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Climate Justice

‘Sustainable Square Mile’ Tests Power Of Biden’s Billions For Climate Justice

August 28, 2024 Adam Mahoney, In These Times. , , , ,
Two days after a series of tornadoes ripped through Chicago’s South Side, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, Naomi Davis and Suzanne Waddell met in the front yard of Emmett Till’s childhood home to assess the damage. Fencing had been blown down. Their organization, Blacks in Green, founded by Davis in 2007, owns the historic landmark. It will open as a playhouse, community farm and museum in 2025, honoring the life the 14-year-old deserved to have. Even in 92-degree heat, people stopped by to take photos, a regular occurrence that reminds Davis of the larger duty marginalized people in America have ​“to remind each other of our greatness.”

Capitalism Facilitates Firestorms, Floods And Tornadoes

August 24, 2024 Zoe Johnson, Workers' World. , , , ,
Summer 2024 has been host to severe and persistent wildfires and tornadoes throughout the United States. Long before the summer, just from January through March alone, more than 2,669 square miles were charred in the United States. That’s larger than the area of Delaware and was already half of the total area impacted in 2023. Moreover, the National Weather Service confirmed 180 tornadoes in July, the most the country has had since 1997, when there were 190. Most of these tornadoes resulted from two storm systems: Hurricane Beryl and the July 15 Derecho — a very long-lived and damaging thunderstorm that can itself be as damaging as a tornado — that impacted Chicago.

Climate Activists Celebrate Shutting Down Major Polluter

August 18, 2024 Whitney Wildman, Fight Back! News. , , ,
Minneapolis, MN – On August 16, over 100 activists and community members held a celebratory rally in response to winning the struggle to shut down a long-time polluter, Smith Foundry. The Smith Foundry is one of several heavy industrial sites located in the residential Minneapolis neighborhood of East Phillips, one of the most diverse and working-class neighborhoods in Minnesota. The city has long used East Phillips as its toxic dumping ground, and, as a result, East Phillips has some of the highest rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease in the state. Notably, Smith Foundry operated as the top lead polluter in the county, further poisoning an already environmentally overburdened community.

Airport Disruption Entered Fourth Day; Starmer’s Government A Target

July 28, 2024 The Canary. , , , , , , , , , ,
On Saturday 27 July, peaceful protests took place in at least six cities across six countries in support of Oil Kills – an international uprising to end oil, gas and coal by 2030. Airport disruption was a key feature, again – with more arrests amid blockades. However, in the UK things went up a gear – as activists targeted Keir Starmer’s new Labour Party government. Across the UK, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada, protesters are gathering to demand their governments commit to establishing a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 as well as supporting and financing poorer countries to make a fast, fair, and just transition.

South Africa Passes Its First Climate Change Act

July 24, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
South Africa has passed its first Climate Change Act, a sweeping law that will set limits for big greenhouse gas emitters and require that every town and city publish an adaptation plan with the objective of meeting the country’s carbon emissions reduction commitments in accordance with the Paris Agreement. South Africa is a member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 190-plus members of which are parties to the 2016 Paris Agreement. President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Climate Change Bill into law. The new law establishes a national response to climate change, including actions for mitigation and adaptation, which constitute South Africa’s “fair contribution to the global climate change response,” a press release from the South African government said.

Climate Activists Score Major Win In Campaign To Electrify DC

July 20, 2024 AbShepherd, Resilience. , , , , , ,
Last month, Extinction Rebellion D.C. scored a major victory for the End Methane, Electrify D.C. campaign: the D.C. Public Service Commission dismissed corporate utility provider Washington Gas’ application for the third phase of their $12 billion fossil fuel pipeline replacement project dubbed Project Pipes. The commission also partially approved a petition to investigate Washington Gas’ leak reduction practices. This victory is a major milestone in the fight to shut down a fossil fuel project that would lock D.C. into decades of planet-warming emissions while poisoning the city’s residents, especially the communities that are most marginalized and underserved.

High In The Himalayas, Resistance To Modi Is On The Rise

July 2, 2024 Safeena Wani, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , ,
The return of Narendra Modi as prime minister of India for a third consecutive term has come as a wakeup call for the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party, or BJP. Unlike 2014 and 2019, Modi’s party this time fell short of the numbers needed to win an outright majority in parliament, despite his pre-election boasts to the contrary. Analysts attribute concerns over unemployment, inflation and growing conflict with China for Modi’s modest mandate. Apart from losing support from strongholds like Uttar Pradesh, Modi also lost ground in the mountainous region of Ladakh, which shares borders with China and Pakistan.

Campaigners Are Targeting Fossil Fuel Financial Backers With Lawsuits

July 1, 2024 Isabella Kaminski, DeSmog. , , , ,
Campaigners are increasingly taking out lawsuits against the funders of fossil fuels and other climate-harming activities, according to a new report. In its annual review of climate litigation, published June 26, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s (LSE) Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment identifies a modest but growing number of lawsuits challenging the flow of finance to projects that worsen climate change. In total, 33 cases that challenge the flow of funding have been recorded since academics began keeping track nine years ago. Six were filed in 2023.

A Jury Ignored A Judge And Stopped Climate Protesters Being Convicted

June 17, 2024 The Canary. , , , , ,
A jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court has resisted a judge’s invitation to convict six medical professionals, charged with ‘criminal damage’, after they broke windows at JP Morgan in July 2022, on the eve of the UK’s record-breaking climate crisis-induced heatwave. Despite more than two days of deliberations and the judge’s direction that they had no legal defence, the jury were unable to agree on a verdict. Just before lunch on Friday 14 June, the jury asked the judge whether a medical emergency could be a lawful excuse, by inference rejecting the prosecutor’s position that the action concerned not objective reality, but ‘political opinion and belief’. The judge told them that in this case it was no defence.

Lloyds Of London Gets An Early Father’s Day Present

June 16, 2024 The Canary. , , ,
‘Super Dad’, supported by Mothers Rise Up – a group of concerned mums who campaign for action on climate breakdown – delivered a giant Father’s Day card and poem to Lloyd’s of London on Thursday 13 June as a gift to CEO John Neal in time for Father’s Day this weekend. It was over the insurance giant’s complicity in the climate crisis due to its huge fossil fuels underwriting. Accompanied by a group of brightly dressed mini superhero children in capes, and mums, Super Dad presented the card and gift to Lloyd’s of London: The card asks John Neal if he will be a climate hero and a super dad… or a climate villain

‘Power Lines—Building A Labor-Climate Justice Movement’

June 15, 2024 Steve Early, Convergence. , , ,
A familiar scene played out in the city council chambers of Richmond, California on May 22, 2024. For the last 20 years, since members of the anti-Chevron Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) first got elected to the council, any measure before that body affecting the city’s largest employer and business tax payer has been hotly debated. Local environmental justice organizations, like Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) mobilize their working-class members to attend and sign up to speak during the time allotted for “public comment.” To rebut the resulting complaints about pollution and arguments for stronger health and safety protection, the $290-billion company that operates Richmond’s massive 122-year-old refinery deploys its own defenders.

‘Orca’ Activists Arrested In Front Of Wall Street Bank Over Fossil Fuels

June 14, 2024 Saul Elbein, The Hill. , , , ,
New York police arrested dozens of climate activists dressed as orcas Tuesday morning in front of the Citigroup headquarters as they protested the bank’s ongoing investment in fossil fuel expansion, according to group Climate Defenders. “Arrests continue at [Citibank] because wanting corporations to put planet over profit is a crime,” activists wrote Tuesday morning on the social platform X. That caption went out above a video of orca-clad protesters, their fins cuffed behind their backs, being escorted from in front of the bank’s glass-walled Manhattan office building. “Banks like Citi set the planet (and oceans to boil),” the group added in another post. “Now we’re bringing the heat to Wall Street.”

Top Human Rights Court Urged To Tackle Corporate Climate Crimes

May 4, 2024 Isabella Kaminski, DeSmog. , , ,
In a landmark hearing at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, legal experts and campaigners argued that businesses, such as the fossil fuel and agriculture industries, have legal duties to stop climate-related human-rights breaches. A panel of six judges met starting April 23 in Barbados at the University of West Indies for the hearing, which was dubbed “The climate emergency and human rights.” It opened with statements from Chile and Columbia, which had requested that the court provide an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights in 2023.

New Evidence Of Big Oil’s Decades-Long Campaign To Deny Climate Science

May 2, 2024 Adam M. Lowenstein, DeSmog. , , , , ,
Oil and gas companies and their top trade groups were aware for decades that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, according to a scathing new report from congressional investigators. Moreover, industry giants knew that many of the technologies they presented publicly as solutions to the climate crisis – such as algae-based biofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS) – were neither as green nor as feasible as they promised, the study reveals. The Senate Budget Committee and Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability published the report and related documents on April 30

Taxing Fossil Fuel Companies Could Be ‘Powerful Tool’ To Cut Emissions

May 1, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , , ,
According to the new Climate Damages Tax report, introducing a fossil fuel tax on companies in the richest countries in the world could generate hundreds of billions to aid the most vulnerable nations in coping with the climate crisis. The impacts of climate change disproportionately affect poorer nations that have contributed to it the least. “Climate change is a war. A category five hurricane releases energy equivalent to 10,000 times the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
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