Big Greens

The 2024 Election Was The Final Nail In The US Climate Movement’s Coffin

November 18, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Featured Campaign, Podcast - Clearing The FOG Big Greens, Climate Movement, Democrats, Election, Fossil Fuels, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris

The newest Global Carbon Budget Report found that carbon emissions were at a record high in 2024, despite the strong evidence that emissions must be cut drastically to mitigate the climate crisis. The United States, the largest producer of fossil fuels and responsible for 13% of global carbon emissions (with only 4% of the world's population), is largely responsible for the crisis. Clearing the FOG speaks with Anthony Rogers-Wright, a national racial and climate justice advocate, about the failures of the US climate movement and its fatal flaw of being loyal to the Democratic Party. That loyalty profoundly undermined the credibility of the big environmental groups in this election cycle. Rogers-Wright discusses the COP29 and where we go from here to build an independent and more strategic climate movement in the United States.

Blue (MAGA) In Green

September 19, 2024 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 2024 US Presidential elections, Big Greens, climate crisis, Democratic Party, Elections, Environment

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to refute the sentiment that the mainstream environmental “movement” has lost its way, assuming that it ever had a clear one in the first place. This election cycle has illuminated the fact that this cadre of the larger non profit industrial apparatus has aligned itself more with a political party, the Democrats, than with the principles necessary to confront the quintessential climate crisis that’s edging the planet and requisite systems for survival to a junction of entropy. It must now be said that the abject intransigence of mainstream environmental groups poses a clear and present danger to climate and environmental justice that in some ways, it could be argued, rivals that of former President Trump.

How A Not So Secret Listserv Exercises White ‘Supremacy’ Ideology

September 20, 2023 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Big Greens, Cop City, Liberalism, White Supremacy

Prophet and GOAT status holder, James Baldwin, wrote in his opus, No Name in the Street, “Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, is a vivid example of what can happen to a Black man who obeys the American injunction, be true to your faith, but his press has been so misleading that he is also an unwieldy and intimidating example.” Brother Jimmy continues, “Muhammad Ali is one of the best of the ‘bad niggers’ and has been publicly hanged like one…” Without knowing it (or maybe he did, he was, afterall, a prophet), Baldwin adroitly portrayed the baleful conditions associated with being a profound, unapologetic (as it was written by the dear and brilliant sister Charlene Caruthers) , and non-tone policed Black person in the United Statesian climate/environmental “movement,” and the nonprofit industrial complex writ large.

‘Climate Bill’ Enriches The Fossil Fuel Industry As Communities Suffer

September 18, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Big Greens, climate crisis, Climate Justice, Congress, Democrats, Fossil Fuels, Inequality, Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden

One year after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Big Green groups hailed as a 'climate justice bill,' the truth is surfacing that this legislation is lining the pockets of the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of frontline, especially Black and Indigenous, communities. Clearing the FOG speaks to Anthony Rogers-Wright, a national racial and climate justice advocate, about the ways Joe Biden and the Democrats are failing to address the climate crisis and Big Green groups are turning away from climate justice to embrace Green Capitalism. Rogers-Wright also describes better alternatives to the Big Greens and where people can focus their efforts effectively to struggle for a just and livable future.

Responding To Protests, Green Groups Reckon With A Racist Past

June 3, 2020 By Shannon Osaka, Grist. Strategize! Big Greens, Environmental racism, George Floyd, Racism

Already stressed by the threat of coronavirus and widespread unemployment, the United States has erupted into protests after the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by a Minneapolis police officer. Now, prominent groups in the environmental movement — which has long struggled with a dark, racist past — are speaking out against institutional prejudice and calling for the movement to better prioritize social justice. “For too long conservation and environmental movements have not spoken up to address the long-standing challenges that non-white communities face,” Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “Environmental organizations should work to bring down the barriers that affect Black, people of color, and Indigenous communities.” The League of Conservation Voters, Earthjustice, 350.org, and the Sierra Club also issued statements.

Gulf Coast Activists Tell ‘Big Green’ To Quit Exploiting Their Disasters

July 4, 2016 Yessenia Funes, www.colorlines.com Strategize! Activists, Big Greens, Exploitation

By Yessenia Funes for Colorlines - In a new open letter, a group of 11 Gulf Coast environmental justice activists are demanding "respect and solidarity" from national "Big Green" organizations that they accuse of exploiting their local disasters for financial gain and treating poor people of color as "poster children for environmental injustice." The activists, who hail from EJ groups including 350 Louisiana, Houstonians Against Tar Sands and Radical Arts & Healing Collective, published the letter on a New Orleans website June 27 and sent it to Colorlines yesterday.

What Will It Take To Create Climate Justice?

September 11, 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.occupy.com Strategize! Big Greens, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Energy

All of the elements required to create climate justice seem to be in place. The climate movement can put hundreds of thousands on the streets, organize creative civil resistance, get thousands to risk arrest and mobilize blockades of tar sands, fracking, oil pipelines and mountain top removal. Polls show high levels of public support for taking action on climate change. A 2014 Gallup Poll shows 65% of Americans support emissions controls and a 2014 George Mason-Yale study found Americans were twice as likely to support a congressional or presidential candidate who strongly supports action to reduce global warming. Yet, despite all of this, the climate change movement is unable to move U.S. or UN policy or force the economic system to respond adequately to the climate crisis.

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