NEW YORK – Screaming that their future and lives depend on ending fossil fuels, tens of thousands of protesters on Sunday began a week in which leaders will try once again to curb climate change caused mainly by coal, oil and natural gas.
But protesters say it won’t be enough. And they aimed their anger directly at US President Joe Biden, urging him to stop approving new oil and gas projects, halt current projects and declare a climate emergency with greater executive powers.
“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” said Emma Buretta, a 17-year-old from Brooklyn of the youth protest group Fridays for Future. “If you want to win in 2024, if you don’t want the blood of my generation on your hands, end fossil fuels.”
The March to End Fossil Fuels features politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and actors Susan Sarandon, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon.
But the real action on Broadway is when protesters fill the streets, pleading for a better but not-so-hot future. It was the opening salvo of New York’s Climate Week, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts gathered to try to save the planet, highlighted by a new special United Nations summit on Wednesday.
Many of the leaders of the countries that cause the most heat-trapping carbon pollution will not be present.
And they will not speak at a summit organized by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a way that only countries promising new concrete actions are invited to speak.
Climate activists attend rally to end fossil fuels.AP
Organizers estimate 75,000 people will march Sunday.
“We have people all over the world in the streets, showing up, demanding an end to what’s killing us,” Ocasio-Cortez told a cheering crowd. “We need to send a message that some of us will be alive, on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now. And we will not take no for an answer.”
This protest is much more focused on fossil fuels and industry than previous marches. Sunday’s rally drew a large proportion, 15%, of first-time protesters and mostly women, said American University sociologist Dana Fisher, who studies the environmental movement and was surveying marchers.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke at the rally.AP
Of the people Fisher spoke to, 86% had experienced recent extreme heat, 21% flooding and 18% severe drought, he said. They mostly reported feeling sad and angry. Earth just went through the hottest summer on record.
Among the marchers was 8-year-old Athena Wilson from Boca Raton, Florida. He and his mother, Maleah, flew in from Florida for Sunday’s protest.
“Because we care about our planet,” Athena said. “I really want the Earth to feel better.”
Climate activists march on Madison Avenue as they protest energy policy and fossil fuel use.AP
People in the South, especially where the oil industry is, and the global south, “don’t feel heard,” said Alexandria Gordon, 23, of Houston. “It’s disappointing.”
Protest organizers emphasized how disappointed they felt that Biden, whom many of them supported in 2020, had overseen increased drilling for oil and fossil fuels.
“President Biden, our lives depend on your actions today,” said Louisiana environmental activist Sharon Lavigne. “If you don’t stop fossil fuels our blood is on your hands.”
Tens of thousands of protesters attended the event. AP
Nearly a third of the world’s planned oil and gas drilling between now and 2050 will be by US interests, environmental activists calculate.
Over the past 100 years, the United States has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, although China now emits more carbon pollution each year.
“You have to phase out fossil fuels to survive on our planet,” said Jean Su, a march organizer and director of energy justice for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The marchers and speakers spoke of immediate improvement and fear of the future.
The actress known as V, formerly Eve Ensler, premiered the anthem “Panic” from her new climate change-oriented musical due out next year. The chorus goes: “We want you to panic. We want you to act. You stole our future and we want it back.”
Oliver Moore, 7, of Montpelier, Vermont, listens to speakers during the rally. AP
Signs include “Even Santa Knows Coal Is Bad” and “Fossil fuels are killing us” and “I want a fossil-free future” and “keep it in the ground.”
That’s because leaders don’t want to acknowledge the “elephant in the room,” says Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate. “The elephant is that fossil fuels are responsible for the crisis. We can’t eat charcoal. We can’t drink oil, and we can’t have any new fossil fuel investments.”
But oil and gas industry officials say their products are important to the economy.
“We share the urgent need to face climate change together without delay; but doing so by eliminating America’s energy options is the wrong approach and will leave American families and businesses tied to unstable foreign territories for higher costs and far less reliable energy,” said American Petroleum Institute Senior Vice President Megan Bloomgren.
Activists are having none of that.
“The fossil fuel industry chooses to rule and conquer and take and take and take without limit,” said Rabbi Stephanie Kolin of Congregation Beth Elohim of Brooklyn. “Then the water rises and the sky turns orange (from the smoke of the fire) and the heat takes lives. But Mr. President can choose another path, to be the protector of this Earth.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
