions and short term payoffs, without providing viable housing for displaced families. Instead of accepting legal responsibility for its negligent actions in bringing cholera to the island and providing the clean water and sanitation infrastructure necessary to stop the cholera’s killing, the UN denies the facts established by the scientific community, including the UN’s own experts, while 8,000 Haitians died.”

BRIAN CONCANNON, [email], (in U.S., speaks English, French and Creole)
Director of IJDH, Concannon said today: “These are band-aid solutions to a fundamental problem. The problem of IDP camps sitting where journalists will see them is being solved, the problem of earthquake survivors without homes is not.”

ANTONIA JUHASZ, [email]
Juhasz is a fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism and was recently in Afghanistan. She wrote the just-published piece “The New War for Afghanistan’s Untapped Oil,” which states: “With the close of 2012, the Pentagon has revealed a disturbing trend in Afghanistan: Taliban attacks remained steady, or in some cases increased, over 2011 levels. I experienced the Taliban surge firsthand this past November, and can offer a cause not cited in the Pentagon’s report: oil and gas.”

SONALI KOLHATKAR, [email]
Kolhatkar is co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence and is co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission. She said today: “The U.S.’s presence did not create peace and its departure will not create it either. The U.S.’s presence only served to strengthen the internal forces of war over more than a decade.”

KATHY KELLY, [email] [in Afghanistan, 9.5 hours ahead of U.S. ET]
HAKIM, [email],
In Afghanistan since December 20, 1012, Kelly just wrote the piece “Seeking Security in Afghanistan” with Martha Hennessy. They are representing Voices for Creative Nonviolence and are guests of the Afghan Peace Volunteers. Hakim is with the APV.

Wrote Kelly and Hennessy: “This week, in Washington, D.C., Presidents Obama and Karzai will discuss a proposed Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. Presumably, they’ll note some of the main security problems Afghanistan faces.

“The people of Afghanistan have only seen cosmetic improvement in their living conditions. UNICEF reports that 36 percent of the people live in poverty and that over one million children suffer from acute malnourishment. According to available World Bank figures, about 73 percent of people in Afghanistan lack access to clean drinking water and 95 percent do not have access to sufficient sanitation. Limited access to medical facilities and the absence of knowledge, skills and the ability to effectively manage these diarrhoeal diseases usually leads to the death of 48,545 children each year — approximately 133 children per day.

“In and around Kabul alone, there are an estimated 35,000 internally displaced refugees living in 50 camps. We’ve seen the wretched conditions there and walked away feeling ashamed of our warm clothes and easy access to food and potable water.

“Kabul appears secure, but it is merely a fragile ‘bubble’ where people feel relatively removed from fighting, compared to areas of the country afflicted by regular Taliban and NATO/ISAF attacks. A young Pashto friend of ours spoke to us with frustration yesterday about how little understanding people in Kabul have for people in his province, called Wardak, where people live in constant fear of drone attacks and night raids.

“The U.S. Congress doesn’t seem to believe in non-military solutions. … Over the past ten years of occupation, the United States could have assumed a responsibility to help establish a sustainable economy and infrastructure. Instead, although billions were spent (in October 2012 the office of the SIGAR, SpecialInspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, released its 17th and latest report on reconstruction reported that, after a decade, U.S. government spending approaches the $100 billion mark), the U.S. forces will leave behind many millions of war-weary, exhausted and economically desperate people.”

Also see recent interview with Malalai Joya, “A Voice for Peace in Afghanistan: Stop This Criminal War”.

C-SPAN reports: “Pres. Obama is expected to announce at 1:30pm (ET) that he will nominate Jack Lew to be the next treasury secretary. Lew is the current White House chief of staff and would replace Timothy Geithner in the position.”

ROBERT WEISSMAN, via Angela Bradbery [email] for broadcast media, Barbara Holzer [email]
President of Public Citizen, Weissman said today: “The last thing the Obama administration needs is to continue having Wall Street insiders and fellow travelers shaping its economic policy. Unfortunately, Jacob Lew has deep Wall Street connections, having worked before joining the Obama administration as managing director and chief operating officer of Citi Global Wealth Management and then Citi Alternative Investments. …

“[Lew] reflects a Wall Street perspective on key economic and policy issues. For example, at a 2010 confirmation hearing, he told the Senate Budget Committee that he did not believe deregulation was a proximate cause of the financial crisis. It is imperative that the administration finally break from Wall Street on economic and regulatory policy.”

SARAH ANDERSON, via Lacy MacAuley [email]
Global economy project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, Anderson just wrote the piece “4 Modest Wishes for New Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.” Anderson’s number one wish: “If you were complicit in the 2008 crash, please fess up and make a convincing case that you’ve seen the light.” She writes: “Lew was the chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investments unit from 2006 through the crash (he left in 2009) and he should reveal more about what he did there. This should also apply to other top Treasury leaders. Since Lew, a former head of the Office on Management and Budget, is considered more of a budget guy than a financial markets guy, there are rumors that President Obama is planning to install a Wall Street executive as his deputy.” http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-modest-wishes-new-treasury-secretary-jack-lew

Anderson notes in her piece that 200,000 people, including her, signed a petition for Paul Krugman to be treasury secretary. See news release from Center for Economic and Policy Research: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/more-than-200000-petition-for-paul-krugman-to-be-treasury-secretary

AP reports: “America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012. … Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.” Reuters reports: “Australia’s record-breaking heatwave has sent temperatures soaring, melting road tar and setting off hundreds of wildfires — as well as searing new colors onto weather maps.”

JOHN TALBERTH [email]
President and senior economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy, Talberth said today: “It is utterly irresponsible for the Obama administration to be pouring billions of dollars into new fossil fuel infrastructure when all the evidence suggests we’re on the worst case trajectory for global warming. Scientists say we need to leave 60-80 percent of new fossil fuels in the ground if we are to avert a global meltdown, something we cannot achieve as long as taxpayer money continues to be used to subsidize new coal mines, deepwater wells, gas fields, pipelines and export terminals.”

The Center for Sustainable Economy recently sued the Obama administration over its “decision to authorize a new five year offshore oil and gas leasing program that includes many new deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska citing biased economic analysis that fails to consider the benefits of Gulf and Alaskan waters and shores for fisheries, tourism and other uses jeopardized by new oil and gas infrastructure development.”

DAPHNE WYSHAM, via Lacy MacAuley [email]
Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. She said today: “Although Obama has signaled that climate change will be a policy priority in his second term, it is not clear whether by that he means causing or slowing climate change. President Obama wants … an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy, meaning greater energy efficiency and the expansion of oil, gas and coal mining and nuclear power. Such a strategy dooms the U.S. and the world to higher temperatures, more nuclear accidents and higher energy prices. Meanwhile, poor countries like Uruguay are on track to 90 percent renewable energy by 2015 and rich countries like Germany and Denmark are on track to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 if not sooner. The U.S., with vastly more sun and wind resources, can and should do more to pull us from the brink of climate catastrophe.”

CHRISTIAN PARENTI [email]
Parenti is author of “Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.” He said today: “There’s a lot that could be done with existing laws and budgets. The EPA could impose a carbon tax under the Clean Air Act and fund a plethora of renewable energy programs. Federal and state governments have enormous budgets, accounting for one-third of GDP. They have a huge number of buildings and enormous fleets of vehicles. The buildings could all be retrofitted, the vehicles could be electric ones. If the government were to become a user of clean energy, that would be a tremendous tool.” Parenti outlined these ideas in a 2010 piece “The Big Green Buy.”