Category: Front

Northern Arapaho Disrupts Biden at COP27: “No Time for False Solutions”

  By , ,

cross-posted from Censored News

Four protesters holding a banner which read ‘people vs fossils’ interrupted the speech of Joe Biden, the US president, to Cop27.

The protesters were youth and Indigenous activists from the US, and they were calling on Biden to stop pushing fossil fuel extraction. They spoke with the Guardian shortly after being escorted out of the plenary hall by security staff.

“The president, members of Congress and the state department have come to this international forum on climate change proposing false solutions that will not get us to 1.5C,” said Big Wind, 29, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe in Wyoming.

“We need to accelerate the transition but that’s not going to happen by partnering with big polluters like Amazon and PepsiCo, and so we needed to call that out,” he said, in reference to an announcement earlier this week by US climate envoy John Kerry, the Bezos Earth Fund, PepsiCo and others about plans to design an energy transition accelerator.

Biden referenced Indigenous peoples in his speech, yet has failed to leverage his power to support them directly through direct access to funds needed by communities to adapt to the climate crisis, said Big Wind.

Jamie Wefald, a 24-year-old climate activist from Brooklyn, New York, said: “Joe Biden is promoting false solutions to the climate crisis, he is no climate hero. We wanted to create a moment on behalf of all frontline communities in the global north and south to demand real climate solutions.”

 

Climate Activists, Including Scientists, Are Arrested in Protests at Private Airports

  By ,

cross-posted from Common Dreams

“The rich are burning down the planet and the damage is irreversible,” said one arrested climate scientist. “We must stop them. Banning private jets would be a start.”

by Brett Wilkins

Fifteen activists were arrested for shutting down the entrances to airports serving private jets across the United States on Thursday as part of worldwide climate protests led by groups including Extinction Rebellion, Scientist Rebellion, New York Communities for Change, and the New York City chapter of the youth-led Sunrise Movement.

“Taking a private jet while the planet is on fire is utter insanity.”

According to a representative of New York Communities for Change, seven demonstrators were arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey—the nation’s busiest private jetport—while four activists were apprehended at Van Nuys Airport outside Los Angeles, and four protesters were taken into police custody at Wilson Air Terminal at Charlotte International Airport in North Carolina.

“The rich are burning down the planet and the damage is irreversible,” climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who was arrested in Charlotte, said in a statement. “We must stop them. Banning private jets would be a start.”

Referring to the billionaire founders of Amazon.com and Microsoft respectively, Scientist Rebellion member Gianluca Grimalda said: “It is obscene that Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates can fly their private jets tax-free, while global communities starve. It’s only fair that wealthy polluters pay the most into climate loss and damage funds to help the most vulnerable countries adapt.”

While private jets account for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse emissions, the world’s richest 1% produce more than double the emissions of the poorest 50%, and a single billionaire produces a million times more emissions than an average person, as an Oxfam study reported by Common Dreams earlier this week explained.

Earlier this week, more than 100 activists were arrested during a similar protest against private jets in Amsterdam.

“Taking a private jet while the planet is on fire is utter insanity,” said Will Livernois, a bioelectronics researcher at the University of Washington who took part in a protest in Seattle on Thursday. “The science has been clear for half a century and we have not changed trajectory. The elite who have funded this crisis must pay back what they have taken from our world.”

PODCAST: Update from #COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt

  By ,

The 27th meeting of the United Nations Climate talks, or COP27 is happening in Sharm El-Sheikh, a coastal resort town in Egypt. The gathering is happening amidst a crackdown on Egyptian civil society by the government around climate issues and food shortages.

Listen in: https://apple.co/3EiyqIK

Green and Red Podcast gets an update with a climate activist on the ground in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Santa Fe: Protest in response to Bureau of Land Management proposed fracking auction of 260,000 + acres in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Kansas

  By ,

pic via Wild Earth Guardians

cross-posted from Censored News

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO—Adding to growing calls for President Biden to follow through on his promise to stop fossil fuel leasing on public lands, groups today delivered more protests in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s latest proposal to lease over 260,000 acres of public and ancestral tribal lands across Wyoming, New Mexico, and Kansas at its proposed May 2023 oil and gas lease sale.

In response to the short 30-day comment period deadline, advocates representing the Permian Basin Climate Justice Coalition and the Greater Chaco Coalition rallied in front of Bureau of Land Management New Mexico Headquarters in Santa Fe to deliver over 20,000 public comments, thousands of pages of technical comments and exhibits, as well as a letter requesting an extension of the reduced public comment period.

Today’s action underscores long-standing calls from environmental groups and environmental justice advocates for President Biden to keep his promise and end new fossil fuel leasing and phase out oil and gas development, despite recent hostage provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that ties continued federal oil and gas leasing to renewable energy investments.

“More oil and gas leasing is the exact opposite of what is needed to address the climate crisis. It furthers our dependence on fossil fuels while placing Black, Brown, Indigenous, and frontline communities at higher risk of harmful and unacceptable health and environmental consequences,” said Miya King-Flaherty, Organizer for Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter.

Thousands of organizations and communities across the U.S. have called on President Biden to halt federal fossil fuel expansion and phase out production consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Multiple analyses show emissions from existing fossil fuel projects have already pushed warming well past the threshold of climate catastrophe.

“Opening hundreds of thousands of additional public and ancestral tribal lands for more oil and gas drilling only serves to shackle regions such as the Permian for decades to come to boom-and-bust cycles that come with an oil-fueled economy,” said Kayley Shoup, Organizer for Citizens Caring for the Future. “Continuing a legacy of pollution and extraction zones is egregious at a time when addressing the impacts of climate change and investing in renewable energy should be a top priority.”

Over 3,000 acres of federal public land are being offered for auction in Eddy, Lea, and Chaves counties in southeastern New Mexico’s Permian Basin. The area is already known as a “climate bomb” where oil and gas development has more than quadrupled in the last decade, producing as much climate pollution as 24 coal plants. In New Mexico, 144,377 people, including 38,749 children, currently reside near or attend schools or daycares within a half-mile radius of active oil and gas operations.

“Continuing to lease our public lands for more oil and gas drilling proves President Biden is prioritizing Big Oil profits over future generations,” said Raena Garcia, Fossil Fuels and Lands Campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “Communities are knee-deep in climate catastrophe, with intensifying wildfires and hurricanes foreshadowing what’s to come if the fossil fuel industry keeps exploiting public lands. Biden must stop auctioning off our public lands if he wants to be the climate leader he claims to be.”

New Mexico is the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental U.S.; the oil and gas industry is flooding funds for political campaigns whilst contributing more than half of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Supercharged by the warming climate, this year brought record-breaking fires and an unprecedented drought season not seen in over 1,200 years. For the first time in 40 years, the Rio Grande River went dry in Albuquerque.

“It’s long past time for our federal government to phase out oil and gas fracking and to prioritize our climate, environment, and public health above a profiteering industry that got us into the climate crisis in the first place,” said Rebecca Sobel, Organizing Director for WildEarth Guardians. “It’s imperative that the federal government end leasing on public lands if the Biden administration has any hope of meeting its climate goals and avoiding catastrophe.”