Instead of mass protests, from April 22 to 24 we’re joining a massive online action for Earth Day Live. That plan is for a three-day live stream focused on climate action, with each day hosting a different theme: Strike. Divest. Vote.
Each day will include training sessions, performances, and appearances to keep people engaged, informed, and inspired. There will be panel discussions, call in days, art builds, divestment, and lots and lots of social media with celebrities, politicians, scientists, and youth activists.
The coronavirus has laid bare the brutality and injustice of our current system. Millions of people have lost their jobs, are no longer able to pay their rent, student loans, credit card bills, utilities, or healthcare costs. That’s why we’re coming together for online action at a scale the climate movement has never done before.
Here’s an overview of what’s happening each day:
Wednesday, April 22, is a day to demonstrate our collective power and unity through community building and storytelling. Originally a day of mass mobilization, we are leaning into healing and togetherness to provide comfort and inspiration during this time of unknown and are centering the voices of frontline, Indigenous, and POC leaders. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.
Thursday, April 23, we will target financial institutions across the country. Led by the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition, this day of action will bring urgent public attention to the fact that banks, insurance companies, and asset managers are complicit in funding, insuring, and investing in the climate crisis. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.
Friday, April 24, we will focus on political change with a nationwide voter registration day. We need leaders who will address this existential threat, and for this to happen, we need people to show up at the polls this year. We will be holding a digital, relational voter registration challenge to see which region of the country can register the most voters, and call on elected officials to support our demands. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.As the 24th is the first day of Ramadan, organizers will be working with the Muslim community to make sure events are accessible for those who are observing and use it as an opportunity to educate people on the holiday.
Online or offline, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day is a day to demonstrate our collective power and unity through community building and storytelling. Social distancing doesn’t have to mean collective disengagement.
From April 22-24, we’re going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, as part of the massive Earth Day Live 2020 event online. The next week, we’re taking bold action online and in the streets (safely) of DC to Shut Down the status quo – which continues to approve pipelines, permit racism, and prolong attacks on our communities during the pandemic.
Months ago, young people from all around the world put out a call for urgent direct action to confront the climate crisis. Today, in the midst of the pandemic, we find ourselves in a much different world than when we first prepared to answer that call. But it is clear that bold direct action is as essential as ever.
That’s why we’re still planning to 5 days of bold action April 27-May 1, so that every weekday from Earth Day (April 22) to May Day (May 1) there’s an action or actions for you to join.
The COVID-19 pandemic has cracked open the veneer of our economic and social system. It’s putting the inequities in health care, wealth, housing, education, and much more on full display, and exacerbating existing crises. And unless we stop them, the politicians and lobbyists will continue to take advantage of this pandemic to suppress the vote, funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to their corporate cronies, and loosen already inadequate environmental regulations.
In the 10 days between Earth Day and May Day (International Workers Day) we are going to take bold direct action online AND in person (safely) to disrupt the interlocking systems that are threatening our collective survival and build a collaborative framework for a healthier, more just and sustainable world.
April 22-24 – Earth Day Live
Between April 22 and 24 young people are organizing online actions to strike, divest and vote for our future. From April 22, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, to April 24, activists, performers, thought leaders, and artists will come together for an empowering, inspiring, and communal three day livestream mobilization. We will support and lift up these activities and while leaving space for youth to lead in this important moment.
Throughout the week of April 27th we’ll take bold direct action online AND in person to shut down business as usual and create space for a healthier and more sustainable world. Each day of the week will focus on a theme to highlight the ways that the climate crisis threatens our communities and lifts up our opportunities to build resilient alternatives.
April 22 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and we’d planned to make it a BIG one. Hundreds of organizations representing millions of people worldwide were planning a massive global strike.
Earth Day Live is a 72-hour live stream and online mobilization that aims to engage people across the country and the world in collective action to protect our climate and communities. Each day has a theme, and the live stream will include speakers, performances, and training sessions to keep you engaged, informed, and inspired. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.
Wednesday, April 22, is a day to demonstrate our collective power and unity through community building and storytelling. Originally a day of mass mobilization, we are leaning into healing and togetherness to provide comfort and inspiration during this time of unknown and are centering the voices of frontline, Indigenous, and POC leaders. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.
Thursday, April 23, we will target financial institutions across the country. Led by the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition, this day of action will bring urgent public attention to the fact that banks, insurance companies, and asset managers are complicit in funding, insuring, and investing in the climate crisis. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.
Friday, April 24, we will focus on political change with a nationwide voter registration day. We need leaders who will address this existential threat, and for this to happen, we need people to show up at the polls this year. We will be holding a digital, relational voter registration challenge to see which region of the country can register the most voters, and call on elected officials to support our demands. Click here to stay engaged and learn more.As the 24th is the first day of Ramadan, organizers will be working with the Muslim community to make sure events are accessible for those who are observing and use it as an opportunity to educate people on the holiday.
Earth Day Live includes more than 350 partners, including 198 methods, who are working to amplify and mobilize around the strikes. While the strikes remain youth-led, we’re a part of a broader network that is truly collaborative, intergenerational, and intersectional.
We started the year protesting Trump’s Environmental Record – in this photo my youngest sister Emily is shutting down a hearing with Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s corrupt, climate-denying EPA chief. Ironically this hearing happened during a government shutdown that had furloughed thousands of EPA staff nation-wide. Protesting Trump’s corrupt, climate-denying cabinet is a theme of this year’s actions.
February brought an old fight back to the fore – the fight to stop Keystone XL. Trump has been trying to build the pipeline, without success, since he was sworn in in 2017. So far court cases and local permits have kept him at bay – but we’re waiting for the moment when Trump’s fossil-fueled-authoritarian tendencies overwhelm those flimsy buffers and they simply begin lighting the fuse of this carbon bomb without proper permits and paperwork.
April was also the month we launched the first of a series of campaigns that targeted David Bernhardt, Trump’s corrupt, climate-denying Interior Secretary. Like Wheeler (see above) he became a recurring character in our fight to stamp out corruption, block pollution, and protect the climate from Trump’s cast of climate conquistadors.
May also launched our campaign to get disaster relief for Puerto Rico. This became a recurring theme as Congress would appropriate money for disaster relief, but Trump would refuse to sign or disburse the money – IF, and this is a big if, the people helped by the funding were black, brown, or tended to vote for Democrats. Later in the year we broadened this campaign to include climate refugees from the Caribbean and eventually the whole global south.
Climate Strike! That was the big theme in September as we supported hundreds of Climate Strike events here in the US. Greta Thunberg asked the United Nations “How Dare You” and I personally buckled in as part of two beautifully troublesome actions.
So there you have it! A year in photos and images to illustrate all our work. You can also check out our previous post which covers more of the science and policy on how we’re ending 2019. Next week, after the New Year, I’ll write you a message about our plans for 2020 but you can be sure it will continue a few of these themes:
Holding corrupt Trump cronies like Wheeler and Bernhardt accountable;
Working as part of the global Climate Strike movement to demand bold action from our elected leaders;
Pushing US policy makers to adopt a bold, fossil-fuel-free Green New Deal; &
Bringing you great direct-action powered online campaigns at the local, state, and federal level to demand climate action.
UPDATE: Since I wrote this earlier, I’ve come across two good discussions on the role of “Hope” in the face of these charts and the overwhelming science of climate change.
This really good thread and podcast discussion by The Hot Take co-founder Mary Annaïse Heglar makes the argument that it’s not hope, but resolve, action, and some other things that are necessary in this moment.
I agree with both parts: that we need more hope, and that the antidote to fear is not hope, but action and conviction in the face of uncertainty. If you agree and are able, I hope you’ll click here to donate.
As has become a tradition, I’m going to tell the story of where our climate and common home is at with a series of charts and graphs. Next week I’ll send you a year in photos so you can look back at some of what we’ve done this year.
The fires in the Rainforest are both a symptom of climate-fueled draught, and also a cause of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice; which in turn is contributing to slower circulation of the Atlantic ocean current; and on and on.
There are a lot of climate emergencies happening all over the planet, and none of them are un-connected. Wherever you are, you’re likely seeing impacts, and your local impacts and emissions are fueling the crisis somewhere else.
That goes for emissions of methane too – again according to scientists at the WMO. Methane is the key component in fracked gas, and is up to 80 times more potent at warming the climate and created those interconnected tipping points and indicators in chart #1 above. Which is why we spend so much time protesting at gas pipelines and the people who are supposed to regulate them.
That emissions are still rising is probably not a surprise, nor is the fact that we’re not doing enough to combat the climate crisis. If we were, emissions would be going down, right? But the distance between what we need to be doing, and what we say we are doing is also getting wider.
So there it is – the state of the climate movement in 4 charts, and it is NOT good.
We’re approaching a series of interconnected ‘tipping points’ of climate chaos much faster than expected.
That’s because emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are still going up despite years of promises by the world’s governments to reduce them.
Most devastating, the gap between what we say we will do, what we need to do, and what we are doing keeps getting wider.
That U.N. report was described as “Grim,” “Bleak” and “drastic” when it came out. But it was not without hope. The authors of the same report on the ambition gap wrote that, “the political focus on the climate crisis is growing in several countries, with voters and protesters, particularly youth, making it clear that it is their number one issue.”
Next week I’ll be back with a photo and video year in review of some of the amazing work we’e been a part of this year – from challenging Trump’s corrupt, climate denying cabinet; to shutting down DC as part of the global climate strike; and much much more.
The Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, NH, is the last large coal plant in New England without a shut-down date. On September 28th we will gather in Bow for a mass nonviolent direct action to shut down this plant.
Nobody’s going to close this coal plant for us. Continuing to burn coal and build fracked gas infrastructure in New England is immoral. That our political leaders stand idly by, or worse claim to believe in climate science, but refuse to take the actions necessary in the midst of this climate emergency is unconscionable. We must act ourselves.
When we took action in DC this week, we chose as our message based on firefighter’s badges: to symbolize that we were the emergency responders coming to the rescue of a planet that’s on fire. In the same way, this week we’re going to show up and remove a little fuel from the fire that is burning our future.
The coal industry/fossil fuel industry has been reaping profits by stealing from our future for generations. They try to tell us that it’s our fault, that we should change our diet, drive less, travel less. But just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions worldwide. And coal kills 13,000 people per year in the US and 800,000 a year globally, plus countless more deaths as a result the climate crisis driven by fossil fuels. Any nonviolent act that prevents fossil fuels from being burned is an act of reclaiming a small piece of the future that is being stolen from us.
Activists have campaigned for decades to close down Merrimack. But local elected officials are bought by the fossil fuel industry and lack the political courage to confront the climate crisis. Nobody is going to shut down this power plant for us. But by physically carrying away the coal, removing the fuel from the fire, we are reclaiming our power and our future in our own hands.
Those who are not risking arrest can arrive on Saturday morning at 479 River Road, Bow, NH – Park on the west side (the southbound side) of the road south of the plant gate. Gather at the softball field across from the plant entrance to urge the operators of the plant to shut it down, and bear witness to those taking more escalated action. Please bring your own lunch.
It is past time to move past comfortable responses to the climate crisis. As Greta Thunburg said in her speech to UN ministers last week:
If you’re ready to take the action we need, not simple what is politically feasible, join us in Bow this weekend and take the fuel from the fires that are burning our planet #BucketbyBucket.
Then (or if you want to know more before you commit) RSVP for an organizing meeting September 11 or 18. The organizing meetings will get you briefed and ready, and help connect you to an affinity group to make taking action safe, easy and fun.
If you’re already onboard, use these quick links to share the news with your networks online:
There’s no time left for business-as-usual; the Amazon and the Arctic are on fire. Greenland is melting and Trump wants to ‘buy’ it. Corruption reigns and the climate crisis is here. Now.
On September 20th, hundreds of thousands of young people around the world will skip school or work to take to the streets and make a stand. Many of them were inspired by the actions and words of Swedish student Greta Thunberg.
They include and will join Indigenous peoples, as well as Black and Brown communities on the frontlines, who have been leading the climate movement and building a regenerative future in the midst of the climate emergency.
In Washington, DC we will be answering the call in a huge way and building on the momentum of the youth climate strikes:
We will block key infrastructure to stop business-as-usual, bringing the whole city to a gridlocked standstill. Parents, workers, college students, and everyone who is concerned about the climate crisis will skip work and school and put off their other responsibilities to take action on the climate crisis.
People around the world are experiencing superstorms, floods, droughts, and wildfires at unprecedented rates, with low-income communities and communities of color hit first and worst. Cruelly, communities and regions being devastated by the worst effects of climate change tend to be the least responsible for its onset. It is not a coincidence that climate impacts strike along the lines of race and class so starkly; climate change itself is a product of the same processes which cement racism and wealth inequality in our country and our world.
To achieve something as monumental as shutting down DC, we are going to need everyone to step up. We need everyone’s creativity, everyone’s energy, everyone’s insights, and everyone’s ideas. Every single person has skills and experience to contribute to the strike.
This is the mass uprising that everyone with climate anxiety has been waiting for. This is an uprising for life itself, fighting back against the forces of destruction. This is your chance to take action to save the people, plants, and animals you love. Let’s rise up and shut down DC!
Here’s the plan: On Friday, September 20th, we’re following the lead of youth around the world to join the global climate strikes. The following week, September 23-27, as the UN meets in New York City, we’ll escalate by bringing tens of thousands of people into the streets and shutting down major US cities and key fossil fuel infrastructure until our leaders take action commensurate with the scale of the crisis.
Ever since Trump was elected, we’ve been building for this moment. Every petition you signed online, every Trump official we forced to resign, every action we took at FERC, at a bank, at a Governor’s office in NY or NC, it’s been in preparation for this kind of moment. Now it’s time to take action and I need you with us.
For the last 12 months, youth around the world have been walking out of class and demanding accountability from our elected officials. Many of them were inspired by the actions and words of Swedish student Greta Thunberg. Now, they’re calling on people of all ages to join them in the streets on September 20th.
It’s urgent you answer this call – in person, in the streets, with action. There’s no time left for business-as-usual; the climate crisis is here. Indigenous peoples, as well as Black and Brown communities on the frontlines have been leading the climate movement and building a regenerative future while bearing the brunt of climate impacts. Young people are joining them in calling for action to protect a livable future for all of us.
People around the world are experiencing superstorms, floods, droughts, and wildfires at unprecedented rates, with low-income communities and communities of color hit first and worst. Cruelly, communities and regions being devastated by the worst effects of climate change tend to be the least responsible for its onset. It is not a coincidence that climate impacts strike along the lines of race and class so starkly; climate change itself is a product of racism and capitalism.
Last year I wrote a great post about what’s really at stake with climate change, and why I was starting 198 methods to push the fight in the US. It’s still great, and you should go read it if you haven’t already. I sent it out as a fundraiser on GivingTuesday, and got some positive feedback.
This year, I didn’t want to send a Giving Tuesday email for two basic reasons:
But there’s also some exciting new info to share from the last few weeks – so without further ado, here’s an updated take on why you should donate, the state of the climate movement, and why I think that world needs one more non-profit environmental group (this one) — all as told through 3 charts and a big picture. Check it out and if you like it, click one of the links below to donate – and if you’ve saved your payment information, your donation will go through immediately:
As you’ve probably guessed – the situation hasn’t improved much under the last 12 months of the Trump Administration. When Obama left office, we’d pledged to cut emissions 50% below 1990 levels. That was a good promise, but we weren’t on pace to do it. And that pace is nowhere near what was needed to keep us below the 2° Celsius goal of the Paris climate agreement.
Here’s an updated chart showing where we were last year, and where we are now:
Chart #2 Still hotter too
Then, last Friday (right about the time everyone was getting their #GivingTuesday emails ready) the US chimed in with their second National Climate Assessment. Again, the news here is bad, but not new. Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to suppress climate science, and Trump and his cabinet’s ongoing climate denial, this report from 10 different US agencies confirms the basics above – The temperature is already rising; We’re causing it; And we need to act fast, and very boldly, if we want to stop it.
If we do nothing, the red line is what we can Temperature increase of 6-8° Farenheit (3-5° Celsius) That would make the planet more or less un-livable, at least for most of us. Seas would drive millions of us off the coasts, wildfires would burn dozens at a time across the west, and pollution (ozone in particular) and heat waves would kill tens of thousands of people every year across the midwest.
The blue line is about what the Paris agreement called for: namely aggressive action to cut US emissions and keep us below the 2° C target. The green line shows the very steep cuts it would take to get to 1.5° C or lower.
Chart #3 It’s not all bad
Here’s the good news though: Despite all Trump’s posturing, things are already turning around. In the developing world (yucky term but most of the world’s people live in the global south, so hang with me a sec) Installations of wind and solar power are actually happening faster than new fossil fuels. There’s a revolution going on around the world, even if we’re not a part of it here in the US (yet). And it totally dovetails with the message we’ve been delivering to so-called climate leaders since this fall’s Global Climate Action Summit: We already have the solutions we need – and the youngest. poorest, and brownest communities with the most to lose from climate change are already showing what’s possible.
That can be terrifying – that the scope of the problem we’re facing is so vast. But it’s also unifying. There’s no more ‘safe harbor’ from climate change in America. You can’t retire to Florida, or emigrate to Canada to avoid it. We will drown, burn, or rise, TOGETHER.
So, now what?
And that’s my main hope – that the presence of climate disaster all around us every day will move people to take real actions to fight the crisis. And we have done some things in the past year:
In particular, I think now more than ever we need digital support for direct action that centers the climate crisis. We saw that over and over again – from protests in North Carolina where we live-streamed the action so more people could participate, to the Global Climate Action Summit, where we used new media tools to super-charge the call for real climate leadership.
