Additional Information on Friends Of the Earth

Additional Information on Friends Of the Earth

Additional Information on Friends Of the Earth

Overview


* Friends Of the Earth (FOE) lists the following as some of its major achievements:

  • 1981: played a crucial role in the successful campaign to impose a moratorium on leases for offshore oil drilling in “pristine areas”;
  • 1992: helped pass legislation authorizing the removal of two dams that blocked historic salmon runs in Washington state;
  • 1999: persuaded President Bill Clinton to issue an executive order requiring the federal government to conduct environmental assessments of all future trade deals;
  • 2002: launched a campaign that, over the next 12 years, would cause more than 1,000 companies to pledge to remove chemicals that harm human health from personal care products;
  • 2003: helped draft and pass California’s Clean Cars Law—the first law regulating the emission of greenhouse gas pollutants from passenger vehicles;
  • 2009: used a lawsuit to successfully pressure the federal Export-Import Bank to consider climate impacts before making its decisions;
  • 2012: successfully derailed a World Bank proposal to exempt a new lending program from 25 social and environmental safeguards and policies;
  • 2012: helped pressure the Obama administration to delay construction of the Keystone oil pipeline, pending further review of its potential environmental impacts; and
  • 2013: campaigned successfully to permanently shut down two nuclear reactors in Southern California.

* FOE has vociferously opposed the policies of virtually every Republican presidential administration since its inception. For instance, the organization:

  • consistently attempted to thwart the George W. Bush administration’s efforts to increase domestic oil drilling as a means of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil;
  • strongly opposed Bush’s choice for Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton;
  • accused Deputy Secretary of the Interior Steven Griles of ethics violations;
  • ran an October 2014 series of full-page ads in USA Today and The New York Timescharging the Bush administration with laying waste to the natural environment; and
  • distributed more than 1.3 million copies of a brochure titled The Bush Administration: A Chronology of Environmental Destruction.

* FOE was a signatory to an April 2001 petition, presented to the Chairman of the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development, opposing further development of nuclear technologies. In addition, the International chapter of FOE signed a petition of “civil society” organizations that opposed globalization and “any effort to expand the powers of the World Trade Organization (WTO) through a new comprehensive round of trade liberalization.” FOE also endorsed a 2003 “Our World is Not for Sale” campaign, similarly condemning the WTO.

* A member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, FOE endorsed a May 1, 2003 document titled “10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq,” which was published by Environmentalists Against War.

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