SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT GLACIER CONFERENCE IN ALASKA

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) Conference Opening Plenary
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Anchorage, Alaska
August 31, 2015

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you very, very much, Admiral Papp, for a very generous introduction. I have to tell you that I’m surprised that on an Irish ship in St. Petersburg any sailors were able to talk at all. (Laughter.) I mean, sailors are sailors, and when you get to port, you don’t talk.

But I really want to thank Admiral Papp. I have to tell you, he’s been a blessing to this enterprise. And over the last year as the U.S. Special Representative to the Arctic, he has already seized the reins and done a rather remarkable job of helping us to set, yes, an ambitious agenda, but one that is, after listening to each of the speakers thus far, I think everybody here would agree is necessary to the challenge. And the challenge is real.

Admiral Papp was literally one night away from retirement as commandant of the United States Coast Guard after a brilliant career in the Coast Guard when I telephoned him and I said – I’d met him in the course of our work, me in the Senate and work we did on fisheries and narcotics trafficking and other things. And I knew this was the man for the job, and I asked him to continue his service to our country and indeed to mankind. And believe me, without hesitancy, the next day he was in the office, we met, and he picked up this baton and he has been running with it ever since. And he has a deep, deep commitment to the Arctic, to the challenge of climate change, and I think we are all blessed to have somebody who is prepared to give up the emoluments of the private sector and of retirement to continue in this role. And I’m very grateful to you, Admiral, for being willing to do that. And maybe someday I can make up to you the thwarting of your retirement plans. (Laughter.)

I want to congratulate each of the other speakers that we heard her today. I sat there, as I think most of you I’m sure did, and when I listened to Chief Stephan talk about 10,000 years, and I think of the Industrial Revolution since the late 1800s, which is, after all, at the heart of sort of how we produce things and how we live and how we travel that is creating this challenge of climate change. You see the contrast pretty starkly. And it struck me that this is the right place to be. This was the right site to come and discuss this issue. Because just by being here, just by listening to Mayor Berkowitz, to Mayor Joule, to the Lieutenant Governor and his tunic and his tribute to his mother, we all have a better sense of the human dimension and of the history, and indeed, even the moral challenge that we face as leaders in our countries and as leaders in the world with respect to this challenge of climate change.

So I’m particularly grateful to all of them and I’m grateful to John Holdren, a resident of my state, somebody I worked with for years as a senator, who helped me early on to come to understand the science of climate change. And we very much look forward – all of you here – to participating today and building, we hope, a record, an agenda, a roadmap, if you will, for how we go out of here to lead into Paris, where we have a critical negotiation in December, but which is not, as the video said, the end of the road. It’s really the beginning of the most important part of our responsibility to meet this challenge.

I particularly want to thank my coterie of colleagues, my counterparts who have come here from each of their countries, my distinguished colleagues who work so brilliantly on this issue and on others to help us to find common ground. The foreign minister of Iceland, Gunnar Sveinsson; the foreign minister of Norway, Borge Brende, who has been a great partner in so many efforts. Margot Wallstrom, the foreign minister of Sweden. Bert Koenders, the foreign minister of The Netherlands. Timo Soini, the foreign minister of Finland. Kristian Jensen, the foreign minister of Denmark. And finally, Yun Byung-se, the foreign minister of South Korea. And we’re very grateful to each of them for having traveled so far at a time that is particularly busy leading into September and the United Nations General Assembly meeting.

I’m grateful to the other heads of delegations, all of you sitting here around this table. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore, Russia, Poland, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China – all of you who are part of this – Canada. Canada is part, obviously, of the Arctic Council, and the foreign minister is not here, but we’re grateful for all of your participation here and for all of the other delegations. Many of you have traveled very, very far to the largest state in our country, as you heard, and certainly one of the most beautiful states in our country, as you can see for yourselves.

The motto of Alaska is “North to the Future.” So I think it’s particularly fitting today that men and women from every corner of the globe have come north for the future. Because what we can decide here – and not just here but what we make real in Paris and beyond – will profoundly impact the future of life on this planet.

I have struggled for years, as I’m sure many of you have, with how you adequately take an issue of this magnitude, this kind of challenge, and put it in terms that average folks can really grab onto, where it isn’t so intimidating that people walk away and say, “Well, there’s no way I can deal with that.” Where people somehow feel that there are individual steps you can take even as countries, states decide to come together and stake – and take the larger steps.

But what we discuss here today is important not just for the Arctic, it is important for the rest of this planet. Everywhere I travel, leaders and average folks talk to me about the impacts of climate change and what they feel and see is happening to their lives in one particular part of the world or another. And the Arctic is so important for us to visit and understand because the Arctic is in many ways a thermostat, a computerized system, if you will, where we don’t even understand fully what the algorithm is, and yet we already see is having a profound impact on the rest of the planet. The temperature patterns, the weather patterns, what happens in the ocean in the Arctic can, in fact, we know – though we don’t completely understand the ways in which it will happen – but we know it has this profound impact on habitat everywhere, on breeding grounds everywhere, on the ecosystem itself.

And one of the beauties of what we heard today from each of the speakers who spoke a few minutes ago is this notion of balance. The balance between our activities – we, having the power of reasoning and choice over all of these other living species, what we choose has this profound downstream impact. Dr. Holdren just painted a very straightforward, purely scientific, actually absolutely factual picture. And it’s hard for people to digest that fully. Some people just want to write it off as a natural change, notwithstanding that at the end of the 19th century a Swedish scientist actually first described the impact of global heating and of the greenhouse effect itself. And we all know that were it not for the existence of the greenhouse itself, life itself would not exist on this planet because it is the greenhouse effect that has held the temperature at a steady average of about 57 degrees for life to be able to exist.

Now we know the Arctic is warming at this pace that was described today, twice as fast, four times in certain places, glaciers now melting three times faster than the rate observed in the last century, and as they melt into the seas the level of sea level rises. But in the figures that we saw regarding Greenland there is cause for greater concern, because the ice sheet on Greenland sits on rock, not in the ocean. Therefore it doesn’t displace water, it only adds to it. And as that level of ice melts, that is a magnitude greater of increase in the rate of sea level rise. And as we saw from Dr. Holdren’s presentation, in the most recent days the gigatonnage, billions of level of meltdown, is significantly greater than it has been at any time in the past, giving greater cause for concern.

We see the permafrost melting, which is releasing methane, and methane we all know is anywhere from – it’s about 30 times on average more damaging than CO2. And sometimes, in the short term it’s 86 times more damaging, but over an average of about a hundred years 30 times more damaging. But 30 times more damaging than something that we’re already having trouble getting control of is a threat to everybody.

We’ve seen 5 million acres of fires in Alaska alone, equal to the size of my state of Massachusetts, in this last year. And on top of that, we see significant challenges to life itself as it invades the communities that have been built, not just in Alaska, but in other parts of the world – low-lying nation-states in the Pacific and others that are increasingly facing this challenge.

The bottom line is that climate is not a distant threat for our children and their children to worry about. It is now. It is happening now. And I think anybody running for any high office in any nation in the word should come to Alaska or to any other place where it is happening and inform themselves about this. It is a seismic challenge that is affecting millions of people today.

Villages in Alaska are already being battered by the storms and some have had to move, or will. As the permafrost continues to thaw, the infrastructure is beginning to be challenged. Houses and other buildings are literally collapsing into rubble. Already this is happening.

There’s a village a few hours northwest of Anchorage called Galena. In 2013, Galena and a number of other villages in the state faced terrible hardships after an ice jam caused the Yukon River to flood. And because natural defenses had melted away, 90 percent of Galena’s buildings were completely destroyed.

The Arctic has never been, we know, an easy place to survive let alone to raise a family or make a living. The story of Arctic communities is inherently one of resilience, adaptation, and survival from one generation to the next. But global climate change now threatens life in this region in a way that it hasn’t been threatened for all of those 10,000 years that Chief Stephan talked about. And unless the global community comes together to address this challenge, the dramatic climate impacts that we’re seeing in this part of the world will be a harbinger for every part of the world.

And we as leaders of countries will begin to witness what we call climate refugees moving – you think migration is a challenge to Europe today because of extremism, wait until you see what happens when there’s an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival.

So over the course of this conference, we will discuss all of this. And the many opportunities that are actually staring us in the face right now to be able to respond to this challenge and, ironically, respond to it in a way that creates millions of jobs, improves our economy, improves health, improves our ability to respond to the environment, does all of the plus-ups that you search for in public policy without the long-term damage and costs that we’re witnessing by not taking those actions.

The energy market, because energy policy is the solution to climate change – and the energy market, if people make the right choices, is the largest market the world has ever seen. The market that drove the great wealth creation in the United States of the 1990s was a $1 trillion market with 1 billion users: technology, computers, personal computers, et cetera. The market that’s staring at us today is already a $6 trillion market with 4 to 5 billion users, and it will grow to 9 billion users as the population of the planet increases in the next 30, 40 years. It is the biggest market ever, and it’s waiting to be grabbed.

So we need to move to reducing carbon pollution, including emissions of short-lived climate drivers like soot and methane, and begin to factor carbon dioxide and its cost into the actual accounting of business and of our economies. We need to explore the need for greater collaboration to develop affordable and reliable renewable energy options in the Arctic communities. And let me underscore we have a number of impressive case studies from which to draw inspiration.

For instance, a small Alaskan village, Igiugig, men and women are using clean energy now, wind turbines in particular, that helps to feed their community. And through a partnership with the Ocean Renewable Energy Company they’re generating a third of their energy needs using a river-based hydrokinetic power technology.

These are the kinds of creative solutions that will enable Arctic communities to endure and to thrive in the future without having to rely on dirtier and ultimately destructive sources of power. And more broadly, today we can discuss what we can pull off in Paris, looking ahead to December when we’ll try to come up with a truly ambitious and truly global climate agreement.

Now our hope is that everyone can leave this conference today with a heightened sense of urgency and a better understanding of our collective responsibility to do everything we can to deal with the harmful impacts of climate change.

Over the course of the day we’re going to discuss efforts to expand resiliency in the region and to provide effective stewardship of wildlife and ecosystems that make the Arctic such an extraordinary place. We’re going to talk through ways that we can better prepare for the spike in human activity that is taking place in the increasingly open Arctic seas that were described earlier. Commercial fishing operations, which are not yet taking place in the central Arctic Ocean but they may begin to ramp up soon, and we’re not going to be able to manage fishing in that area effectively unless we gather more scientific information.

That’s why the United States is proposing an international agreement to prevent unregulated fishing for the time being. In addition, as more and more people begin to take advantage of the new shipping lanes and the potential of exploration of resources, there is obviously a heightened need to be able to expand open water search and rescue responsibilities and capabilities and also to define the rules of the road.

So we have a lot to cover today, and there is no question that the stakes could frankly not be much higher. And that’s why I’m so grateful for such a display of interest by so many countries coming here today to be part of this discussion. I know that when you consider the enormity of what we’re up against and the serious risks and overwhelming uncertainty that people are already experiencing, this seems like a pretty high mountain to climb. Well, I can assure you, as I have described, in fact, if you step back and look at it, it is not.

We are hardly the first generation in human history to face uncertainty about the future. Seventy-five years ago, our predecessors faced a world that was literally engulfed by strife, where seemingly all of Europe was overrun by evil, and civilization itself seemed to be in peril. We had leaders then who rose to that occasion, and we have all seen a world that is better for what came out of it with the United Nations and multilateralism and commitments to humanitarian and other missions.

The threat posed by climate change is obviously entirely different in character. But it is not different in its global reach or its potential to do harm. And the urgent need for global cooperation, for global commitment, for global choices is exactly the same as it was in the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s. If only we fully grasp that, if we commit ourselves to climbing this mountain together, then I am absolutely convinced that we will meet the obligation that we have to future generations, we will meet it here in the Arctic, and we will meet it for the rest of the world.

So I thank you very, very much for being part of this. I hope we have an extremely productive and rewarding day here at GLACIER, and I hope that GLACIER is a stepping stone to our meetings in New York around UNGA, and then afterwards in Paris, and afterwards to getting the job done. Thank you all. (Applause.)

DOD VIDEO: COAST GUARD COMBATS INTERNATIONAL CRIME

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

2015 - U.S. Coast Guard Deputy Commandant for Operations, VADM Charles Michael testified before a House subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Drug Interdiction Efforts.

SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT U.S. CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE ARCTIC COUNCIL RECEPTION

FROM:  THE STATE DEPARTMENT
05/21/2015 09:10 PM EDT
Remarks at the U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council Reception
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Benjamin Franklin Room
Washington, DC
May 21, 2015

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Well, Admiral Papp, thank you for a way over the top introduction, which I’ll take any day of the year. (Laughter.) We don’t get enough of those in public life.

I want you all to know I began sailing when I was about five years old, which was way before Jack Kennedy became President of the United States, so – (laughter) – it was no model there. It was my dad, actually, who dragged me out and let sail, crossed the ocean several times, actually, as a sailor.

I knew somehow Admiral Papp was going to get some icebreakers into that introduction, too. (Laughter.) But we need him, and I’m honored that so many coasties are here. Thank you all very much. And Navy, if you’re in there, we appreciate it very, very – whoops. What happened? Well, it’s not a sign of the times, I want you to know. (Laughter.) It rolled way out there. That’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Seriously, don’t worry about it. I have the job without that, so – (laughter).

I am really thrilled to see so many of you here. I mean that. We did not know who would respond to this sort of call to gather only a short time after the passing of the gavel in Iqaluit, and we’re deeply grateful to our friends from Canada for their great stewardship and for helping our team so much – Admiral Papp and company – to be able to do that in a seamless way and with a great deal of cooperation with respect to the agenda ahead. I know Lynne Yelich, minister at the House of Commons, is here tonight. Lynne, I don’t know where you are. Where’s your hand? But you’re representing Chair Leona Aglukkaq, and we’re very grateful to you. And thank you to Canada for all you did, and we appreciate your being here today. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

And I had a chance before we came out here to present a couple of certificates of appreciation to Susan Harper and to Vincent Rigby, who’s the chair of the Arctic officials, and we’re very grateful for their stewardship. They were really the ones who worked so closely and helped to pass that baton, and I say thank you to them.

I also want to say I talked to Foreign Minister Lavrov earlier this morning. We did talk a little about the Arctic. And he couldn’t be here because Prime Minister Abadi is in Moscow, but he is 100 percent looking forward to working with us and committed – Moscow – you all saw that they indicated they’re going to sign the treaty. And we are looking forward to that continued participation.

But I’ll tell you there is no greater test of the collegiality of this council – or, frankly, of a personal gesture of friendship and support for this effort – than the three foreign ministers who have traveled to be here all this distance, one of whom came all the way from Tel Aviv in Israel, where he was on a visit. I’m talking about the distinguished foreign minister from Norway, Borge Brende. Thank you so much for your being here and making that effort. (Applause.) The foreign minister of Iceland, Gunnar Sveinsson – they’re right here. Thank you so much for being part – raise your hand so everybody can see you. (Applause.) There you are. And my friend from Finland, who announced to me because of the change of government this will be his sort of last journey here for the moment as a foreign minister, but Erkki Tuomioja – where are you? Erkki. There he is. Thank you very, very much. (Applause.) Thanks for being here.

And we’re privileged to have our ambassador from Canada who does such a great job here, Gary Doer. Thank you, Gary, for being here. And the American ambassador to Canada, Bruce Heyman – Bruce, thank you for being here very, very much. Appreciate it. (Applause.)

I want to begin by saying that I love a man who can’t say no to serving when he’s asked to. And when I called him literally the night before he was about to retire, I didn’t know whether I was on a fool’s mission, in the sense that he already had his life planned out and he was locked in and clear where he was going to go. But what a terrific phone call that turned out to be, and what a stroke for all of us that the admiral is prepared to continue almost doing what he was doing in many ways, only with a closer, more narrowed focus, but on a focus of passion and a focus of his own heart. He is 100 percent into this, my friends. And after years – you don’t become commandant of the Coast Guard without years of extraordinary service, and now he is putting in overtime, so to speak. We’re deeply appreciative to Admiral Papp. Thank you for being our special representative to the Arctic. Appreciate it. (Applause.)

And I want to join the admiral in welcoming all of you who are here – friends from the diplomatic community, the Executive Branch, Capitol Hill. I want to introduce two senators. The senator from Maine, Angus King, is here somewhere, over there. (Applause.) Angus, thank you for being here. (Applause.) And from Alaska, the senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, is here. (Applause.) And I am deeply appreciative to both of them. They have started the Arctic caucus in the United States Senate. They took the time to travel with me when we went to Iqaluit and took on the chairmanship. It helped us – I think it helped them – to get a sense of the energy and enthusiasm that exists for this enterprise. And we will need the United States Senate and the Congress, and we’re deeply appreciative for your leadership.

I also thank the folks from the private sector, from the scientific, from the academic worlds, worlds of academia who are here, especially those of you, literally, who have traveled thousands of miles to be with us this evening. And we’re very grateful you could make it.

For those of you who haven’t been here before, this is sort of the great hall of our State Department, where we are privileged to entertain foreign dignitaries or have events like this. The room was named for Benjamin Franklin, and you can see him up there on the wall above the fireplace. He had something to say about just about everything except the Arctic. (Laughter.) But there is a connection. And that is, during his storied career – and it was a remarkable career and he is really known as sort of the first diplomat, if you will, the founder of the diplomatic service – he crossed the Atlantic many times back when it was not an easy task, my friends. And if you read the history of John Adams and his young son leaving Massachusetts to sail over to become ambassador, and literally escaping a British frigate and pumping down in the hold to keep the ship afloat because it sprung a leak, this was hairy business – these guys, the way they did this.

And he loved to fill up the hours at sea by conducting experiments with water temperature. And he used the most sophisticated equipment of the era, which was a thermometer put in a bucket. And he would lower the bucket into the waves, and with help from a Nantucket sea captain who happened to be his cousin – Franklin, actually, was raised partly by an aunt on Nantucket – he became the first person to publish, as a result of his findings, a chart of what he called “a river in the ocean,” which, of course, we know as the Gulf Stream. So it’s a powerful current that affects all of our climate, including the conditions in the Arctic itself. So without knowing it – he didn’t talk about it, but he did something about it. (Laughter.)

And there is, of course, a second connection between Franklin and this reception. And that is that he liked to have a really good time, folks. (Laughter.) And he didn’t spare the booze, and while he was in Paris he led a life that clearly meant that had he lived today and been nominated, he would never have been confirmed for office. (Laughter.) Anyway, it just goes to show how the times change. (Laughter.)

So I’m not going to give a long speech. I just want to say a few words about this wonderful opportunity to take over this chairmanship, which I totally respect, is a consensus-driven structure and will stay that way, obviously, and which is really a moment of stewardship. It’s a shared responsibility. It’s a rotating chair. We get to be chair; we bring some ideas to the table, but none of them work if we don’t have the same collegiate spirit that brought these three great foreign ministers here to Washington tonight. That’s the spirit with which we approach this.

And the council is a unique body. It was established to find practical solutions to some very daunting and rapidly growing challenges, and the United States is really thrilled to take its turn in the chair with a goal of passing the baton on with all of us heading in the same direction and with a great sense of responsibility.

Our priorities include Arctic Ocean safety, security, and stewardship. It includes improved economic conditions for the living conditions of folks in the Arctic communities, and that is a critical concern – indigenous population and what development or changes in the environment might do to those folks. They’re 4 million strong living there for centuries, and believe me, they are an essential part of everything that is critical to the region.

So I begin by being very clear that every nation that cares about the future of the Arctic has to be a leader in taking and urging others to move forward with bold initiatives and immediate, ambitious steps to curb the impact of greenhouse gases.

A few minutes ago we were talking in the back room with my fellow foreign ministers about the importance of our responsibility on climate change and the difficulty of getting people in public life to link in reality to the daunting impacts that the potential catastrophe that comes with that change could bring to people. It’s hard to fathom and it’s hard to grab on, and for a lot of people it’s easier to shove it off and either pretend it’s not happening or let it – somebody else is going to take care of it.

It’s not going to work that way. And if we don’t do this, the current trends of record temperatures – almost every year is a record set ahead of the last year, and that’s true for the last 10 or 11 years. It’s not an anomaly. And we also know that the thawing permafrost, which is releasing methane, which is 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, has its own negative impacts, not to mention the impact on living conditions for the people who live there and rely on the frozen tundra and so forth.

Moreover, you have huge acidification that comes, and we’re seeing the increase of that acidification. And scientists are telling us there’s an impact on krill, which is critical to whales and critical to ocean life. And so the cycle itself can be broken here, once again, conceivably by the impact of human beings and the absence of wise stewardship and, in fact, sustainable development practices.

Extreme weather events, which we’re seeing more and more of – we spent about 110 billion or so last year in the United States of America for one year’s damages. I mean, you think, if you start accruing that on an annualized basis, folks, the kind of input we’re talking about in order to put out technology that could reduce those impacts or limit them altogether is miniscule compared to those damages and to what will happen as property disappears, as insurance rates go up, as whole nations like islands in the Maldives or the Seychelles or other places, in fact, are threatened by sea level rise. There’s no mystery to what any of this means.

And so we also see the loss of sea ice, meaning coastal disruptions and storm surges, and in lower latitudes the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which has real impact because it’s currently above water, on ground. And as that water enters the ocean – or the whole ice sheet or parts of it might start to break off – you are going to see some serious impacts. So nobody can afford to be passive on this issue, and that’s what brings us to the table in this effort for these two years. The responsibility the Arctic Council has to the people who live in the region – as beautiful as it is, it is not just a picturesque landscape. It’s a home. It’s a lifestyle. It has a history. And those folks deserve as much respect for that as anybody else in any other habitat on the earth.

Over the next years, we’re going to focus on the well-being of the indigenous communities, and we’re going to take into account that the melting of the ice is now opening up the possibilities of a great deal more commercial traffic, a great deal more tourism – eco-tourism or otherwise – and a great deal more shipping, fishing, and commercial operations, particularly possibility of extraction of minerals from the ocean and the possibility of conflict as people engage in staking claims for that. So there’s a lot at stake, which is why President Obama did undertake to articulate this in the context of the Coast Guard graduation yesterday. So we have to implement the framework that we have developed to reduce emissions of black carbon and methane in the Arctic, and at the same time we have to foster economic development that will raise living standards and help make renewable energy sources the choice for everybody.

So everybody in this room is connected to the Arctic somehow. That’s what brought you here today. And I think there’s an extraordinary degree of unity of purpose in our beginnings here and in our being here. We want a region where people can live with hope and optimism for the future, where strong measures are being taken to mitigate environmental harm, where natural resources are managed effectively and sustainably, and where the challenges of economic development and social cohesion are being addressed in a creative, sensitive, responsible way. Above all, we want a region where every stakeholder has a voice and a role in making the idea of one Arctic a reality. And I want to thank each of you for the contributions that you are making to this effort and that you will make over the course of these years.

It’s my pleasure now to introduce to you somebody who has probably gained the title as the guest who came the furthest even. Forgive me. It’s only the second visit that Byron Nicholai has made to the Lower 48, as it’s called, and it’s his first to the East Coast. And the reason it’s his first is he only just turned 17 years old, folks. (Laughter.) Byron’s home is the village of Toksook Bay in Alaska, where he was a star basketball player. He was the leader of the high school drum group. And as we will soon see and hear, he also sings. And when he posted a song on Facebook, his world suddenly got a lot bigger. (Laughter.) After graduation, Byron hopes to do more traveling to teach students about his culture and hopefully to inspire them to learn more about their ancestral traditions. Tonight he is here to help us celebrate the next chapter in the work of the Arctic Council. And unity is our watchword, so please put your hands together and welcome Byron. (Applause.)

(Mr. Nicholai performs three songs.)

SECRETARY KERRY: That was wonderful. What a strong, resonant, extraordinary voice. And most importantly, thank you for really not just giving a person and a face to the Arctic, but also a voice and especially a spirit. And I think everybody here is deeply appreciative for you coming and singing. Thank you so much. Thank you. (Applause.) Have a good time, everybody.

Oh, I’ve just been handed a note. I wasn’t aware of this; I apologize. But the Swedish Minister for Research and Higher Education Hellmark Knutsson is here. Where is she? There. Thank you so much. (Applause.) Thank you very, very much. Thank you.

Folks, now you get to the Ben Franklin part of the party. Have fun.

DOD VIDEO: HUGE DRUG BUST FOR THE COAST GUARD

JORDANIAN COMPANY PLEADS GUILTY TO OIL SLUDGE WASTE DISCHARGE

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Jordanian Shipping Company Pleads Guilty to Illegally Discharging Oily Waste

Company Sentenced to Pay $500,000 Criminal Penalty

Jordan-based Arab Ship Management Ltd. pleaded guilty today in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, to one count of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, the Justice Department and the U.S. Coast Guard announced.

In accordance with the terms of the plea agreement, Arab Ship Management Ltd. was sentenced to pay a criminal penalty totaling $500,000 and be placed on probation for two years, during which time ships operated by the company will be banned from calling on ports of the United States.

“The defendant violated environmental laws that protect our marine environment from harmful pollution,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware Charles M. Oberly III.  “This conviction ensures that the defendant is held accountable with a criminal fine and a contribution to conservation efforts in coastal Delaware, as well as a two-year ban from United States ports.  The message to the shipping industry is clear: environmental crimes at sea will not be tolerated.”

“This case demonstrates one way the Coast Guard acts to protect the environment,” said Captain Kathy Moore, U.S. Coast Guard Commander of Sector Delaware Bay.  “Marine Inspectors detected serious problems with the ship’s operations.   They dove into the details and worked with the Department of Justice and the Coast Guard Investigative Service to bring this case to an appropriate resolution.”

According to court documents and statements made in court, Arab Ship Management Ltd. operated the M/V Neameh, a 6,398 gross ton ocean-going livestock carrier.   On March 28, 2013, the U.S. Coast Guard boarded the vessel in the Delaware Bay Big Stone Anchorage to conduct an inspection.   The inspection and subsequent criminal investigation revealed heavy oil sludge inside the piping on the discharge side of the pollution prevention equipment leading directly overboard, where no oil sludge should be if the pollution prevention equipment is operated properly.   Inspectors also discovered that the vessel’s piping arrangement had been modified in a prohibited manner so as to allow oil sludge to be pumped directly overboard.   This prohibited piping arrangement was removed prior to the vessel’s arrival in Delaware.   Also during the inspection, Coast Guard officers were presented with two oil record books which are required by law to be accurately maintained onboard the vessel.   These two oil record books contained different and contradictory entries for the time period of Nov. 30, 2011, through Jan. 2, 2012, as well as fake oily waste disposal receipts.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay, Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment Lewes and the Coast Guard Investigative Service.   The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Stephen Da Ponte in the Environmental Crimes Section of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice and Assistant U.S. Attorney Edmond Falgowski from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware.

USS GARY STOPS $22 MILLION COCAINE SHIPMENT

130104-N-ZZ999-001 U.S. 4TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (Jan. 4, 2013) Approximately 600 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $22 million was confiscated by the U.S. Coast Guard team aboard the guided-missile frigate USS Gary (FFG 51) after an interdiction while conducting Operation Martillo in the U.S. 4th Fleet area of responsibility in Central and South America. Operation Martillo, Spanish for hammer, is a U.S., European and Western Hemisphere partner nation effort targeting illicit trafficking routes in coastal waters along the Central American isthmus. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

FROM: U.S. NAVY

USS Gary Seizes $22 Million of Narcotics During Operation Martillo, Sinks Drug Boat

USS GARY, At Sea (NNS) -- The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Gary (FFG 51) and its embarked U.S. Coast Guard team leveraged the capabilities of partner nations and the interagency to intercept a small drug trafficking vessel and confiscated more than 600 pounds of cocaine while on patrol in U.S. 4th Fleet while conducting Operation Martillo Jan. 4.

The estimated street value of the seizure is approximately $22 million.

"This was one of those vessels we were chasing in the dark," said USS Gary's embarked Naval Criminal Investigative Service Agent, Leatrice Daniels. "There was great open communication with everybody involved. Everything just flowed, from pursuit to initial contact and boarding."

Shortly after the intercept and search of the drug vessel and its contents, the ship was deemed a hazard to navigation and subsequently sunk. This case concluded a week in which the Gary's crew successfully boarded three vessels and disrupted the smuggling of more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine destined for the United States worth an estimated street value of $272 million.

Gary is homeported in San Diego and is currently deployed to Central and South America in support of Operation Martillo and U.S. 4th Fleet's mission, Southern Seas 2012.

Operation Martillo - Spanish for "hammer"- is a U.S., European and Western Hemisphere partner nation effort targeting illicit trafficking routes in coastal waters along the Central American isthmus. U.S. military participation is being led by Joint Interagency Task Force South.

Operation Martillo is part of the U.S. government's coordinated regional security strategy in support of the White House strategy to combat transnational organized crime and the U.S. Central America Security Initiative.

Fourteen countries are participating: Canada, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

COAST GUARD RESPONDING TO HURRICANE SANDY

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Robert C. Parker, Atlantic Area commander, assesses the area along the New Jersey coastline on Oct. 31, 2012. Parker and Coast Guard Rear Adm. Richard T. Gromlich, director of Operational Logistics, conducted an aerial survey of the New Jersey coastline, New York Harbor and Long Island to assess the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Lt. Cmdr. Jamie Frederick

 

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Coast Guard Responds to Superstorm Sandy Damage
From a Coast Guard Atlantic Area Public Affairs News Release
PORTSMOUTH, Va., Nov. 1, 2012 - Coast Guard leaders Vice Adm. Robert C. Parker, Atlantic Area commander, and Rear Adm. Richard T. Gromlich, director of Operational Logistics, conducted an aerial survey of the New Jersey coastline, New York Harbor and Long Island yesterday to assess the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy.
Currently, the Coast Guard's top priority is to get the port of New York and New Jersey back to full operations. Their assessment included evaluating impacts to the maritime transportation system and Coast Guard facilities.

"The United States is a maritime nation and we rely heavily on the ports for commerce. Ninety-five percent of our goods come to us by way of [the] sea. Just about everything you purchase ... most likely came through a seaport somewhere at some time," Parker said.

"The port of New York and New Jersey is vital to our nation's economy and we are doing everything humanly possible to get the port back to full operations. This is an all-hands-on-deck evolution," he added.

The Coast Guard's priorities are safety of life, to restore the local maritime transportation system -- specifically in New York and New Jersey -- and to effect rapid reconstitution of operations in the affected areas. Coast Guard crews continue to conduct assessments to ensure ports are safe and ready for business.

Coast Guard operations continue despite some service shore infrastructures sustaining flood damage, limited communications capacity and power outages.

As the Coast Guard Atlantic Area Commander, Parker serves as the operational commander for all Coast Guard missions within a geographic region that ranges from the Rocky Mountains to the Arabian Gulf and spans across five Coast Guard Districts and 40 states.

　

 

SHIP'S CAPTAIN CONVICTED OF OBSTRUCTING A COAST GUARD INSPECTION

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Friday, May 18, 2012
WASHINGTON – The former captain of a Panama-flagged cargo ship that discharged hundreds of plastic pipes into the ocean, was convicted yesterday by a jury in Mobile, Ala., for obstructing a U.S. Coast Guard inspection of the vessel in the port of Mobile on Sept. 21, 2011.  Prastana Taohim, 38, the captain of the M/V Gaurav Prem, was found guilty of two counts of obstruction of justice, announced Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and Kenyen R. Brown, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.

At trial, witnesses testified that Captain Taohim ordered the ship’s chief officer to throw hundreds of plastic pipes into the ocean and not record the discharge in the ship’s garbage record book as required.  The garbage record book is a required log regularly inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard.  Taohim then knowingly made the garbage record book available during a Coast Guard inspection of the vessel in the Port of Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 21, 2011. The plastic pipes had previously contained insecticide and were used to fumigate a grain shipment.  The discharge of plastic into the sea is prohibited under the International Convention to Prevent Pollution from Ships, known as MARPOL.  

Taohim was found guilty in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Alabama for obstructing the Coast Guard’s inspection of the ship.   The jury also found the defendant guilty of one count of obstruction of justice related to covering up the pollution by creating a false and fictitious garbage log.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 15, 2012.

This investigation was conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division.  Additional assistance was provided by the Coast Guard Sector Mobile, and U.S. Coast Guard Eighth District Legal Office.  The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney David O’Connell of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section of the Environment and Natural Resources Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Anderson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama.

U.S. NAVY AND COAST GUARD WORK TO PREVENT NARCOTICS FROM ENTERING U.S.

FROM:  U.S. NAVY
CARIBBEAN SEA (April 21, 2012) U.S Navy and Coast Guard personnel assigned to the guided-missile frigate USS Elrod (FFG-55) pick up bales of narcotics April 21, 2012 during recovery operations in the Caribbean Sea. Joint service operatives prevent the flow of narcotics into the U.S.(U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andy Barrera/Released)

FLEET WEEK PORT EVERGLADES 2012

FROM:  U.S. NAVY
PORT EVERGLADES, Fla. (April 25, 2012) The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) prepares to moor at Port Everglades. Wasp, along with four other U.S. Navy ships and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter are scheduled to participate in the Fleet Week Port Everglades 2012. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Greg Johnson/Released)

U.S. NAVY AND COAST GUARD RESCUE TAIWANESE FISHERMEN

 FROM:  U.S. NAVY
PACIFIC OCEAN (April 21, 2012) A fire burns aboard the Taiwanese fishing vessel Shin Maan Chun in the Pacific Ocean. The fire forced the crew of nine to abandon ship and through a coordinated effort between the U.S. 7th Fleet and U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam, all of the fishermen were safely rescued and brought aboard the Marshallese-flagged bulk carrier Semirio. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

VP-1 Assists in Taiwanese Fishing Vessel Rescue
From Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet Public Affairs
USS BLUE RIDGE, At Sea (NNS) -- A P-3 Orion from Patrol Squadron (VP) 1, in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard's District 14, assisted in the rescue of 10 Taiwanese fishermen April 21, 700 miles off the west coast of Guam.

At approximately 4:30 p.m., local time, Coast Guard Sector Guam received an initial alert from an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon from the Hsin Man Chun, the 70-foot Taiwanese fishing vessel. After a request for assistance from the Coast Guard, VP-1's P-3 located 10 crew members from the fishing vessel that was reported to be on fire.

VP-1 spotted eight crew members in a life raft with two crew members still on the burning vessel's bridge. The P-3 deployed two life rafts to assist crew members in distress.

At the time of the request for assistance, the Semirio was only 40 miles away from the distressed vessel. Once on scene, the 980-foot bulk carrier launched a small boat and successfully rescued all 10 crew members.

The Semirio is one of many foreign flagged vessels operating in the Pacific that voluntarily participate in the Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER).

AMVER, sponsored by the U.S. Coast Guard, is a unique, computer-based, and voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities to arrange for assistance to persons in distress at sea. With AMVER, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and divert the best-suited ship or ships to respond.