Dear President Obama,

We call on you to order the Department of the Interior to undertake immediately a programmatic environmental impact study of the climate impacts of the federal onshore oil and gas program, and to place on hold all, new federal leasing until that study is complete.

The Department of the Interior has sold leases to dirty energy companies to drill and frack one to two million onshore acres of our public lands in each year of your presidency.

These leases include the right to drill lands in our National Forests and National Wildlife Refuges and lands many consider sacred.

For some auctions, commercial interest was so low the Department of the Interior could not find a single bidder. In other cases, it sold the rights to our lands for as little as $1.50 per acre annual rental fee.

Just as your Administration appears poised to take long overdue steps to review the federal coal leasing program, review of oil and gas leasing is also essential.

In all, private industry now holds more than 34 million acres of oil and gas leases on our public land. Conservation of natural resources and public recreation have been pushed aside in these public places in favor of industrial development and private profit.

More than three million of these acres are being held by dirty energy companies in a suspended lease state that does not require any payment for the privilege of open-ended, private speculation on public land into perpetuity. Companies are only developing about one-third of the federal leases they hold.

In other words, the US oil and gas industry already has more rights to exploit our public lands than they are willing or able to use for decades to come.

Bureau of Land Management step up on climate change

The federal onshore oil and gas program has never been comprehensively studied for its impacts to our climate, despite the fact that this federal program is responsible annually for emissions of more than 200,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 4% of all U.S. emissions from all energy sources.

Five years ago, the Council on Environmental Quality published draft guidance on evaluating the climate change impacts of federal programs.

The guidance makes clear that climate impacts from the federal oil and gas program must be studied on a programmatic level through an environmental impact statement. The CEQ guidance has never been finalized and the climate impacts of the federal oil and gas program have never been studied.

In defiance of governing statutory mandates and the urgent interest in addressing climate change, state offices of the BLM continually and consistently refuse to quantify climate emissions from oil and gas development activities, ignore the climate costs from these activities to society, and, as recently as this year, have even gone so far as to deny the basic scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change.

Hear our call: ‘Keep it in the Ground!’

Mr. President, you have championed the pressing need for climate action on the world stage and have recognized the imperative to keep some fossil fuels in the ground to leave a hospitable planet for future generations.

You have heard a growing global movement deliver ever-louder calls to ‘Keep It in the Ground.’ For the federal oil and gas program, there is a crucial step you can take today that will align an outdated energy policy with your climate policy leadership.

We, the undersigned, call on you to order the Department of the Interior immediately to develop a programmatic environmental impact statement examining the climate change impacts related to the federal onshore oil and gas program. While this study is developed, and given that these significant federal actions cannot be legally undertaken without adequate environmental study, we call on you to put all future onshore oil and gas lease sales on hold.

A programmatic study of climate impacts will provide the American public and agency decision makers with information necessary to evaluate the true costs to society of drilling and fracking millions of acres of our precious public lands.

Further, such a study would evaluate alternatives that can help define how we make the transition to a future free of fossil fuels that is essential to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in keeping with our international commitment on climate in Paris.

To meet Paris targets, we must leave fossil fuels unexploited

Given the millions of acres already held by dirty energy companies, there is no justification for further leasing. The federal oil and gas program can withstand a leasing timeout while climate impacts are studied.

With that study in hand, it will become possible for you and your successors in leadership to determine what form that program should take in a climate-constrained world.

Mr. President, it is clear now that the US cannot have it both ways. We cannot pursue a 1.5°C goal or assure a 2°C limit to global warming with unbridled extraction of fossil fuels. We have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground and this is an easy, necessary first step to live up to American climate leadership.

Do not sell one more acre of public lands to dirty energy companies until the climate impacts of doing so are clearly examined.

We thank you for considering our request and stand ready to support such action in any way that we can.

Sincerely,

Abbie Dillen, Vice President of Litigation for Climate and Energy, Earthjustice.

Marissa Knodel, Climate Change Campaigner, Friends of the Earth.

Diana Best, Senior Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace USA.

Ruth Breech, Senior Campaigner Climate and Energy, Rainforest Action Network.

Pete Nichols, National Director, Waterkeeper Alliance

Tim Ream, Climate and Energy Campaign Director, WildEarth Guardians.

This Open Letter was sent to President Obama yesterday, 14th January 2016, and copied to the following:

• Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20240
• Neil Kornze, Director Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street, N.W., Rm. 5665 Washington, DC 20240.
• Bryan Deese, Senior Advisor to the President, The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NM Washington, DC 20500.
• George T. Frampton, Jr., Chair Council on Environmental Quality Executive Office of the President, 722 Jackson Place, N.W. Washington, DC 20503.
• Horst G. Greczmiel, Associate Director for NEPA Oversight Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, 722 Jackson Place, N.W. Washington, DC 20503.

Climate Rising is the perfect opportunity to come together after the Paris climate talks and get energised to build a bigger and more diverse climate movement in 2016.

Join us for a day of engaging workshops, inspirational speakers, updates from the talks and the next steps in the fight to protect people and our planet.

Climate Rising is chance to celebrate the victories of 2015, explore solutions and get ready to rise up for the climate together in 2016.

Find out how to take action individually, together in our communities and workplaces; and link up with others across the globe who are on the frontline facing the threat of climate change.

Everyone is welcome. Whether you’re new to the climate movement or a seasoned campaigner you’ll leave feeling inspired, motivated and connected with the climate community.

Date: Saturday 30th January
Registration: 09:15 – 10:00 

Start: 10:00

Ends: 18:00
Tickets: £4.13 – £7.27

Venue: Friends House, 173-177 Euston Road, London, NW1 2AX

More information and tickets

Almost a quarter of a million forest fires were detected in Brazil last year – and the main cause of a huge increase is being attributed to climate change that brought about a year-long drought in much of the country.

Satellite data revealed a 27.5% increase in forest fires in 2015 compared with the previous year.

The total number was 235,629, almost as high as the record of 249,291 in 2010.

Dr Alberto Setzer, co-ordinator of the Nucleus for Forest Fires at INPE – Brazil’s national space research institute, which monitors deforestation – says:

“This (2015) was a year with less rain, and hotter than the historic average, especially in central Brazil, in the south of the Amazon region and in parts of the Northeast. Some regions registered temperatures 4°C above the average.”

These conditions favour the spread of fires, but Dr Setzer emphasises that it was not spontaneous combustion that caused the fires. “It was human activity, whether carelessness or deliberate”, he says.

Mind the gap – Brazil’s COP21 promises broken?

The increase in forest fires contributed to the general 16% increase in deforestation registered in 2015. And these figures present a stark contrast to Brazil’s commitment at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris last month to reduce carbon emissions by 43% by 2030.

To achieve this, the government promised it would ensure zero illegal deforestation. Yet a lot of deforestation is technically legal, thanks to changes to the country’s Forest Code. Also in jarring contrast to the government’s Paris commitment are two bills now under debate in Congress, which, if made law, will greatly increase ‘legal’ deforestation.

One will overturn the ban on infrastructure projects inside indigenous territories, with a payoff to the communities of 2% of the value of the project. The other will ‘streamline’ the environmental licensing system for major infrastructure projects, such as roads, mines and dams.

The existing system demands detailed environmental, anthropological and archaeological studies and public hearings before a project is given the go-ahead. Not only will this system be scrapped, it will be replaced with self-licensing by the very companies that plan to build the projects.

Studies show that most deforestation takes place around these big projects, because they open up access to previously inaccessible areas. They also show that indigenous reserves in the Amazon region tend to be far better preserved than surrounding areas.

If Congress approves both these bills, and the president sanctions them, they will actively stimulate deforestation.

Last year’s fires occurred all over Brazil, but most of them were in the greater Amazon region, where three of the largest states, Pará, Mato Grosso and Maranhão, accounted for over 100,000 fires.

In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, a dense pall of smoke from forest fires covered the city for most of the month of October, causing a big rise in respiratory problems among the population. Record temperatures of almost 40C were also registered in October, the highest since records began 90 years ago.

Contributing factors, Setzer believes, are the rise in meat prices, which has encouraged cattle farmers to open up new pastures in forested areas, and the reduction in monitoring – the result of cuts to government budgets caused by Brazil’s recession.

Hunger for farmland driving forest fires

Of the fires, 8,000 occurred in the central region, where the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia share borders. This area, which encroaches on the cerrado, a vast tropical savanna ecoregion that is one of Brazil’s most threatened biomes, has become a fast-developing new agricultural powerhouse, producing soy, maize and cotton.

“We only get indignant when the fires are in the Amazon, but they are advancing on the cerrado, causing extensive environmental damage”, Setzer says.

In one of the few remaining pre-Amazon forest areas in Maranhão, the Arariboia reserve, the fire raged for two months, destroying much of the habitat of groups of uncontacted Awá indigenous people.

The monster fire, believed to have been deliberately ignited by illegal loggers, destroyed an immense area the size of 260,000 football pitches. The lack of firefighters contributed to the unchecked spread of the blaze. A total of 999 fires for the first four days of January 2016 – an increase of 85% over the same period in 2015 – was recorded by INPE.

Meanwhile, weather forecasters say 2016 will be as dry as last year, under the continuing influence of El Niño. If the forecasters are correct, and the proposed government bills are passed, then 2016 will be a year of “burn, Brazil, burn!”

Jan Rocha is a freelance journalist living in Brazil and is a former correspondent there for the BBC World Service and The Guardian. She writes for Climate News Network and other publications.

It’s early December, and I’m siting in a mega-church packed with more than 500 people.

They’re here to listen to an update on the efforts to contain an enormous natural gas blowout that occurred more than a month before.

Gas from the leak is being blown by prevailing winds right into their community of Porter Ranch, in Los Angeles County, CA.

People are mad.

Hundreds of families have left their homes to get away from the rotten-egg smell of the gas, and moved into temporary homes elsewhere.

Children are attending other schools further from the leak, which is spewing some 110,000 pounds of methane per hour from a broken well less than a mile from the neighborhood.

Trust between the gas company, regulators, and community members seems absent. People question what else is in the gas that might have long-term health impacts. They want to know why many are suddenly reporting headaches and bloody noses.

Invisible to the naked eye – but dark cloud in infra-red

I’m sitting in this church because my colleague Hilary Lewis and I were invited to Porter Ranch with our infrared gas-finding camera to see what this high profile disaster actually looks like. Before we arrived, the public had no access to images or video of the gas itself, as it’s invisible to the naked eye.

We meet a local organizer in a supermarket parking lot, exit the vehicle, and even my horrible sense of smell instantly reacts to the scent of the gas more than two miles from where we stand. It’s coming from a well at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, an 8,000-foot deep sandstone formation – a depleted oil field – that SoCalGas uses to hold vast quantities of gas.

In fact, it’s one of the largest gas storage fields in the nation, comprising some 115 extraction and injection wells, some of which operate at pressures above 2,000 pounds per square inch – a hefty load for well casings over 60 years old.

We hike the hills and document the gas blowing sideways and downhill into town. Later that night, we see a plume of gas at least a mile long spanning Aliso Canyon.

Of all the sites I’ve shot as a certified infrared thermographer nationwide, this is, hands down, the largest volume of spewing methane gas I’ve ever seen – and I’ve visited nearly a hundred sites around the country, including the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. Each day, the leak is releasing the same amount of greenhouse gases as the average daily emissions of more than 7 million cars.

This video footage – aired nationally on NBC’s The Rachel Maddow’s Show and many other media outlets – has helped to draw widespread attention to the leak, and has assisted local residents in their efforts to get justice and to hold industry, regulators, and policymakers accountable.

Just ten days later, I return to Aliso Canyon to shoot additional infrared footage for the Environmental Defense Fund from a small chartered aircraft. We fly as close as is safe, seeing a plume nearly 1,000 feet high under calmer wind conditions. The pilot can’t help but note the pungent smell not long after gaining altitude.

We get a view of the well pad itself – a mangled looking mess coated in mud. This mud was used to try to ‘drown’ the well during the first several attempts to plug the leak. Nothing worked. There are huge craters around the well, and no one wants to get too close with machines for fear of a spark turning the entire scene into an enormous fireball.

The footage I shot for EDF makes an even bigger mark on the national consciousness. Soon thereafter, California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency regarding the leak, and the Los Angeles Times editorializes against fossil fuels, referencing the Aliso Canyon leak.

Nothing safe or clean about fossil fuels – including gas

Right now, as the leak enters its tenth week, the underground pressure has been reduced by half of its original rate, due to the gas escaping from the leak and other actions taken by SoCalGas – the company operating the facility – to withdraw gas in a controlled manner.

It will be months before the leak is repaired. SoCalGas is currently drilling two relief wells to divert the gas below the leak source, much like what was done during the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But by the time the wells are drilled, most of the gas will be gone anyway.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 87 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. So far, an estimated 79,000 metric tons of methane have escaped from this one facility – so much that California’s goals to reduce climate pollution have been seriously compromised. It’s estimated that, at its height, the leak increased the state’s daily methane emissions by 25%.

What has this disaster taught us? For one thing, it’s yet another affirmation that fossil fuels are not safe or clean, and that things often go horribly wrong when it’s least expected. But more specifically, it highlights the woeful state of regulatory oversight on underground gas storage facilities such as Aliso Canyon.

For example, the well casing at the site of the blowout failed hundreds of feet below the surface, likely due to the predictable corrosion of 60 year old well casings. To add insult to injury, the safety shut-off device for this well was removed long ago and never replaced.

So there you have it – a well operating at the upper limit of its pressure tolerance, with a safety valve deliberately removed long before, and a well casing that failed with no safeguards in place to prepare for when that time might come. Aliso Canyon has 114 other wells that could fail at any time unless adequate safeguards are in place.

Shut down unsafe gas facilities – and go full tilt for renewables!

Thankfully, Governor Brown’s declaration of a state of emergency will force a number of much-needed steps – both immediate and medium-term – that will address the situation.

His declaration was much needed because, for example, the California Air Resources Board is considering new regulations that would address leak detection and repair for natural gas infrastructure, but these wouldn’t have applied to underground facilities like Aliso Canyon.

Yes, you read that correctly. Now, due to Brown’s declaration, California regulatory bodies, including the Air Resources Board, will be required to assess the long-term viability of natural gas storage facilities in California.

It’s long past time to regulate these facilities properly, or take them offline entirely. Hundreds of underground natural gas storage facilities exist throughout the nation, and many of them could also experience catastrophic failures, in addition to other problems already occurring, such as groundwater contamination.

To prevent more disasters like Aliso Canyon in California and around the country (there are 326 similar facilities nationwide) we need an emergency statewide effort to shut down facilities that lack basic safety equipment, including Aliso Canyon.

Gas storage wells that lack shut off valves should be taken offline before other Porter Ranches happen. We also need increased oversight and management of these facilities, not to mention support for residents affected by pollution, including health care and financial compensation.

Moving forward, we also need a rapid transition away from gas. The Solutions Project, an organization working to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, has mapped out a plan for California to achieve 100% fossil fuel-free energy by 2050. This transition would protect communities from underground storage risks, gas line leakage, and explosions like the one in San Bruno.

Because nearby communities – and the global climate – cannot afford any more disasters, Earthworks, a nonprofit that works to protect communities from the adverse impacts of energy development, is working hand-in-hand with community groups to push for significant regulatory changes and enforcement.

Pete Dronkers works at Earthworks.

Learn more about Earthworks’ work here.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

A new study has concluded that the Trans Atlantic Trade & Investment Agreement (TTIP) threatens to completely change the way small and medium sized farms operate, through the use of more genetic engineering and more hormone-treated meat.

Europe’s farmers are in the midst of a crisis, with milk prices at rock-bottom, continuing EU sanctions against Russia and smallholders going under.

But the knockout punch could still be yet to come, with the looming behemoth of TTIP, the planned free trade agreement between the EU and USA, on the horizon.

If, as intended by negotiators on both sides of the Atlantic, standards in the agri-food industry are harmonised between the two trading blocs, then entire sectors of European agriculture could be endangered.

“No one can produce products like cereal as cheaply as the USA”, said a study on TTIP carried out by UnternehmensGrün, an association formed around green economy interests, seen by EurActiv before its publication. The group will formally launch the report tomorrow.

The study referenced the use of genetic engineering on a local level, weaker thresholds and larger production areas. “European farmers are, economically speaking, outgunned … it would mean the almost automatic downfall of parts of the agricultural sector.”

A study carried out by the United States Department of Agriculture, which considered three different scenarios, concluded that American farmers are set to win out in the end.

Another study carried out in 2014 on behalf of the European Parliament came to a similar conclusion: agricultural value in the EU would fall by 0.5% as a result of TTIP and would increase by 0.4% across the Atlantic.

However, Peter Pascher was quick to point out that all the studies have been produced before TTIP has been negotiated or finalised, meaning the results have been based on a number of assumptions and urged its critics to wait.

Dario Sarmadi is a journalist with EurActiv.com. See more articles by this author on Euractiv.

This article was originally published by Euractiv.com. It is translated from the original German by Samuel Morgan.

A bitter row has broken out over the allegedly carcinogenic qualities of a widely-used weedkiller, ahead of an EU decision on whether to continue to allow its use.

At issue is a call by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) to disregard an opinion by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on the health effects of Glyphosate.

Glyphosate is sold and promoted by Monsanto for use with its GM crops. The herbicide makes the company $5bn (£3.5bn) a year, and is used so widely that its residues are commonly found in British bread.

But while an analysis by the IARC last year found it is probably carcinogenic to humans, EFSA decided last month that it probably was not. That paves the way for the herbicide to be relicensed by an EU working group later this year, potentially in the next few weeks.

Within days of EFSA’s announcement, 96 prominent scientists – including most of the IARC team – had fired off a letter to the EU health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, warning that the basis of EFSA’s research was “not credible because it is not supported by the evidence”.

“Accordingly, we urge you and the European commission to disregard the flawed EFSA finding”, the scientists said. Their arguments were echoed in a second open letter signed by individual health campaigners and 50 NGOs which demanded a “full and open scientific investigation“.

Commissioner condemns ‘Facebook age of science’

In a reply last month, which the Guardian has seen, Andriukaitis told the scientists that he found their diverging opinions on glyphosate “disconcerting”. But the European Parliament and EU ministers had agreed to give EFSA a pivotal role in assessing pesticide substances, he noted.

“These are legal obligations”, the commissioner said. “I am not able to accommodate your request to simply disregard the EFSA conclusion.”

A few days later, EFSA’s executive director Bernard Url hit back, complaining to the European Parliament’s environment committee that the scientists had not seen the evidence, and were leaving the domain of science by making their criticisms public.

“This is the first sign of the Facebook age of science”, he said. “You have a scientific assessment, you put it in Facebook and you count how many people like it. For us, this is no way forward. We produce a scientific opinion, we stand for it but we cannot take into account whether it will be liked or not.”

However, unease within Url’s group was growing and at the next EFSA executive meeting, board members talked candidly of a “crisis” over the issue. As well as finding the IARC’s analysis “far more credible”, the critique by the 96 scientists had appeared to snipe at EFSA’s vulnerability to influence from interest groups.

The IARC paper had relied “on open and transparent procedures by independent scientists who completed thorough conflict of interest statements and were not affiliated or financially supported in any way by the chemical manufacturing industry”, the scientists’ letter said. “It is fully referenced and depends entirely on reports published in the open, peer-reviewed biomedical literature.”

Five of EFSA’s 80 or so mammalian toxicology experts failed to file a declaration of interests, while some of those that were submitted were several years old. More than a third of the experts were also employed by national regulators and one had a 5% stake in a risk assessment consultancy.

Given the highly charged nature of the debate, EU officials privately say that the issue is most likely to be resolved in a classic Brussels-style fudge.

“The way out may be to put more limitations on certain products [containing glyphosate], or allowing member states to do that”, one EU source said. “There is a problem of the combination of glyphosate and some other substances. That is part of the reason for the difference between IARC and EFSA. But if you have additional restrictions for certain products, you give member states some leeway.”

EFSA study ‘more comprehensive’, claims chief

In a letter sent today, Url defended EFSA’s study as a “more comprehensive hazard assessment” than the IARC paper which, he said, had not tried to differentiate between the carcinogenic effects of glyphosate and other ingredients in pesticide packages, or their combined effects.

EFSA and IARC had agreed to meet early in 2016 “in an effort to clarify scientific divergences”, Url added.

However the statement will do nothing to calm the conflict. One of the scientists’ main objections is precisely that the EFSA investigation was ‘too comprehensive’, including non peer-reviewed, unpublished, industry-funded studies by scientists with grave conflicts of interest due to their industry links.

As for the scientists not having seen some of the evidence used by EFSA, one reason for that is that much of it was unpublished and IARC and other scientists do not have access to them, or can only see edited versions.

And as they stated in their letter, the IARC report “is part of a long tradition of deeply researched and highly credible reports on the carcinogenicity of hundreds of chemicals issued over the past four decades by IARC and used today by international agencies and regulatory bodies around the world as a basis for risk assessment, regulation and public health policy.”

Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity.

This article was originally published on the Guardian Environment and is republished with thanks via the Guardian Environment Network. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Amid the noise of COP21, the Philippines took historic action for human rights and the environment.

The island nation is launching the first ever formal human rights investigation into 50 of the world’s biggest coal, oil and gas corporations.

In September, a complaint was submitted to the Filipino government’s independent Commission on Human Rights (CHR). It was led by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Philippine Rural Construction Movement and backed by the signatures of 1,288 Filipinos.

The complaint said these corporations are intensifying climate change and its impacts with their high-carbon activities – and violating human rights law in the process.

The complaint asked the CHR to assess whether these companies are breaking human rights law through their impact on the climate. The CHR accepted the request, and the investigation was launched during COP21 on 10th December 2015 – Human Rights Day.

What’s different this time?

It will be the first time a formal human rights investigation has been undertaken against industry on the basis of climate impact. Environmental and financial law is being used already to regulate companies’ behaviour and the toll it takes on the climate. But the use of human rights violations as a legal basis for complaint is an entirely new approach – and it’s exciting.

Until now, legal cases that demand environmental accountability have generally been brought against state authorities. Taking on the ‘untouchable’ corporations is seen to be a taller order.

But for the Philippines and the fossil fuel giants, this may turn out to be a case of David and Goliath. The Philippines is at the mercy of some of the world’s most extreme weather, leaving it particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Up to ten cyclones hit annually, claiming thousands of lives, flattening the infrastructure and battering the economy. Most recently, super typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, killed over 6,000 people when it hit in 2013. Its financial costs were estimated at over $13bn.

On a day-to-day basis, housing, farming and fishing are left in jeopardy as weather patterns morph and the shoreline creeps inwards.

Finding a guilty party (actually, 50 of them)

Climate change is no longer a theory. It’s the single biggest threat to our future, a process of cause and effect unfolding before our eyes. But as with all ills, addressing the problem means finding a guilty party.

The complaint makes a direct link between carbon-intensive industry, climate change and extreme weather. It draws on Richard Heede’s 2013 study, which aggregates and ranks the historical emissions of fossil fuel and cement producers. Heede calls these companies carbon majors.

To give you an idea of scale, the biggest offenders, these 50 investor-owned carbon majors, were responsible for over a fifth of global industrial emissions in 2010.

Industrial emissions are accelerating climate change and intensifying extreme weather events. The increasing frequency and strength of tropical storms, and how they deprive Filipinos of the ‘exercise‘ of their human rights, can therefore be blamed, at least partially, on polluting corporations.

We know emissions cause climate change. Until recently, assigning specific blame – establishing whose fault it is – wasn’t possible. But science is racing towards sure ways to clarify ‘whodunnit’ – and to what extent they did it. And the law needs to keep pace.

“Companies fear nothing more than a lawsuit”, says Gregory Regaignon of the UK’s Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. As Volkswagen painfully found out, overlooking environmental issues can dent the reputation of your company, your industry, even your country.

Pointing the finger with the weight of law and science behind you is powerful. Regardless of the outcome, complaints filed against your name create consumer cynicism – particularly, as it turns out, when the complaint is about threats posed to health, finances and the planet. It’s a good way to push socio-environmental concerns further up a company’s agenda.

Can industry afford to play dirty (energy) any longer?

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has warned that it will soon become impossible for any business not to take climate risk into account. For the moment, however, many carbon majors continue to invest as though they are unaware of the 1.5 degree goal.

Legal cases are starting to emerge that indicate an appetite to point the finger and that citizens are demanding legal remedies – and more importantly, behavioural and procedural changes. Consider the Urgenda case, brought by Dutch citizens against their government to improve national climate efforts, or the case of the Lahore farmer in Pakistan, who demanded the government started to implement their climate law.

This is why the human rights basis of the Philippines investigation is so significant. Lawyers are already working to hold companies accountable under finance and environment laws, but the human rights angle is new.

Never before has this human rights commission conducted an investigation into an environmental matter. Never before have accusations of human rights violations been levelled against private entities – and certainly not on the basis of greenhouse gas emissions. And never before has Heede’s study been called upon as the evidential basis of a complaint.

The petitioners want to see the carbon majors make concrete plans to start complying with human rights law, starting with including human rights in their corporate reporting. Further afield, they want to see the countries where the companies are incorporated better regulate their behaviour.

The Commission on Human Rights will investigate the claim and the ways government could respond. It has the power to judge how these corporations are performing against national and international human rights standards and recommend next steps.

CHR rules say investigations they conduct must be “fact finding in nature, and non-adversarial”, and the government would not be obliged to act should the findings indicate human rights law was indeed being breached.

However, the CHR is charged with “monitor[ing] the Philippine government’s compliance with international treaty obligations on human rights” – and investigations like this are exactly why this advisory body was established.

A new weapon in the battle to force decarbonisation

The Philippines, with its population of 100 million, is taking an internationally significant step in launching this investigation. Taking on the carbon majors in this way could trigger copycat investigations, continuing the wave of legal action for the climate. It expands what the world thinks is possible in the name of environmental justice.

And the timing is good, rolling out alongside the New York Attorney General’s investigation of Exxon and Peabody.

This human rights investigation is a new weapon in the struggle to drive decarbonisation. A CHR declaration that the carbon giants are infringing international human rights law would have major implications for fossil fuel companies worldwide, and other carbon-hungry industries.

While the CHR’s findings would not oblige The Philippines government to act, considered legal opinion showing that energy corporations are contravening human rights law would add lend phenomenal pressure to the drive to phase out fossil fuels.

Emissions from BP, Shell, Exxon and the other energy majors are a primary driver of global warming, which is already taking life and livelihood from vulnerable populations. We will be following the CHR’s investigation closely. It is time to hold these companies to account. 

Ellen Baker is a journalist with the ClientEarth communications team. Previous experience includes a year at the International New York Times in Paris. In 2014 she was the editorial assistant and features writer for London sustainable food magazine Jellied Eel, run by charity Sustain, and she continues to copy edit OURS Magazine, an international development and culture publication based in Geneva.

In December of 2015 – the earth’s hottest year since recordkeeping began – 195 nations met in Paris to forge an agreement to combat global warming.

The governments of the world acknowledged their individual and collective duty to protect the earth’s climate – and then willfully refused to perform that duty. What did they agree to, and how should the people they govern respond?

The 195 nations meeting in Paris unanimously agreed to the goal of keeping global warming “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and to pursue efforts “to limit the increase in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Despite that goal, the Paris agreement also permits the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming to continue rising.

Under the Paris agreement, governments put forward any targets they want – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – with “no legal requirement dictating how, or how much, countries should cut emissions.“ [1] These voluntary commitments don’t come into effect until 2020 and generally end in 2025-2030.

Today there are 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon in the atmosphere, far above the 350 ppm climate scientists regard as the safe upper limit. Even in the unlikely event that all nations fulfill their INDC pledges, carbon in the atmosphere is predicted to increase to 670 ppm by the end of this century. [2]

The global temperature will rise an estimated 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. [3] For comparison, a 1-degree Celsius increase has been enough to cause all the effects of climate change we have seen so far, from Arctic melting to desertification.

In short, the agreement authorizes the continued and even increased destruction of the earth’s climate.

At US insistence – ‘should’ not ‘shall’

US negotiators were adamant that the agreement must not include any binding restrictions on emissions. Secretary of State John Kerry told fellow negotiators that he “wished that we could include specific dates and figures for emissions cuts and financial aid” to developing countries, but “this could trigger a review by the US Senate that could scuttle the entire agreement.” [4]

When US lawyers discovered a phrase declaring that wealthier countries “shall” set economy-wide targets for cutting their GHG pollution, Kerry said, “We cannot do this and we will not do this. And either it changes or President Obama and the United States will not be able to support this agreement.” “Shall” was changed to “should” without so much as a vote. [5]

The breathtaking gap between the Paris agreement’s aspiration to hold global warming below 2 degrees Celsius and the agreement’s actual commitments is indicated by an analysis by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan.

The current US pledge to drop GHG emissions 26% below 2005 levels by 2025, along with the pledges of other countries, will lead to a global temperature increase of 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

To reduce warming to 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) will require the US to increase its INDC from 26% below 2005 levels to 45% by 2030, and for other countries to make comparable reductions. [6]

Under the Paris agreement countries will monitor their emissions and reconvene every five years starting in 2023 to report on the results and perhaps ratchet up their INDCs. This has been characterized as creating a ‘name-and-shame’ system of global peer pressure, “in hopes that countries will not want to be seen as international laggards.” [7]

On the last day of the Paris summit, a panel of leading scientists evaluated what would be necessary to achieve its targets. Prof. Hans Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that to reach the 2-degree target the world would have to get CO² out of its system by 2070.

To reach the 1.5-degree target it would have to eliminate CO₂ emissions by 2050. Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center said that for any chance of reaching 1.5 degrees, the richest nations need to reach zero fossil fuel use by 2030. [8]

Fossil Freeze?

Meanwhile, fossil fuel projects are multiplying – and many are meeting effective resistance both through both legal means and through civil disobedience. Last year, after a seven-year struggle, President Obama turned down a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Collateral struggles have terminated other Canadian tar sands projects worth $17 billion. Scotland, Wales, France, Tasmania, as well as such states as New York have banned natural gas fracking. On the West Coast, four of the six proposed giant coal ports have been cancelled, and the future of the other two hang in the balance. In southern India, a six-year campaign has stopped a huge coal plant. [9]

In an article last spring, Bill McKibben acknowledged that “fighting one pipeline at a time, the industry will eventually prevail.” But he argued that conditions are ripening for a “fossil freeze” – a halt to all new fossil fuel development. [10]

The fossil fuel industry itself is in crisis, finding that its new projects have become unprofitable all over the world – a crisis aggravated by the spread of the view that fossil fuel energy is on the way out and by the divest / invest movement, which announced in Paris that 500 institutions with assets of $3.4 trillion have agreed to some form of fossil fuel divestment. [11]

Over the last six years solar panels have become 75% cheaper and the cost of installation is predicted to fall 40% in the next two years. Denmark now gets 40% of its electricity from wind power; Bangladesh plans to run entirely on solar energy by 2020. The climate protection movement combined with the new economics of energy are “reshaping the consensus view about how fast a clean energy future could come.” [12]

State and local policy is increasingly rejecting new fossil fuel infrastructure based on the greater economy of grid modernization, distributed energy, energy efficiency, and the falling cost of renewables. In many localities advocates for those policy changes could be tacit or explicit allies of a fossil freeze campaign.

It’s simple – leave it in the ground!

Of course, there is a common-sense objection to proposals to “leave fossil fuels in the ground”: Won’t billions of people soon freeze to death in the dark? But a focus on shifting new investment from fossil fuels to clean energy provides a common-sense answer:

“Why should we spend one more penny for costly, outmoded, environment-destroying fossil fuel infrastructure when new clean energy technology is not only climate-friendly but cheaper?”

Another concern is that a fossil freeze will threaten the jobs of those workers who produce and use fossil fuel and the construction workers who build fossil fuel infrastructure.

A fossil freeze campaign will need a jobs program that includes both a just transition for workers who will be affected by the freeze and a way to take advantage of the transition to fossil-free energy to create millions of jobs for all kinds of workers – especially those who have long been the victims of discrimination and exclusion from good jobs. [13]

Late last year the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) and 350.org issued a report ‘The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the climate, creating jobs, and saving money‘. [14] It shows that the US can reduce GHG emissions 80% by 2050 – while adding half-a-million jobs per year and actually saving money compared to business-as-usual fossil fuel energy. Most of the added jobs will be in manufacturing and construction.

The plan does not depend on any new technical breakthroughs to realize these gains, only a continuation of current trends in energy efficiency and renewable energy costs. It is based on the conversion of all gasoline-powered light vehicles and most space heating and water heating to 100% renewable electricity. It includes an orderly phasing out of coal and nuclear energy and a gradual reduction in the burning of natural gas.

In addition to such national plans, campaigns against local fossil fuel infrastructure need to propose specific alternatives for the pipelines, plants, and other facilities they are trying to block or close. These need to address both consumers’ need for energy and workers’ need for jobs.

An example: When last year a campaign initiated by Baltimore high school students blocked a large incinerator project, the students organized a celebratory Concert for Fair Development highlighting proposals for a solar farm on the site, zero-waste reuse and recycling industries, and local agricultural initiatives. [15]

Breaking free

Near the close of the Paris climate talks, 350.org, Greenpeace, and other organizations announced escalated actions worldwide in May 2016. Building on the burgeoning on-the-ground resistance to new fossil fuel infrastructure, ‘Break Free From Fossil Fuels’ aims to “accelerate a global energy transformation“ away from fossil fuels. [16]

Actions in more than a dozen countries from the US to Turkey and from South Africa to Australia will “shut down the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects and support the most ambitious climate solutions.” Such civil disobedience will “reflect the scale and urgency of this crisis in a way that governments can no longer ignore.” [17] And it will show the fossil fuel industry that it will “no longer benefit from the consent of the people.” [18]

Break Free from Fossil Fuels could serve as a proving ground for a Fossil Freeze campaign.

The Paris climate agreement doesn’t prevent one molecule of GHG from being put in the atmosphere, but it may provide additional justification for civil disobedience actions like Break Free from Fossil Fuels and a Fossil Freeze.

Toward a global climate insurgency

In Paris, the governments of the world made a promise to the people of the world – and immediately betrayed it. On the one hand, all these governments, including the US, agreed that “climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet” and that “deep reductions in global emissions will be required.”

On the other hand, they emphasized “the significant gap” between the “aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020” and “aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.” [19]

Stripped of the jargon, this says they recognize that their current policies are aggravating that “irreversible threat” and acknowledge the inadequacy of their efforts to halt it.

The call to Break Free from Fossil Fuels asks us to imagine “tens of thousands of people around the world rising up” to take back control of their own destiny; “sitting down” to “block the business of government and industry that threaten our future;” conducting “peaceful defense of our right to clean energy;” making sure that “the promises are kept.” That is surely what it will take to reverse climate change.

Such a ‘rising up’ amounts to a global nonviolent insurgency – a withdrawal of consent from those who claim the right to rule manifested in a selective refusal to accept and obey their authority. [20]

When citizens interfere with a pipeline, power plant, or other fossil fuel infrastructure project to demand a transition to a clean energy future they are committing no crime, but responding to an extreme emergency and to corporations that are criminally negligent and criminally complicit in perpetrating that irreversible threat. They are showing that the fossil fuel industry “will no longer benefit from the consent of the people.”

Now governments must follow the logic of Paris

They are giving the same message to the governments that are aiding and abetting the fossil fuel industry. After all, it is the very governments that approved the Paris Agreement that are permitting and even encouraging the continued and expanded burning of fossil fuels.

Every new fossil fuel infrastructure project in the world is authorized by permits issued by one government or another. Two-thirds of the GHG emissions in the US are emitted pursuant to government-issued permits. [21] And it is governments that send police to arrest, try, and sometimes brutalize those who are trying to protect the planet and enforce the law.

The governments of the world may rule the world but they don’t own the world – that is the common property of humanity. The Paris Summit was in effect a conspiracy of the world’s governments to rob the world’s people and their posterity of their common inheritance.

Those governments acknowledged the devastation they are causing, but refused to be accountable to each other for correcting it. So now they need to be made accountable to the world’s real owners.

Jeremy Brecher is an historian and co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. A new, post-Paris edition of his book Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival will be published by Routledge in 2016. See more on Jeremy’s website.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

References

[1] Coral Davenport, ‘Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris‘, New York Times, December 12, 2015.

[2] ‘Scoreboard Science and Data‘, Climate Interactive.

[3] Andrew Jones, John Sterman, Ellie Johnston, and Lori Siegel, ‘With Improved Pledges Every Five Years, Paris Agreement Could Limit Warming Below 2C‘, December 14, 2015.

[4] Mark Hertsgaard, ‘Breakthrough in Paris’, The Nation January 4, 2016, quoting “a delegate from a Mediterranean country” who requested anonymity “because his government is a US ally.”

[5] Andrew Restuccia, ‘The one word that almost sank the climate talks’, Politico, December 12, 2015.

[6] Ibid [3].

[7] Coral Davenport, “Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris”, New York Times, December 12, 2015.

[8] Kim Nicholas, ‘Top scientists weigh in on current draft of Paris climate agreement‘, Road to Paris, December 11, 2015.

[9] Bill McKibben, ‘Climate fight won’t wait for Paris: vive la resistance.‘ The Guardian.

[10] Bill McKibben, ‘Climate fight won’t wait for Paris: vive la resistance’ For an earlier fossil fuel freeze proposal, see Jeremy Brecher, ‘Freezing the Greenhouse‘, Z, January 8, 2010.

[11] “Divestment Commitments Pass the $3.4 trillion Mark at COP 21”, 350.org release, December 2, 2015. http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/12/02/divestment-commitments-pass-34-trillion-mark-cop21

[12] McKibben, ‘Climate fight won’t wait for Paris.’

[13] Jeremy Brecher, ‘A Superfund for Workers: How to Promote a Just Transition and Break Out of the Jobs vs. Environment Trap‘, Dollars & Sense, November/December 2015. See also the ‘Clean Energy Worker Just Transition Act‘ recently outlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

[14] ‘The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the climate, creating jobs, and saving money‘, Labor Network for Sustainability, 350.org, and Synapse Energy Economics, based on research by a team led by Frank Ackerman of Synapse Energy Economics.

For an example what this would mean at a state level, see ‘Connecticut’s Clean Energy Future‘, Labor Network for Sustainability, Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, and Synapse Energy Economics.

[15] ‘Fair Development Victory!‘ We Demand Fair Development, March 26, 2015. For examples of cooperation among environmental, labor, and community groups in the context of coal plant shutdowns, see ‘Jobs Beyond Coal: A Manual for Communities, Workers, and Environmentalists‘.

[16] ‘Break Free From Fossil Fuels‘: Launch of escalated mobilisation plans for 2016, December 10, 2015.

[17] ‘May 2016: Break Free from Fossil Fuels.‘

[18] ‘It’s time to break free from fossil fuels.‘

[19] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement‘, December 12, 2015.

[20] See Jeremy Brecher, Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival“, Routledge, 2016.

[21] See Mary Christina Wood, ‘Atmospheric Trust Litigation across the World‘, in William C.G. Burns and Hari M. Godowsky, eds., Adjudicating Climate Change: Sub-National, National, and Supra-National Approaches (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) , accessed September 18, 2014. p. 104 and references there.

The recent and ongoing flooding of urban areas in northern England and the Scottish borders has in part been caused by unprecedented rates of rainfall.

However, this is only one of the factors that contribute to the development of a flood wave passing down a river.

Centuries of alteration to how our river catchments (or drainage basins) function has undoubtedly exacerbated the risk of downstream flooding in every river area in Britain.

Rivers are inherently variable, but those with floodplains tend to flood in these areas every couple of years with deeper more extensive flooding occurring less frequently. Sometimes riverbeds also deepen as part of a natural adjustment and in these cases flooding would also be less frequent.

Most often, though, floodplain inundation has been reduced deliberately through dredging, embanking, straightening and clearing, which concentrates flood flows in a main channel.

These alterations to the landscape have fundamentally altered surface and subsurface flow processes. They include a strategic network of drains and ditches cut by landowners and managers (often with government grants) to improve floodplain land for agriculture to prevent surface flooding and waterlogging, and dredging and embanking which helps to contain flow within a river.

Improved drainage in our upland moors through the cutting of a network of drainage channels means that upland precipitation or snow melt is also now concentrated into channel networks more quickly and flows downstream into river valleys faster.

All of these interventions move water more quickly downstream instead of capturing it in the soil or naturally inundating valley bottom areas where it flows more slowly. Government plans to relax current rules will see this drainage network extended and improved to the detriment of the main river flood regime and those living and working downstream.

Natural flood risk management

Natural flood risk management includes measures to store and slow flow in catchments more effectively with the aim of reversing the long-term trend of moving water downstream as quickly as possible and restoring some functionality to beleaguered uplands and floodplain areas.

It would make sense to try to restore some of the storage function that catchments used to perform before they were so expertly drained. Keeping water in the catchment area for longer means that the flood wave in the river will be longer but at a generally lower level than we currently see during heavy rainfall. This effect has been known from early studies in catchments such as Plynlimon in Wales, and Coalburn and Balquidder in Scotland.

The recent floods in the north-west were linked to record rainfall figures – Cumbria, for example, saw 341.4mm of rain in 24 hours. The flooding that occurred in Carlisle in December 2015 surpassed the 2005 event which generated a flood peak that exceeded the one in 200-year event that is the standard of protection for the city and followed extreme rainfall in the River Eden catchment area.

Rapid deployment of an sUAV (a Small Unmanned Air Vehicle) after the event captured imagery and evidence of the flood’s extent. It revealed that the entire floodplain along the main river and its tributaries was active during the heavy rainfall, along over 60km of surveyed watercourse. This has obvious implications when evaluating the value of natural flood management measures for an event of this magnitude.

Small storage measures and obstructions erected in channels, including bed raising and feature restoration such as removing or relocating banks, will have slowed and stored water even though it eventually reached capacity. It is critical that flow on the floodplain is slowed relative to the main channel and it appears from the morphological activity and infrastructure damage across floodplain areas that this was minimal.

Functional floodplains are essential – but not always enough!

The role of the floodplain would seem obvious in controlling downstream flooding yet it did not prevent flooding in Carlisle. It seems that in big events, attempts to increase the natural physical storage of water in the catchment is not going to stop urban areas flooding – but does this mean that natural flood risk management is ineffectual when it comes to preventing urban flooding during extreme events?

Sadly, we still don’t have answers for this. We simply do not know how much land compaction caused by livestock and farm machinery and poorly-timed planting and cropping has increased surface runoff, how significant or even how extensive our surface and subsurface land drainage network is in relation to flood wave generation, or just how dysfunctional our river floodplain system is.

One thing is certain. The floods have left a vast amount of evidence and information in the Eden and other catchments impacted by the recent flooding and we must act to capture these data before they are lost. And national and local government, insurance companies and funding agencies must seriously consider the following as part of their response:

The Environment Agency must release all of its flood image archives to allow the role of catchment floodplain inundation to be quantified for all recent and historic floods. This will tell us whether, like the Eden, the floodplain is being fully utilised during extreme events or if physical capacity remains to store and slow floodwater.

We need improved flood models that provide a fully integrated whole river and floodplain understanding of flooding. The capacity and data to develop 2D flood models now exist. Such a model would allow for a realistic simulation of catchment interventions such as natural flood risk management.

Land management is key – and must be neglected no longer

The impact of land management must be rapidly evaluated across catchments impacted by the recent floods. Drainage efficiency is clearly visible in the catchment areas as they recover from the flooding:

• compacted soils show signs of erosion and water-logging;
• patterns of redistributed sediment shows how flows were concentrated;
• and we can see how efficiently soil has drained from rapidly drying fields.

These data can form a spatial map of areas that can impact the generation of flood flow and could allow the strategic deployment of alternative land management measures.

Small-scale, piecemeal natural flood management measures are not the answer to controlling the flooding in Carlisle, and the Eden catchment is evidence of the ever present risk of extreme events. However, large-scale, long-term management of the catchment is exacerbating problems for urban areas downstream.

Government ministers talk about appropriate catchment and floodplain management, but this can only realistically be achieved through the development of evidence-based mapping. This offers a clear and focussed way forward that will allow holistic planning of flood reduction measures.

We have a near unique and certainly time-limited opportunity to gain a greater understanding of these impacts and must take targeted and immediate action to gather this information before it is lost.

Neil Entwistle is Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Salford.

George Heritage is Honorary Research Fellow, University of Salford.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

When microbiologist Bruce Hemming was hired two years ago to test breast milk samples for residues of the key ingredient in the popular weed-killer Roundup, Hemming at first scoffed at the possibility.

Hemming, the founder of St. Louis-based Microbe Inotech Laboratories, knew that the herbicidal ingredient called glyphosate was not supposed to accumulate in the human body.

Hemming, who previously worked as a scientist for Roundup maker Monsanto Co., now operates a commercial testing facility located just a few miles from Monsanto’s headquarters.

But Hemming said his lab’s testing did find residues of glyphosate in the samples of breast milk he received from a small group of mothers who were worried that traces of the world’s most popular herbicide might be invading their bodies.

Food companies, consumer groups, academics and others have also solicited testing for glyphosate residues, fueled by fears that prevalent use of the pesticide on genetically engineered food crops may be contributing to health problems as people eat foods containing glyphosate residues.

Those fears have been growing, stoked by some scientific studies that have shown health concerns tied to glyphosate, as well as data from the US Department of Interior finding glyphosate in water and air samples.

The concern surged last year after the World Health Organization’s cancer research unit said it had found enough scientific evidence to classify glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

USDA tests for over 400 pesticides – but not glyphosate

Consumers groups have been calling on the US government to test foods for glyphosate residues on behalf of the public, to try to determine what levels may be found and if those levels are dangerous. But so far those requests have fallen on deaf ears.

It would seem that would be an easy request to meet. After all, since 1991, the US Department of Agriculture has conducted a ‘Pesticide Data Program‘ (PDP) that annually collects pesticide residue data for hundreds of pesticides.

The testing looks for residues on a range of food products, including infant formula and other baby foods, and also looks for residues in drinking water. The purpose of the program is to “assure consumers that the food they feed their families is safe”, according to the USDA.

But while the USDA looks for residues of other herbicides, as well as fungicides and insecticides, the agency routinely does not test for glyphosate. It did one ‘special project’ in 2011, testing 300 soybean samples for glyphosate, and found that 271 of the samples had residues. The agency said all fell within the range deemed safe by the EPA, and has since said that testing for glyphosate is “not a high priority.”

In the latest annual PDP report – issued yesterday, 11th January – once again, glyphosate data is absent. Testing was done to look for residues of more than 400 different herbicides, insecticides and other pesticides on food products. But no tests reported for glyphosate.

The USDA says it is too expensive to test for glyphosate residues; much costlier than tests for the other 400+ pesticides that are part of the analysis, the agency says. The agency also echoes the position held by Monsanto that glyphosate is safe enough that trace amounts in food are nothing to worry about.

The EPA’s glyphosate risk assessment delayed again

This begs the question: how do we know there are only trace amounts, without the testing? And what of all that World Health Organization talk of cancer connections to glyphosate? Monsanto hired its own experts who concluded that finding was wrong.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which sets the tolerance levels allowed for glyphosate and other pesticides has said glyphosate is safe at certain defined tolerance levels, and has actually raised those tolerance levels in recent years.

At the same time, the EPA has been conducting a multi-year re-evaluation of glyphosate, its usage and impacts. The agency was due to release a risk assessment last year. In fact, EPA’s chief pesticide regulator Jim Jones said in May 2015 that assessment was nearly completed then and should be released by July. But this week an EPA spokeswoman said the report would likely be made public “sometime later this year.”

The government pegged glyphosate use in the United States at nearly 300 million pounds for 2013, the most recent year the estimate is available. That was up from less than 20 million pounds in 1992. The rise in usage parallels the rise of crops genetically engineered to be glyphosate-tolerant, meaning farmers can spray the herbicide directly on their fields and kill weeds but not their crops.

Many key food crops are sprayed directly with glyphosate, including corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola and even in some cases, wheat, though wheat has not been genetically engineered as glyphosate-tolerant.

Instead the herbicide is used as a ‘dessicant’ to kill the wheat plants and allow them to dry out before harvest. Tests carried on on bread and cereal bars in the UK, show that glyposate residues often remain at detectable levels in food products.

So why won’t the USDA tell us?

It is a scandal that USDA tests for hundreds of pesticide residues but not glyphosate, among the most widely used chemicals on our food crops. Consumers want to know how much glyphosate is in our food. As for the idea that it is so uniquely and unaffordably expensive to test for out of over 400 pesticides, the EPA has failed to explain or justify its claim.

In a statement that accompanied the annual pesticide residue report, the EPA’s Jim Jones lauded the data as an “important part of … our work to evaluate pesticide exposure from residues in food”, adding that “EPA is committed to a rigorous, science-based, and transparent regulatory program for pesticides that continues to protect people’s health and the environment.”

But given the health concerns raised by the World Health Organization and the rising use of this pesticide, consumers deserve better. In April 2015 the EPA actually said that US regulators would consider testing for glyphosate: “Given increased public interest in glyphosate, EPA may recommend sampling for glyphosate in the future”, the agency told Reuters, adding that the final decision rested with USDA.

Then, in a masterly piece of buck-passing, USDA insisted the desision was really up to the EPA: “EPA makes the determination which commodities and pesticides are tested”, said a spokesman, and EPA had not requested any glyphosate testing. The decision remains in bureaucratic limbo.

It’s high time for the EPA-USDA two-step shuffle to stop – and for the two agencies to immediately respect consumer concerns and  include tests for glyphosate and its residues in the Pesticide Data Program.

Carey Gillam is Research Director at US Right to Know, a nonprofit organization that investigates the risks associated with the corporate food system, and promotes transparency regarding the food industry’s practices and influence on public policy. She has worked as a journalist, researcher and writer specializing in the food and agriculture for more than 20 years.

This article was originally published by US Right To Know. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.