What Can Be Done Now?
Climate action under existing U.S. law
We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing
that the failure to do so would betray our children and
future generations.
— President Obama, Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 2013
E
fforts are mounting to create political space
and bolster the president’s renewed
determination to avert increasingly devastating
disruption of our planet’s climate system.
To take the most notable example since the
inauguration, more than 35,000 protesters converged on
the nation’s capitol Feb. 17 for a March on Washington for
Climate Action. Their call for action without further delay
included the specific demand that the U.S. State Department
disapprove an exceptionally damaging scheme for a
Canada-to-U.S. tar sands pipeline (the so-called Keystone
XL project). Lifecycle carbon emissions from use of tar
sands substantially exceed those from other oil sources,
and NASA’s James Hansen has warned that the Canadian
tar sands “contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide
emitted by global oil use in our entire history.”
Three days later, the protesters’ overall demand for
meaningful climate action appeared to be embraced by
John Kerry. In his first major speech as the new U.S.
BY DAN GALPERN
secretary of state, Kerry declared that “We as a nation must
have the foresight and courage to make the investments
necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for
our children and grandchildren: an environment not
ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating
droughts and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing
climate.” That statement should herald the right decision
soon over the tar sands matter.
But beyond blocking an exceptionally egregious new
carbon-intensive project, what can the federal government
do now — particularly when the majority in the U.S. House
remains beholden to the short-term interests of the fossil
fuel industry and deaf or disdainful of the clarion warning
of science that further delay imperils broad reaches of our
planet, including much of the American West?
In fact, much can be done. Granted, this Congress is
unlikely to pass a new, economy-wide limitation on carbon
pollution. But existing law — particularly the set of federal
and state authorities and requirements embodied in the
Clean Air Act — provides exceptionally strong tools to
sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions from most of our
major sources.
Precisely how this can be done is the subject of a report
out this month by the World Resources Institute (WRI),
entitled, appropriately enough, “Can The U.S. Get There
From Here? Using Existing Federal Laws and State Action
to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”
In brief, WRI researchers detail why, under a business-
as-usual scenario — one without additional action — the
U.S. contribution to the global climate crisis will slowly
worsen. However, with strong utilization of existing
environmental law, they show that our nation could realize
significant short- and medium-term emissions reductions
from existing coal and gas power plants and natural gas
systems, and phase out certain hydrofluorocarbons that
otherwise will efficiently trap atmospheric heat.
Nicholas Blanco, principal author of the WRI study,
will be in Eugene to discuss his findings in a panel
discussion at the Public Interest Environmental Law
Conference, entitled “Without Further Delay: Reducing
Climate Pollution under Existing U.S. Law,” at 10:30 am
Sunday, March 3, at the UO School of Law, Room 142.
In this late hour — at the precipice of runaway,
uncontrollable planetary heating — dare we do less than is
allowed by law?
Dan Galpern is an environmental attorney with the Law Offi ces of Charles M.
Tebbutt in Eugene.
Makama says that the corporations are predatory and
deliberately look for the weakest governments. They
violate laws in Africa that they would never violate in their
home countries, she says, and it’s difficult, if not impossible
to pursue them.
She points to a coal mine in Swaziland that was run by
the Koch Brothers that had frequent explosions; people
died, she says, and now men sit at home, injured and unable
to work, but the company pulled out, and said it was too
“cash-strapped” to make contributions. “And we all know
the Koch Brothers are not struggling,” Makama says.
TANZANIA
While Elifuraha Laltaika may live in another region of
Africa, Makama, sitting across from him at a table in
Eugene, points out that his fight for environmental and
social justice in Tanzania is “very similar; what is different
is only the location.”
She says across Africa, indigenous people are forced off
the land not only for preserves, often under the guise of
ecotourism, but also for fossil fuel extraction and for fuels
whose purpose is to fight climate change — sugarcane and
a crop called jatropha are planted to generate biofuels for
Europe and ironically have to be shipped long distances to
get there.
Laltaika says that the concept of indigenous rights is not
one that has been widely used in Africa, but now it has
become an important concept. Tanzania and many other
African countries have not recognized the legal existence
of indigenous peoples; this means people like the Maasai
have lacked constitutional, legislative or administrative
means to ensure that as indigenous peoples they have
rights equal to that of other communities, he says.
Both Laltaika and Makama play down the backlash they
themselves have faced for their work advocating for local
populations and for the environment. By comparison to
Maasai advocates before him, the backlash has been greatly
reduced, Laltaika says. “I remember my relatives getting
harassed, getting threats,” he says. It’s the communities
themselves, and those people who try to stand up for
themselves, that experience backlash from the corporations.
They isolate them, target them personally, Makama says.
One company installed a water tap into a community
without much access to clean water, but then prevented
those who spoke up against the corporation from accessing
the water. Another company targeted children by sponsoring
ELIFURAHA LALTAIKA
a soccer team but then excluding the kids whose parents
were seen as talking to “outsiders” — advocates who
might be speaking out against the corporation. “The
government sees foreign investors as a panacea for
economic growth,” Laltaika says.
Hunting preserves are a problem in Tanzania, too, he
says, with Maasai herders unable to roam to the lands they
have historically retreated to in times of drought.
Recreational safaris are not the problem, he says, but
closed-off hunting preserves are. “The poor are poachers,
but the others are ‘sport hunters,’” he says.
Big game hunters, high-ranking government officials,
celebrities, Laltaika says, come to Tanzania to hunt lions,
antelope, cheetahs and leopards. The royal family of the
United Arab Emirates has installed an airstrip in a sanctu-
ary “in total disregard of the livelihood of the Maasai cattle
herders,” Laltaika says. These evictions of the Maasai off
their lands result in cattle dying and conflicts over the land,
he says. His nonprofit organization, ALAPA, gives legal
assistance and helps protect the human rights of traditional
cattle herders and hunter-gatherers. The group works in the
courts, but also works to change the laws themselves to
allow local populations a say in their own land and envi-
ronment issues.
“Historically, a lot of harm has been by the government
taking land from those vulnerable groups,” Laltaika says.
Elifuraha Laltaika and Thuli Makama speak at PIELC at 4 pm Feb. 28 on
“Land, Climate Justice and Wildlife Conservation in Africa,” and at the 10:30
am March 3 fi lm debut of Unfair Game: The Politics of Poaching. Makama gives
a keynote speech at 12:30 pm March 1. See pielc.org for more panels and times.
eugeneweekly.com • February 28, 2013
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