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114 Climate Defenders Arrested While Blocking Entry to NY Federal Reserve

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A protester is led away by a New York City police officer during a September 18, 2023 climate protest in Lower Manhattan. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A protester is led away by a New York City police officer during a September 18, 2023 climate protest in Lower Manhattan. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The activist group Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”

A day after tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Manhattan’s Upper East Side demanding an end to oil, gas, and coal production, thousands more demonstrators hit the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday, where more than 100 people were arrested while surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to protest fossil fuel financing.

Protesters chanted slogans like “No oil, no gas, fossil fuels can kiss my ass” and “We need clean air, not another billionaire” as they marched from Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement—to pre-selected sites in the Financial District. Witnesses said many of the activists attempted to reach the New York Stock Exchange but were blocked by police.

“We’re here to wake up the regulators who are asleep at the wheel as they continue to let Wall Street lead us into ANOTHER financial crash with their fossil fuel financing,” the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition explained on social media.

Local and national media reported New York Police Department (NYPD) officers arrested 114 protesters and charged them with civil disobedience Monday after they blocked entrances to the Fed building. Most of those arrested were expected to be booked and released.

“I’m being arrested for exercising my First Amendment right to protest because Joe Manchin is putting a 300-mile-long pipeline through my home state of West Virginia and President [Joe] Biden allowed him to do it for nothing in return,” explained Climate Defiance organizer Rylee Haught on social media, referring to the right-wing Democratic senator and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

As she was led away by an NYPD officer, a tearful Haught said Biden “sold us out.”

“He promised to end drilling on federal lands, and he’s selling out Appalachia’s future for profit,” she added.

Responding to the “block-long” line of arrestees, Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”

Alicé Nascimento of New York Communities for Change toldWABC that the protests—which are part of Climate Week and are timed to coincide with this week’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit—are “our last resort.”

“We’re bringing the crisis to their doorstep and this is what it looks like,” said Nascimento.

As they have at similar demonstrations, protesters called on Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Some had a message for the president and his administration.

“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” 17-year-old Brooklynite Emma Buretta of the youth-led protest group Fridays for Future told WABC. “If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Climate activists block Federal Reserve bank, calling for end to fossil fuel funding

Continue Reading114 Climate Defenders Arrested While Blocking Entry to NY Federal Reserve

Greenpeace Protests ‘Shock Doctrine’ by Blockading New TotalEnergies LNG Terminal

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Greenpeace activists paint "Gas kills" on the hull of the Cape Ann.
Greenpeace activists paint, “Gas kills,” on the hull of the Cape Ann.
 (Photo: Jean Nicholas Guillo/Greenpeace)

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Gas companies “cynically used… the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” one campaigner said.

As part of the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels, activists from Greenpeace France attempted to block a new TotalEnergies liquefied natural gas terminal [tanker] from entering the port of Le Havre Monday morning.

Kayakers paddled between the port entrance and the tanker carrying the terminal—the Cape Ann—and wrote “Gas kills” in white paint along its side, Reuters reported.

“This LNG terminal is yet another blatant example of ‘shock doctrine,’ where gas operators shifted their public messaging and lobbying from ‘energy transition’ to ‘energy security’ and cynically used the opportunity after the energy supply concerns triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” Greenpeace France oil, transport, and ocean campaigner Hélène Bourges said in a statement.

ation unit did arrive at the port in Western France Monday morning, TotalEnergies told Reuters.

But the Greenpeace activists argue its arrival contradicts French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 promise to make France the first major nation to abandon the fossil fuels driving the climate emergency. What’s more, the gas is mostly U.S. shale gas, obtained by fracking—a method banned in France because of the harm it does to the global climate and the health and environment of local communities.

The activists in kayaks carried banners reading “Total: shale dealer,” “Macron: shale dealer,” and “End Fossil Crimes.”

Members of Scientists in Rebellion also came to Le Havre to support the action.

“This LNG terminal is a sham that responds neither to the crisis nor to energy sovereignty and pushes us into a scenario of climate chaos,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Greenpeace challenged the narrative that increased LNG is necessary to help France and the rest of Europe meet their energy needs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a report copublished in June with Disclose, Greenpeace France pointed out that the country’s existing LNG terminals did not use their maximum capacity in 2022 and were underutilized during the first half of 2023.

“If France really suffered from a gas supply crisis in 2022 that was severe enough to justify the new floating terminal in Le Havre, it’s surprising that the capacities of existing terminals, particularly the ones at Dunkerque and Fos Tonkin, were underutilized,” the report authors wrote.

“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels.”

Instead, they argued that the LNG increase was the result of lobbying from the oil and gas industry.

“The only beneficiaries of the LNG gas infrastructure in Le Havre are TotalEnergies, the operator of the floating terminal, and its shareholders, whose private interests and gains prevail over climate action and people’s health, with the complicit support of the French government that granted an unprecedented legal preferential regime to set up this operation,” Bourges said in a statement.

Greenpeace’s action followed a summer of deadly heatwaves, fires, and floods and a global mobilization to end fossil fuels from September 15-17.

“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels,” Greenpeace France wrote on social media.

The group said it had two demands for Macron: to prevent the new terminal from being used and to kill any other fossil fuel projects under consideration.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingGreenpeace Protests ‘Shock Doctrine’ by Blockading New TotalEnergies LNG Terminal

‘Time to Make Them Pay’: Internal Docs Further Expose Exxon Efforts to Spread Climate Lies

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Climate change isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a crime,” said one climate campaigner in response to documents reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Previously unreported documents published on the front page of The Wall Street Journal Thursday show that ExxonMobil continued to work behind closed doors to cast doubt on climate science, even after the company publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel-driven greenhouse gas emissions and climate change in 2006.

The documents—which detail email exchanges between executives, board meeting conversations, and other company proceedings—reveal that during his tenure as CEO, Rex Tillerson joined other Exxon leaders in questioning “the severity of climate change’s impacts,” the Journal reported.

The company’s scientists, meanwhile, “supported research that questioned the findings of mainstream climate science” despite Exxon’s pledge to stop bankrolling think tanks and other groups peddling climate denial.

After scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded the alarm in 2011 about the potentially devastating global impacts of runaway warming, Tillerson told a leading Exxon researcher that the IPCC’s warning was “not credible” and complained about the media’s coverage of the potentially dire scenario, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.

“Tillerson wanted to engage with IPCC ‘to influence [the group], in addition to gathering info,'” the newspaper reported.

Tillerson also dismissed the Paris Climate Agreement’s 2°C warming target as “something magical” shortly before Exxon endorsed the accord.

“As communities pay an ever-greater price for our worsening climate crisis, it’s more clear than ever that Exxon must be held accountable to pay for the harm it has caused.”

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement that “this damning new evidence of Exxon’s climate lies shows that for decades it has been official company policy for executives to undermine climate science, minimize the dangers of their oil and gas business, and protect company profits at all costs—with no concern for the catastrophic impact their actions would have on humanity.”

Wiles argued that the documents reported by the Journal provide more evidence for the dozens of states, cities, and counties that are currently suing Exxon and other fossil fuel giants over their decades-long effort to deceive the public about climate change.

“As communities pay an ever-greater price for our worsening climate crisis,” said Wiles, “it’s more clear than ever that Exxon must be held accountable to pay for the harm it has caused.”

The new reporting could also heighten pressure on the Biden Justice Department to join the legal fight against Big Oil.

In late July, a group of progressive U.S. senators led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the DOJ to sue fossil fuel giants for violating “federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws.”

It has long been public knowledge that Exxon, the largest oil and gas company in the United States, was aware of the climate impacts of its business model well before it admitted the link between fossil fuels and climate change.

A peer-reviewed study published earlier this year in the journal Science shows that Exxon’s own internal data between 1977 and 2003 contradicted the company’s public statements downplaying and questioning the veracity of climate science.

The Journal‘s reporting confirms that Exxon did not stop working to sow doubt about climate change after it conceded for the first time in 2006 that “the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems.”

“In 2008, Exxon announced it would stop funding think tanks and other groups that questioned climate science, saying their positions ‘could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner,'” the Journal noted.

But internal company documents show that “Exxon researchers continued to support scientific research that cast doubt on climate science and its impacts,” the newspaper reported.

The same year the company vowed to stop funding climate-denial organizations, Exxon’s manager of global regulatory affairs said that “Exxon should direct a scientist to help the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s influential lobbying group, write a paper about climate science uncertainty.”

Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, called the Journal‘s reporting “another massive exposé of Exxon’s strategy to attack climate science and block action.”

“Climate change isn’t just a tragedy,” Henn added, “it’s a crime.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Time to Make Them Pay’: Internal Docs Further Expose Exxon Efforts to Spread Climate Lies

Rich Nations Have Delivered Mere ‘Pittance’ to Help East Africa Tackle Climate Crisis: Oxfam

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“We have an abundance of clean, renewable energy,” said one African activist. “But to unlock it, Africa needs funding from countries that have got rich off our suffering.”

As the first-ever Africa Climate Summit kicked off in Nairobi, Kenya on Monday, an analysis by the humanitarian group Oxfam found that rich nations have delivered just a small fraction of the aid that East African nations say they need each year to meet their climate goals.

Unlike rich countries that account for a disproportionate share of planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution, East Africa has contributed “almost nothing” to global carbon emissions that are driving record-shattering heat worldwide, Oxfam’s new report notes. In 2021, according to one recent estimate, the average North American emitted 11 times more carbon dioxide than the average African.

The World Meteorological Organization pointed out Monday that Africa is responsible for less than 10% of global carbon emissions.

Yet “East Africa is one of the world’s worst-hit regions by climate change and is now experiencing its worst climate-induced extreme weather, fueling an alarming hunger crisis,” Oxfam’s report states. “Over 31.5 million people are currently facing acute hunger across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan.”

Those countries, which suffer billions of dollars worth of climate-related damage each year, have said they will need at least $53.3 billion annually to meet critical targets under the Paris Climate Agreement. According to Oxfam, wealthy countries provided just $2.4 billion in aid to East African nations in 2021.

More broadly, Oxfam noted, high-income countries pledged that they would provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help lower-income countries fight climate chaos.

“Oxfam estimates that in 2020 the real value of financial support specifically aimed at climate action was only around $21 billion to $24.5 billion—much less than officially reported figures suggest,” the group’s report states.

Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam’s Africa director, said Monday that “even by their own generous accounts, polluting nations have delivered only pittance to help East Africa scale up their mitigation and adaptation efforts.”

“Nearly half the funds (45%) they did give were loans, plunging the region further into more debt,” N’Zi-Hassane added.

Climate finance is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the Nairobi summit, which comes after months of scorching heat on the continent.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, toldBloomberg in July. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

The Associated Press reported Monday that “there is some frustration on the continent about being asked to develop in cleaner ways than the world’s richest countries—which have long produced most of the emissions that endanger climate—and to do it while much of the support that has been pledged hasn’t appeared.”

Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa told AP that “we have an abundance of clean, renewable energy and it’s vital that we use this to power our future prosperity. But to unlock it, Africa needs funding from countries that have got rich off our suffering.”

In addition to calling on rich nations to contribute the aid they’ve promised to support Africa’s renewable energy transition, African civil society groups are urging their leaders to reject fossil fuel expansion, specifically warning against the completion of TotalEnergies’ East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

A recent Human Rights Watch report warned that more than 100,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania are set to “permanently lose land to make way for the pipeline and Tilenga oilfield development.” One analysis indicates the pipeline could result in 379 million tonnes of planet-warming emissions over its lifespan—more than 25 times the combined annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania.

Zaki Mamdoo, coordinator of the Stop EACOP Coalition, said Monday that “the African Climate Summit could provide the platform needed for the continent to dramatically shift its trajectory and future—from one that is set to bear the brunt of climate collapse, to one of energy security and prosperity driven by decentralized and people-centered renewables.”

“For this to happen,” said Mamdoo, “African leaders will need to rise to the occasion and make firm commitments to significantly upscale renewable energy developments while resisting and withdrawing any and all support for exploitative and destructive projects like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingRich Nations Have Delivered Mere ‘Pittance’ to Help East Africa Tackle Climate Crisis: Oxfam

Top Climate Scientists to Biden: ‘Follow the Science, Stop Fossil Fuels’

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Original article by Andrea Germanos republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Note that the original article was published 7 April, 2022.

U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus is seen outside a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles on April 6, 2022. Along with several others, he locked himself to the front door of the building and was ultimately arrested as they engaged in civil disobedience as part Scientist Rebellion’s week of action. (Photo: Scientist Rebellion)

The letter to President Joe Biden came amid a week of “scientist-led civil disobedience” demanding urgent climate action.

In a powerful direct appeal to President Joe Biden urging him to follow through on his vow to listen to science, a group of over 275 scientists on Thursday called on the U.S. leader to urgently ditch fossil fuels and lead the country to a renewable energy transition.

Written “in this moment of climate emergency… with utmost urgency,” the letter to Biden was coordinated by the advocacy group Food & Water Watch along with noted U.S. climate experts including Peter Kalmus, Sandra Steingraber, Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, and Michael Mann.

As Common Dreams previously reported, the scientists leading the effort unveiled the letter last month, seeking a critical mass of signatures to push back against the administration’s move to further oil and gas production as nations look to reduce their dependence on Russian fuels in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

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The letter–bluntly declaring “Follow the Science, Stop Fossil Fuels”–was officially sent to the White House Thursday, landing amid a week of “scientist-led civil disobedience” featuring strikes and occupations in dozens of countries to highlight the urgency of the ecological and climate crisis.

In their letter to Biden, the expert group cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in February cataloging the “unfolding climate catastrophe” as evidence of the need for swift action. Millions worldwide, including within the U.S., are already facing climate impacts, the IPCC report notes, including water scarcity and extreme weather events.

“These problems will only accelerate as we continue our reliance on fossil fuels,” the scientists wrote. “And, this is on top of the significant health and environmental justice impacts that power plants, export facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure have on neighboring communities.”

“As the IPCC report indicated, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that we must act now,” they wrote, “we simply do not have time to waste.”

Firmly rejecting Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s framing of the U.S. being “on war footing” in pushing for more domestic fossil fuel production, the scientists told Biden that such urgency must instead be directed at “building a renewable energy economy” and that he must exercise his “executive authority to redirect these massive investments, mobilize the country, and rally the global community around a program of energy security through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

“We urge you to lead boldly, take on the fossil fuel titans, and rally the country towards a renewable energy future,” the scientists wrote.

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Lead signatory and climate scientist Kalmus was among those taking part in Scientist Rebellion direct actions on Wednesday; he was ultimately arrested after locking himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles.

He was driven by what he sees as “humanity heading directly toward climate disaster” and “currently on track to lose everything we love.”

In an op-ed published at The Guardian Wednesday explaining why he was willing to risk arrest, Kalmus wrote, “If everyone could see what I see coming, society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.”

Original article by Andrea Germanos republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Note that the original article was published 7 April, 2022.

Continue ReadingTop Climate Scientists to Biden: ‘Follow the Science, Stop Fossil Fuels’