In Bid to Save Future From Trump, Groups Mobilize for Nationwide #ActOnClimate Day

Since President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord earlier this month--a move Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune dubbed "one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any President"--calls for resistance have blossomed into plans for mass, collective action.

"The critical question right now is this: How do we build more political power, and how do we win?"
--Stephen Kretzmann

This weekend will offer at least one measure of the nationwide outrage at Trump's destruction of policies geared toward protecting the planet, as people across the country are set to march and "demand that their city and state stay in Paris and go beyond in getting us off fossil fuels."

Organized under the banner Act on Climate, the day of protest--which will take place in cities and towns nationwide on Saturday--was organized primarily by 350.org, with the backing of Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen, The Nation, and more than a dozen other groups.

In a piece published on Friday, The Nation outlined a to-do list for activists and those looking to get involved in the Trump-era climate fight, which included making calls to elected representatives to "demand that they commit to the goals in the Paris Climate Agreement and go beyond it" and spreading the work of "people and movements who are fighting back against climate denial and for climate justice."

As Stephen Kretzmann argued in piece for Oil Change International, only this kind of concerted action can produce meaningful change; attempting to convince Trump and his band of executives that they are wrong about the science is a losing venture.

The new president has now confirmed, wrote Kretzmann, "what an increasingly large section of the climate movement has been saying for a while now: don't bring a spreadsheet to a knife fight."

"The question for us--as climate and democracy and justice advocates--is not primarily which policy path leads to how many degrees of warming using what assumptions under whose scenarios," Kretzmann concluded. "The critical question right now is this: How do we build more political power, and how do we win? Less PowerPoint. More power. It's time, in short, to fight. There is no way to solve climate without confronting--and defeating--the fossil fuel industry."

As Common Dreams has reported, cities and states have decided to commit to the Paris agreement even as Trump has moved in the opposite direction. California Governor Jerry Brown, for instance, signed an agreement with China earlier this week in a bid to cooperate in the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

The rallies throughout the nation this week will celebrate such efforts "and urge those who haven't committed to take action now."

"Find a rally near you for Saturday's day of action defending the Paris agreement," urged Bill McKibben, co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org. "Weekends are for fighting fascism!"