Dear friends,
Organizers estimate that 75,000 people turned out for yesterday’s climate march to demand that Biden take more climate action. It was a spirited event, with more attendance than many expected and probably not enough attendance to move the needle.
Even if you couldn’t be there, sign the petition to President Biden why we came out! This quick action is from People vs. Fossil Fuels.
There were climate protests on all seven continents. In NYC, there was a lot of important messaging about who is responsible for creating and addressing the crisis.
Instead, the World Bank has a history of decades of predatory and oppressive lending. Faced with sky-high interest rates and harsh loan conditions, the poor are pushed into crippling debt that holds back our economies and burdens people for generations. It's the story of greed, pouring money into fossil fuels, and damage to nature. It’s a story of human rights abuses and people forced from their homes to make room for giant infrastructure projects funded with World Bank money.
The World Bank needs urgent, deep reform, to meet the challenges of today’s world. And right now, a change in the Bank’s leadership has created a rare opportunity for us to demand the changes we need.
The new President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, took office this summer.
Call on the World Bank to clean up their act and stop funding fossil fuels. This quick action is from 350.org.
The artists were out in force, including kids dressed in dinosaur costumes and folks with beautiful, original signs. We marched behind folks from Bread and Puppet and the brilliant Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Choir. Below is Bread and Puppet, and their dynamic performance piece connecting fossil fuel profiteers with war.
Marching is obviously not enough. That’s why Earth Justice is suing the Biden Administration to stop next week’s lease sale of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore drilling.
[The] lawsuit challenges the upcoming lease sale for violations of NEPA because Interior did not consider the health threats to Gulf Coast communities living near oil refineries and other polluting drilling infrastructure. The department also failed to adequately consider the climate impacts from this massive new source of fossil fuel development. The lease sale could result in the production of more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years, resulting in over 370 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Donate to Earth Justice to support their legal efforts to protect communities, wildlife, and the climate.
I should also mention that we had fun. We marched as a group, met people along the way, and caught up to more friends toward the end.
Photo by Mita Patel
with love,
L