California cities win global climate victory
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Should the U.S. government finance billions of dollars in oil and gas projects overseas without considering the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate?
Santa Monica didn’t think so. Neither did Oakland, Arcata, Boulder, Colo.--and their allies, the environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. After all, they reasoned, carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by U.S.-financed oil refineries and gas pipelines in India or Russia affect Earth’s climate. And global climate influences, for example, Santa Monica’s water supply, the sea level near Oakland’s airport and the snow on Rocky Mountain ski slopes.
A landmark 2002 lawsuit filed in federal court by the two environmental groups, joined by the four cities, against the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) was settled on Friday. The two agencies agreed to provide a combined $500 million for renewable energy projects overseas and include greenhouse gas emissions in their environmental reviews before financing fossil fuel projects.
Court decisions prompted by the lawsuit have established precedents in climate-related law. The case expanded the scope of the National Environmental Protection Act, which requires impact statements for government projects, beyond local pollution issues to global warming. It was cited in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that the Environmental Protection Agency had the power to regulate greenhouse gases.
Environmentalists are now looking to the Obama administration to extend climate considerations to all government actions. ‘When we launched this lawsuit in 2002, we were deep in the Bush global warming dark ages,’ said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace. ‘Now [we] hope that sweeping reform of global warming policy will reach every corner of the government.’
The U.S. Justice Department, which represented the two agencies, declined to comment. The Bush administration had contended that “the alleged impacts of global climate change are too remote and speculative” to be included in the agencies’ project reviews.
From 1995 to 2006, the Export-Import Bank and OPIC provided more than $21 billion in loans and loan guarantees for oil refineries, pipeline projects, liquefied natural gas plants and electric power plants around the world, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation last year. An analysis of a sample of 48 projects in Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, Algeria, China, Brazil, Turkey and India found that they would produce 12 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, or at least 600 million metric tons a year.
--Margot Roosevelt
PHOTO: An oil refinery in Jamnagar, India, one of hundreds of fossil-fuel projects built with the help of U.S.-controlled funding agencies. The facility was expected to emit 9 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Credit: Associated Press