Written by Ashley Schaeffer

In what has been called the biggest climate decision of the year for the Obama Administration, the Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil industries are flexing their lobbying muscle to overturn a crucial, science-based decision by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In January of this year, the EPA issued an initial finding that biofuels made from palm oil do not qualify for subsidies under the agency’s 2007 renewable fuels mandate. While it was found to have lower life-cycle emissions than conventional gasoline and diesel, palm oil came up short of the 20 percent reduction in total emissions required for inclusion in the new biofuel blends.

While the public comment period regarding its decision is now officially closed, the EPA remains under serious and mounting pressure to reverse its findings from high-powered lobbying groups hired by the Indonesian, Malaysian, and Chinese palm oil industries. These shadowy foreign interests are joined by the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other right-wing organizations fundamentally opposed to the Renewable Fuels Standard.

Among the most disturbing developments in this lobby assault is the fact that these high-paid industry lobbyists are leveraging their political influence to place their clients’ profit-driven agenda over the conclusions of science. For example, many of the comments submitted to the EPA came from the palm oil industry itself — including palm oil giants Cargill and Wilmar, which claim that the EPA’s estimates of palm oil-related emissions are seriously exaggerated.

Scientists, however, assert that even the EPA’s proposed findings are overly conservative and that palm oil fuels are likely no better for the climate than conventional fuels at all. The New York Times Green Blog reported on a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that used socioeconomic surveys, high-resolution satellite imagery and carbon mapping to plot past and future patterns of land conversion for a representative region in Indonesia. The study found that half of all palm oil in the study area is being grown on extremely carbon-rich peatlands, a number that sharply contrasts with the EPA’s estimate of only 13 percent for all of Indonesia.

As the NYT blog states: “Indonesia ranks right behind the United States and China in the lineup of the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters. It’s not because of smokestacks or freeways, but massive deforestation starting in the 1990s — driven in large part by the expansion of plantations for palm oil, an edible vegetable oil used in cookies, crackers, soap and European diesel fuel.”

The EPA’s decision is incredibly important because it will influence how governments around the world think about palm oil, particularly in Europe. As Ezra Klein explains in the Washington Post, the biggest market for palm oil-based fuels is still the European Union, which has a law requiring 10 percent of all transportation fuel to come from renewable sources by 2020. The problem with this rule is that the European Union never considered the indirect deforestation effects from biofuels. The science on this only really emerged in 2008 or so, after the E.U. law was crafted.

As for the US, the EPA’s decision could also determine the extent to which the United States becomes a major palm oil buyer. According to trade data, consumption of palm oil in the United States is growing at a much faster rate than anywhere else in the world, so it makes sense that industry reps from Indonesia and Malaysia are concerned about protecting palm oil’s reputation here. So concerned, in fact, that the Malaysian Prime Minister’s wife met with the Girl Scouts CEO last week. But what isn’t so clear in my mind is how an industry that is accused of gross environmental and social abuses can justify hiring the most expensive lobby group to paint palm oil green without looking desperate.

As my colleague Laurel Sutherlin said in a press conference: “It is a disturbing development to see a politically motivated group like ALEC join forces with the shadowy palm oil lobby from Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as with huge agribusiness companies Cargill and Wilmar, to pressure the EPA to overturn what is supposed to be a science-based decision made in the best interests of the American people. The question the EPA is tasked with answering is whether biofuels made with palm oil meet our nation’s greenhouse gas requirements as a renewable fuel. The stark reality of the impacts of palm oil plantation expansion in Southeast Asia, where nearly 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from, makes it clear that it does not.”

This post was republished from Rainforest Action Network with permission.

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Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the United Nations observer mission in Syria, issued a statement on Saturday that the mission is suspended due to rising violence. The 298 military observers are unable to carry out their mandate and will remain in their locations in Syria “until further notice.” Gen. Mood emphasized that the violence has escalated in the past ten days.

Early in May, Gen. Mood’s own convoy just missed being hit by a roadside bomb — a Syrian military truck was struck instead — in southern Syria. The following week, observers’ cars were damaged by a roadside bomb in the northern town of Khan Sheikoun, where the observers were meeting with rebels opposing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Last week, observers were prevented from entering the town of Haffa in the coastal Latakia region to investigate reports of a massacre and shots were fired at their convoy.

The observers have been in Syria as part of the six-point peace plan negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special envoy to the UN. The plan had called for a cease-fire starting April 12 but neither the Syrian regime nor the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) has honored it.

The New York Times observes that the suspension of the observers’ mission is “the latest sign that a peace plan brokered by Mr. Annan is disintegrating.” But the continued bloodshed including the Houla massacre in which 108 were slain, including dozens of children has cast serious doubt on Annan’s peace plan for weeks. As the BBC’s Jim Muir frankly observes, the suspension of the observer mission is a sure sign that Annan’s peace plan “has hit the rocks, and greatly increases the pressure on international diplomacy to salvage it.”

Members of the Syrian opposition have expressed deep frustation with the peace mission. Activist Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the New York Times that it was better that the observers, who “couldn’t do anything,” simply leave. Reporting from Istanbul where opposition activists are meeting on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught describes a “lack of surprise on the whole” about the suspension of the UN mission, whose efforts have consistently been blocked by Assad’s regime.

McNaught suggested that the suspension of the UN mission could put pressure on China and Russia, who have insisted on Annan’s peace plan being carried out and refused efforts by the UN Security Council to demand that Assad step down. International powers have clung to the plan and to a diplomatic solution as it has been and is the only option; there has been no request for military intervention like that in Libya.

Activists reported that the central city of Homs and parts of the capital of Damascus were shelled overnight.

Over 10,000 people have died in the Syrian uprising since it began in March of 2011, says the UN.

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Written by Amanda Starbuck

Bank of America released its new environmental initiative Monday, grandly declaring that “Today’s announcement builds on Bank of America’s legacy of leadership in the environmental arena.”

While the bank’s initiative focuses on its financing of renewable energy, key construction projects and reduction of its own operational emissions (emissions from its buildings and facilities), the bank makes no mention of its role in financing fossil fuels, like coal, which are the leading cause of climate emissions in the United States.

Plain and simple, increasing support for renewable energy and not decreasing funding for coal will not do what’s needed to reduce emissions or protect the climate.

Bank of America’s commitment to renewable energy is a step in the right direction for our climate, however, the bank is simultaneously taking two steps back by continuing to underwrite the coal industry. The bottom line is we cannot reduce the emissions necessary to stem climate change with renewable energy funding alone, we must also curb our use of coal and Bank of America’s new environmental commitment makes no move to do that.

Coal is the elephant in Bank of America’s record. Bank of America boasts about increasing its commitments to renewable energy, but omits reporting its steadily increasing financing for coal—the number one source of U.S. climate pollution. Between 2010 and 2011, Bank of America provided more than $6.4 billion in underwriting for U.S. coal.

Bank of America finances climate and community pollution at every stage in the coal industry. It spends billions each year underwriting mountaintop removal coal mining companies and utilities that operate the dirtiest coal-burning power plants in the country.

Check out our video of people who traveled to Bank of America’s 2012 shareholder meeting to explain to the bank what impact their underwriting is having on local communities across the U.S.

If Bank of America wishes for a true legacy of environmental leadership, then it is clearly time to update its position on coal. Coal’s devastating impact on both climate and public health comes at a time when the profitability of both coal mining and coal-fired power generation is way down and presenting a clear financial risk for the bank.

This post was republished with permission from Rainforest Action Network.

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