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Environmental Roundup: February 27, 2009
George Will's Dishonesty
 After more than 5,000 Friends of the Earth activists responded this week to George Will's Feb. 15 Washington Post column -- which included several falsehoods intended to sow confusion over climate science -- Will is at it again. This morning, he attempted to defend himself in another column riddled with even more errors. Worse, instead of apologizing for printing demonstrably false statements, the Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, defended Will and accused us of waging "a campaign online to pressure newspapers into suppressing minority views." Please join us in telling the Post enough is enough.
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Ending Big Oil Giveaways
 Friends of the Earth has worked for years to fight huge giveaways to Big Oil. Last July, we released an analysis showing that the oil and gas industries stood to reap nearly $33 billion in tax breaks and subsidies. And it looks like President Obama heard us! The Obama administration's budget proposal released yesterday slashes taxpayer giveaways to the oil and gas industries by tens of billions of dollars, including a tax on oil and gas companies that are failing to pay oil royalties on Gulf of Mexico leases. The Wall Street Journal's "Environmental Capital" blog reported yesterday that the president's budget would increase taxes and fees on the oil and gas industries by more than $30 billion.
International Climate Victory
Our work against the undemocratic World Bank Fund paid off when the U.S. House of Representatives wisely nixed any money for the fund, which could have financed dirty coal projects, in its spending bill that passed on Wednesday. We also helped secure support for a United Nations fund that aids impoverished countries as they respond to global warming. If the bill is signed into law, it will provide the first-ever U.S. contribution to this fund. This will increase the ability of U.S. officials to credibly engage in international climate negotiations.
Ship Shape: New York Times on Cruise Ships
The New York Times, in its annual cruise ship issue, did a great job covering cruise ship pollution -- with a big assist from Friends of the Earth! Click here to read about the significant environmental impacts from cruise ships and here to see what Friends of the Earth is doing about massive unregulated air and water pollution from cruise ships.
Warnings about Warming Increase
If George Will had pulled his head out of the sand he could have learned a thing or two this week from scientists sounding the alarm that our climate is changing more quickly than anticipated. The Associated Press reported that Antarctic glaciers are "melting faster and across a much wider area than previously thought, a development that threatens to raise sea levels worldwide and force millions of people to flee low-lying areas," members of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists testified before Congress that humans are adding far more heat-trapping gasses to the atmosphere than had been projected, and another group of scientists reported that the planet will not have to warm as much as previously thought before serious negative impacts are felt.
The good news? It's not too late to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis if we act quickly and dramatically reduce emissions.
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News
Shifting Gears: Obama Budget Favors Renewables, Hurts Oil
The Wall Street Journal
A Global Green Deal
The Nation
Study Urges U.S.-China Climate Change Summit
Reuters
Current Actions
Ask the Washington Post to Correct George Will's Willful Deceit
Stop Chevron's Poison Fire
Tell EPA to Regulate Nano-Silver
Film Competition
The D.C. Environmental Film Festival opens in early March. The winning film from our eco-comedy video competition will be screened on March 17. It's not too late to submit an entry! Read more about it here.
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