When was the last time you heard about Republicans and Democrats agreeing on something?

Christine Todd Whitman. Photo by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Green.

Recently, the Center for Public Integrity reported that on April 3, Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President George W. Bush sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging her to use Clean Air Act to prevent chemical disasters.

Yes, you heard that right, in a world where Newt Gingrich is calling for the abolition of the EPA, there is common sense bi-partisan support for the EPA using its authority to make us safer. Governor Whitman can speak with authority about this issue because she, as EPA chief under President George W. Bush, drafted such a program in 2002, driven by the country’s national security concerns following the 9/11 attacks.

The EPA’s 2002 proposal, complete with a roll out plan, hinged on using the “Bhopal Amendment” of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. Commonly called the “General Duty Clause” (GDC) this section of the Clean Air Act obligates chemical facilities who handle hazardous chemicals to prevent chemical disasters.

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It’s not surprising that the American Petroleum Institute — Big Oil’s premium lobbying entity — is using a synthetic media strategy. Their Vote 4 Energy astroturf campaign spews misinformation like a two-stroke engine belching greenhouse gasses. It attempts to portray ‘real (cough cough) Americans’ who are ‘energy voters,’ which translates to voting for whichever politicians support Big Oil’s dirty agenda.

API also bought the back page of the A section of the Washington Post with a Vote4Energy ad that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s about as genuine as a gas-station burrito.

If you want authentic insights on Big Oil’s scheming, start with our own mock Vote 4 Energy commercial.

Anticipating this new misinformation campaign, PolluterWatch created a mock Vote 4 Energy commercial to show how API and it’s oil company members (Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron and all the usual suspects) are generating this phony citizen support for Big Oil.

What’s really fueling this bogus outreach is API’s $200 million budget to push dirty energy incentives and tax handouts for oil companies — something the petrol pushers can’t do on their own. Hence the need to prop up a phony corps of pseudo-interested citizens. They’ve even gone so far as to stage faux-rallies for their Energy Citizens astroturf campaign, as revealed by Greenpeace in a confidential API memo to oil executives. The con-job is essential to their strategy because American’s overwhelmingly support clean energy over dirty oil development. Read the rest of this entry →

While Obama’s jobs speech is being framed as a turning point for his tenure as President, there is another job I would respectively suggest he concentrate on: protecting the lives of America’s children.

Here’s a quick video ad that I think gets right to point:

Late last week the President blocked reforms to the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to improve pollution measures to protect Americans against the harmful effects of toxic ozone smog. The President chose to side with big corporate polluters instead of with the 12,000 Americans that, according to the EPA, would have been saved by these proposed updates to pollution controls. Obama also chose to side with the big polluting industries instead of with the estimated 24 million men, women and children suffering from asthma in this country who are forced to suffer even more because of heightened smog levels.

The decision outraged his biggest backers in the Democratic Party. Barbara Boxer, Chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said that environmentalists should sue the Obama administration over the decision: “I hope they’ll be sued in court and I hope the court can stand by the Clean Air Act.” Read the rest of this entry →

Recent Greenpeace analysis of lobbying disclosure records reveals that since 2005, Koch Industries has hired more lobbyists than Dow and Dupont to fight legislation that could protect over 100 million Americans from what national security experts say is a catastrophic risk from the bulk storage of poison gasses at dangerous chemical facilities such as oil refineries, chemical manufacturing facilities, and water treatment plants. Koch lobbyists even outnumber those at trade associations including the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute. Only the American Chemistry Council deployed more.

In 2010 Koch Industries and the billionaire brothers who run it were first exposed as a major funder of front groups spreading denial of global warming in a Greenpeace report, which sparked an expose in the New Yorker. Since then, the brothers have been further exposed as a key backer of efforts to roll back environmental, labor, and health protections at the state and federal levels. Through enormous campaign contributions, an army of lobbyists, and funding of think tanks and front groups, David and Charles Koch push their agenda of a world in which their company can operate without regard for the risks they pose to communities, workers, or our environment.

Today, in a new exposé, Greenpeace has shown how Koch Industries has quietly played a key role in blocking yet another effort to protect workers and vulnerable communities – comprehensive chemical security legislation. The Report is called “Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at risk of a Poison Gas Disaster.”

Since before the September 11, 2001 attacks, security experts have warned of the catastrophic risk that nearly every major American city faces from the bulk storage of poison gasses at dangerous chemical facilities such as oil refineries, chemical manufacturing facilities, and water treatment plants. Nevertheless, ten years later, thousands of facilities still put more than 100 million Americans at risk of a chemical disaster. According to the company’s own reports to the EPA, Koch Industries and its subsidiaries Invista, Flint Hills, and Georgia Pacific operate 57 dangerous chemical facilities in the United States that together put 4.4 million people at risk.

A coalition of more than 100 labor, environmental, and health organizations has advocated for comprehensive chemical security legislation that would help remove the threat of a poison gas disaster by requiring the highest risk facilities to use safer processes where feasible. Koch Industries and other oil and chemical companies have lobbied against legislation that would prevent chemical disasters, despite repeated requests from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for disaster prevention. Instead Koch favors an extension of the current, weak Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) that exempt most facilities and actually prohibit the authority of DHS to require safer processes. As in other policy areas, Koch’s huge efforts have gone largely unnoticed.

Koch campaign contributions reveal the company’s influence over the chemical security debate in Washington DC. All of the key Senators and Representatives who have taken a lead role during the last year in pushing legislation that supports Koch’s chemical security agenda have received Koch campaign contributions. The House members who introduced two bills that would extend CFATS without improvements and block the DHS from requiring safer processes for seven years have all taken KochPAC contributions over the last three election cycles, including Representatives Tim Murphy (R-PA), Gene Green (D-TX), Peter King (R-NY) and Dan Lungren (R-CA). And all of the cosponsors of similar legislation in the Senate – Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (R-AR), and before his retirement, George Voinovich (R-OH) – received KochPAC contributions during their most recent elections.

As Congress debates how to protect Americans from dangerous chemical facilities, Koch is once again opposing legislation that would make America safer, despite the enormous risk its facilities pose to communities, workers, and our environment.

There are clear signs that a new Arctic oil rush has begun. Earlier this month Shell submitted plans to the US government for for new drilling in the icy waters off Alaska’s north coast, and now a Scottish company has won permission to take a similar gamble near Greenland. Tomorrow Hilary Clinton will fly to the picturesque town of Nuuk in Greenland to discuss how spill response equipment might work in one of the world’s most extreme and beautiful environments. I can save her the trip – it won’t.

Here are some facts. Over the next few years a handful of powerful oil companies will tow rigs beyond the Arctic Circle to drill for a few short months before the winter sea ice closes in. They’ll rely on untested equipment and wildly ambitious response plans in the event of a blowout or other major accident. When October comes, the sea ice will close in and leave the area completely isolated until the following summer.

Think about that for a moment. This means that if a blowout happened in the fall, oil could gush out underneath the ice from Halloween through Thanksgiving, all the way to Memorial Day or, depending on the oil spill and the ice, the fourth of July or longer. Wildlife like bowhead whales, polar bears, seals and walrus would have to fend for themselves as the world looks on helplessly and the oil companies make their excuses. We tried. We took precautions. It’s a big ocean. The Arctic will recover. Sound familiar?

Global warming is happening faster in the Arctic than on anywhere else on earth, and multinational oil companies are desperate to exploit the newly opened seas for huge profits. Safety is not their first priority, whatever the glossy brochures and reassuring words might say. The Deepwater Horizon disaster took 6,500 well equipped vessels over three months to cap. In the Arctic Ocean there aren’t even that many kayaks.

In the Arctic Ocean, the world’s last real frontier, Big Oil is taking bigger risks than ever before and dressing up their recklessness as necessity. They’re wrong. We can prevent extracting oil from the Arctic – and the Gulf of Mexico, and the Tar Sands in Canada -by taking it out of Detroit instead. We can ‘produce’ millions of barrels a year simply by not using it in the first place. Cleaner cars with better engines mean lower bills, less pollution and a healthier industry.

Our politicians have become hypnotized by the mantra of the fossil fuel lobby and are repeating it like drones – more, more, more. At some point this thirst, this reckless and desperate urge has to stop. One day, somewhere, we must draw a line in the sand and say: enough. This year just might be the moment, and Alaska’s Arctic Ocean might be the place.

Last month, a group of Greenpeace volunteers in Denver trekked to over 30 Colorado supermarkets to investigate the sustainability of the seafood being sold inside. Armed with an “endangered fish check-list,” what they found–a thousand miles away from the nearest ocean–was shocking. In the freezers, wet cases, and can aisles they discovered nearly every species on their list, including Chilean sea bass, Atlantic cod, swordfish, orange roughy, hoki, red snapper, shark, and other environmentally unsound seafood options.

Today, these volunteers, along with supermarket chains, industry, scientists, and consumers, are working to change the state of our planet through our seafood choices. Greenpeace’s Carting Away the Oceans project has been working with all these players to rank America’s major supermarket chains on their seafood sustainability practices.

Since the first report, supermarkets have made big strides to change their policies. Over the last few years, major seafood retailers such as Costco, Price Chopper, and Trader Joe’s have eliminated many unsustainable species from their inventories. A small group of industry leaders has emerged as well, and today, we’re happy to announce that Safeway has taken over the top spot on our list. With this recent development, Safeway is joining the ranks of Wegmans, Whole Foods, and Target in proving that sustainable seafood operations are both possible and necessary in all sectors of the seafood retail industry – conventional, specialty, and big-box.

Seafood sustainability plays an important role in Greenpeace’s overarching work on ocean conservation. Our oceans are in crisis, and we need everyone on board to make the massive change needed to bring them back from the brink. Three quarters of global fish stocks are suffering from overfishing, and 90% of top marine predators are already gone. Destructive fishing practices such as pirate fishing destroy critical ocean habitats and harm global fish stocks. As the ocean becomes more vulnerable, it will succumb more quickly to the harmful effects of global warming.

Despite the major strides made to protect our oceans, no large grocer has yet achieved a “green” ranking in Greenpeace’s Seafood Sustainability ranking. We’re thankful for all of this progress, but the overwhelming majority of retailers still have a long way to go. All seafood retailers need to acknowledge their responsibility towards the oceans–both for how they have damaged them and what they must do to heal them. Until that happens, we will continue to call on them to enact strong, effective, sustainable seafood policies that will reduce pressure on our flagging fish stocks and help heal our ailing oceans.

Congressman Peter King (R-NY), the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, faced protests from hundreds of New Yorkers and interfaith leaders this weekend over his plans to single out Muslim communities in upcoming Congressional hearings. While Rep. King seeks to look tough on terrorism by scapegoating people for their religious beliefs, last week he showed his willingness to leave New Yorkers and millions of other Americans vulnerable to a catastrophic terrorist attack on dangerous chemical plants.

Instead of ensuring that the highest risk chemical plants convert to safer technologies, King joined Representatives Dan Lungren (R-CA) and Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) in supporting weak chemical plant security standards. Championed by chemical industry lobbyists, these rules leave 110 million Americans threatened by these pre-positioned weapons of mass destruction. In a press release, Congressman King explained why he supports the weak rules, but not the disaster prevention legislation that the chemical industry opposes: “Congress must ensure that DHS’s current authority is extended in a manner that protects our homeland without additional burdensome and costly requirements or job-crushing mandates.”

In case you need help translating those chemical industry talking points, “burdensome and costly requirements or job-crushing mandates” is code for the common sense requirement that if a chemical plant can use a safer chemical or process that would remove the threat of a poison gas disaster to hundreds of thousands of people, then it should do so. And in fact, an independent analysis showed that the disaster prevention legislation the House of Representatives passed in 2009 (which Rep. King voted against) would have created 8,000 jobs each year for the next decade, despite his unsubstantiated “job-crushing” claim.
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Amazon basin showing deep ebb due to drought. (photo: Rodrigo Baléia for Greenpeace)

Tropical rainforests are called the lungs of the earth, because they suck in pollution and breath out clean, healthy air. There is a darker side to this story, though – without protection, these same forests could actually speed up global warming.

A new paper from a team of British and Brazilian researchers has some worrying news about the Amazon rainforest, the biggest single lung on the planet. It describes how last year’s drought left some areas as dry as a tinderbox.

The thing is, this happened in 2005 too. Back then the drought was described as a once in a hundred year event, but then it happened again.

The new study shows how these dry spells are really bad news for the trees, and many are dying. They then stop absorbing carbon dioxide and start pumping out gases as they burn or rot away. And so we get into a kind of vicious circle.

Climate science tells us that we’ll be seeing more droughts like this, more often. And if the rainforest starts breathing out more than it’s absorbing, then the forests begin to contribute to the problem they help solve today.

So far, so grim, but there are reasons for hope. Deforestation in the Amazon is falling, due in part to new agreements from the big players in the leather world (like Nike and Timberland) not to buy from ranchers who are cutting down the forest to graze cows. Larger chunks of rainforest are much better at withstanding drought, and so this drop in deforestation matters.

Every nation on earth also has a stake in this. By cutting carbon pollution down instead of trees, we can help to slowly stabilize the world’s climate and preserve the rainforests that are left.

Right now the world’s ancient rainforests are on our side in the fight against climate change. They can mop up a huge amount of our pollution, but there is a limit. It’s time for us to realise that this deal cuts two ways.

The Arctic has won a reprieve from offshore oil drilling this year. Oil giant, Shell, just announced they won’t pursue offshore oil drilling in the fragile Arctic environment in 2011.

This one-year delay was a hard-fought victory for environmentalists.

On the heels of the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill, thousands of Greenpeace members wrote the federal government asking them to halt offshore oil drilling.

Greenpeace activists took action on one of the vessels Shell was planning to use in the Arctic. Others stood up at government hearings, calling on President Obama’s team to stop offshore drilling. And, last summer, our ship, the Arctic Sunrise, documented and exposed the truth around the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, bringing important information to the government and the public.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to stand up with us to fight for the people and wildlife of the Arctic.

As you know, we have been persistent in urging President Obama and Secretary Salazar to deny Shell permission to drill in the Arctic. Shell acknowledged that the continued delays in the federal permitting process were the primary reason for canceling drilling in 2010.

But, before we celebrate too much, we have to make sure that Shell’s plans for offshore drilling in the Arctic are canceled, not just for one year, but permanently. And we won’t result until the government bans ALL new offshore drilling. The stakes – and the risks – are just too high.

[Philip D. Radford is the Executive Director of Greenpeace US.]

Today, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against Dow Chemical, Sasol North America (which owns CONDEA Vista), and PR firms Dezenhall Resources and Ketchum, for hiring private investigators to steal documents from Greenpeace, tap our phones and hack into our computers.

[Go here for a PDF copy of the complaint]

The purpose of this lawsuit is twofold.

First, we aim to put a dent in the arrogance of these corporate renegades who have for too long believed that ethics do not apply to their pursuit of ever-higher profits.

Second, we believe it is every citizen’s right to stand up for the health of their children and community without fearing retribution, an invasion of privacy, conspiracy against them or theft of their belongings. We believe Dow and Sasol conspired to do this to Greenpeace; we aim to stop this before it happens to you.

Boxes of files from the security firm hired by Dezenhall Resources and Ketchum on behalf of Dow, Sasol North America, and other companies, reveal daily logs, emails, reports, phone records and other evidence that shows what these corporations were working to disrupt: the private lives of community members in Louisiana fighting to keep their communities free of toxic poisons and community meetings and efforts to educate the public about the public health threats posed by these companies. [see a sample of these files here]

The public relations firms involved – including Nichols Dezenhall (now known as Dezenhall Resources) and Ketchum – acted as intermediaries between the chemical companies and the private investigator spies.

While Greenpeace can only sue on our own behalf, we do so to send a message to any big corporation that plans to spy on, intimidate and interfere with communities fighting for a better world for their children. People among the communities in this case are residents of Mossville and Lake Charles, Louisiana, who suffer high rates of cancer and other health effects linked to the production processes of the companies we’re suing.

This case concerns events that occurred between 1998 and 2001. Many of the affected people in Lake Charles and Mossville have since died, many by cancers they believe were caused by the toxic pollutants these companies pumped into their environment.

Greenpeace works to protect the environment we all depend on, rooted in the assumption that politicians and corporations care about two things – money and people (either voters or customers).

We know we won’t match polluters dollar for dollar, but have matched their millions over the years with three million people behind us. When Goliath corporations go beyond buying elections to intimidating, infiltrating and invading the privacy of small citizen groups, they are attacking more than that group. When corporations hire private spies to undermine the rights of civic leaders, they are undermining democracy.

We’ll see them in court.

Go to Greenpeace’s Spygate website to see a sampling of the evidence used to support this lawsuit.