September, 05 2023, 08:22am EDT
500 Groups Endorse NYC March to End Fossil Fuels
Sept. 17 March Urges Biden to Declare Climate Emergency, Phase Out Fossil Fuels
NEW YORK
Organizers of the March to End Fossil Fuels today announced that 500 organizations have endorsed the upcoming mobilization on September 17 in New York City.
Groups including the NAACP, Sierra Club, and Sunrise Movement have signed on to support the march and its demands for Pres. Biden to take bold action on fossil fuels in the wake of a deadly, record-breaking summer of extreme heat and climate disasters. They join the key groups organizing the march, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Popular Democracy, Climate Organizing Hub, Food & Water Watch, Fridays For Future USA & NYC, Earthworks, Greenfaith, Indigenous Environmental Network, New York Communities for Change, Oil Change International and Oil & Gas Action Network.
In addition to the 500 groups supporting the march, nationally recognized leaders including Sen. Ed Markey, Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson, Jane Fonda, Naomi Klein, Mark Ruffalo, and Bill McKibben are backing the march. More than 10,000 people from across the country are expected to attend, including Goldman Prize winners Nalleli Cobo and Sharon Lavigne, UN youth adviser Ayisha Siddiqa, scientist Peter Kalmus, Gulf Coast leaders John Beard, Jr. and Roishetta Ozane, and Mountain Valley Pipeline fighters including Crystal Cavalier from Appalachia.
The route of the March to End Fossil Fuels will begin at 52nd and Broadway, with participants marching down 52nd Street to 1st Avenue starting at 1:00 PM ET. A rally will take place on 1st Avenue, just blocks away from the United Nations, which will host the first-ever UN Climate Ambition Summit in the following days.
The New York City march is part of a mass global escalation to end fossil fuels, with mobilizations occurring around the world, which all take place just days before the UN Climate Ambition Summit. At the summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has demanded world leaders come with a commitment to approving no new fossil fuel infrastructure and bring concrete plans to phase out existing fossil fuel production.
A full list of the 500 organizations supporting the March to End Fossil Fuels is available here.
“It’s never been more clear than now – a summer of record heat, deadly fires, and devastating floods – that we need to unite to put an end to fossil fuels. Every new fossil fuel project is incompatible with a livable future,” said Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International US Program Manager. “President Biden promised to address climate change, but he has approved fossil fuel project after project, harming our planet and communities. We demand President Biden wield his power, to usher in the end of fossil fuels so our planet and people can thrive. We join together for the March to End Fossil Fuels, not just to ask for change, but for a reckoning.”
“The current reliance on fossil fuels is literally killing Black Americans. Black elders are three times more likely to die from air quality-related issues and Black youth continue to suffer the impacts of living in communities that are more likely to house fossil fuel plants and other toxic waste incinerators. This is an emergency. For Black communities to have any hope of a just and sustainable future, we must act now,” said Abre’ Conner, NAACP Director for the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice. “The NAACP is marching to demand a global and domestic emphasis on climate and racial justice, Black health, and a future that prioritizes not shortens Black life.”
“In 2020, Gen Z voters had an enormous impact on the presidential election. We turned out for Biden and Harris in larger numbers than anyone predicted. Even as someone who couldn’t vote the Biden-Harris ticket was on the forefront of my mind. We did this with the explicit promise that there would be no more oil drilling on federal land. This promise has now been broken more than once. In the past three years many of us have lost the passion and hope we originally had when fighting for Biden,” said Fridays For Future NYC Organizer Noa Greene-Houvras. “We have watched him approve pipelines and fossil fuel projects that youth have consistently pushed against. The same voices that called him to the presidency are now calling on him to take bold climate action.”
“It’s been a summer of scorching heat waves that have shattered records, relentless wildfires that have led to mass casualties, and raised sea levels that are encroaching upon our city’s edges – these are not isolated incidents, but urgent calls to action. In NYC we passed the most important city-level climate and jobs law with Local Law 97, but it won’t be enough to meet the global climate emergency. The time for complacency from so-called leaders has passed. With 500 organizations strong, the March to End Fossil Fuels isn’t a request, it’s a demand for President Biden to enact actionable solutions that match the scale of the crisis at hand,” said Olivia Leirer, Co-Executive Director of New York Communities for Change
“Ending fossil fuels is a matter of life and death for Indigenous and Appalachian communities like mine,” said Crystal Cavalier, co-founder of 7 Directions of Service. “It fills me with outrage that this summer started with Biden and Congress fast-tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline and ends with us preparing to face supercharged Hurricane Idalia. I’m joining thousands in New York to demand that Biden halt new fossil fuel expansion and quit fueling the climate emergency.”
“People are fed up, they’re frightened, and they’re marching in the thousands to demand President Biden stop deadly fossil fuels,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The hottest summer on record is galvanizing people like never before to cry out for lifesaving climate action. Biden needs to answer those cries by declaring a climate emergency and ending new fossil fuel project approvals, starting now. As leader of the world’s largest oil and gas producer, Biden has power like no one else to lead the world off the fossil fuels poisoning our planet and communities. It’s time he starts using them and become the climate leader we need.”
“From being forced to work through extreme heat to losing homes to flash flooding, low-income communities of color are experiencing the worst effects of climate change. And if we don’t take action to stop greedy fossil fuel companies, it’s only going to get worse. The Center for Popular Democracy will be in the streets with thousands of people, including our affiliates from NYC to Alaska, to call on President Biden to declare a climate emergency and protect frontline communities. We must end fossil fuels before it’s too late,” said Vonne Martin, Deputy Chief of Campaigns, Center for Popular Democracy.
“Despite his numerous and explicit pledges to the contrary, President Biden has turned out to be a strong supporter of fossil fuels. With each passing day, Biden’s failure to lead on clean energy drives the planet deeper into the abyss of irrevocable climate chaos,” said Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Region Director, Food & Water Watch. “We’re marching to send a message that true climate leadership means halting new oil and gas drilling and fracking, and rejecting new fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals – beginning now.”
“The devastating extreme weather events facing communities across the country this summer have made it clearer than ever that we have no time to waste in ending our reliance on the dirty fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis,” said Patrick Grenter, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “The Sierra Club is proud to be a part of the diverse movement taking to the streets to demand bold action to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.”
ABOUT THE MARCH
The March to End Fossil Fuels will be held on September 17 in New York City.The New York City march is part of a mass global escalation to end fossil fuels, with mobilizations occurring around the world. The march will be held ahead of the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit in New York City, the first-ever climate summit where countries are expected to present fossil fuel phaseout plans and commit to no new fossil fuel production.
Over 370 organizations are joining to build the largest U.S. climate mobilization since the pandemic, demanding President Biden stop all federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects, phase out production of fossil fuels on federal public lands, declare a climate emergency, and build a new clean energy future.
More information at endfossilfuels.us
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
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Record 76 Million Internally Displaced in 2023, Largely Due to Violence
"We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities," one expert said. "It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
May 14, 2024
War, conflict, and environmental disasters displaced a record 75.9 million people from their homes at the end of 2023, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported Tuesday.
The vast majority of the displaced—68.3 million—were forced from their homes due to conflicts, the highest number since data became available 15 years ago.
"Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council—which houses IDMC—said in a statement. "We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities. It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
"This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
The IDMC publishes its Global Report on Internal Displacement every year, which is considered the definitive source for data on internal displacements worldwide. This year's report notes that the number of people displaced within their own countries increased by 51% in the last five years while the number displaced by conflict alone swelled by 49%, spiking in 2022 and 2023. The uptick was primarily due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as renewed or ongoing conflicts in Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
"Over the past two years, we've seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving," said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. "Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end."
In addition to tracking the number of displaced people, the IDMC also looked at the total number of new displacements in 2023. It recorded 46.9 million new movements—20.5 million due to war and conflict and 26.4 million due to natural disasters.
"As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale," International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement. "This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
Of the 20.5 million conflict-driven displacements last year, nearly two-thirds were due to violence in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.
In Sudan, renewed hostilities between government and paramilitary forces ignited in April of last year, forcing 6 million new movements and leaving 9.1 million displaced.
"This figure is the highest ever reported for a single country globally since 2008," the report authors wrote.
All told, conflict forced 13.5 million displacements in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number for the region in 15 years.
Nearly 17% of total conflict displacements in 2023 were forced in Gaza, even though Israel only began its war on the enclave during the last quarter of the year. Although it was only home to around 2.3 million people at the start of the war, Gaza saw 3.4 million displacements, as many people were forced to move multiple times.
"This figure should be considered conservative, because many people were displaced within governorates before moving across them, but such movements were unaccounted for," the report authors explained.
By the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in Gaza—or 83% of the population— were displaced, "all of them facing acute humanitarian needs," the authors wrote.
The report also says that 7.7 million people were living outside their homes by the end of 2023 due to disasters such as extreme weather and geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The 26.4 million disaster-driven displacements were the third-highest amount in the last 10 years.
Displacing disasters in 2023 included climate change-fueled events like cyclone Freddy—which caused 1.4 million displacements in southeast Africa—and Canada's record wildfire season, which fueled 185,000 displacements, the highest number for Canada on record.
"No country is immune to disaster displacement," Bilak said. "But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don't. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response, and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better."
Egeland called for more attention to the plight of displaced people after the initial trigger fades from the headlines.
"The suffering and the displacement last far beyond the news cycle," Egeland said. "Too often their fate ends up in silence and neglect. The lack of protection and assistance that millions endure cannot be allowed to continue."
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Veteran Human Rights Leader Has Seen Enough: Israel Perpetrating Genocide in Gaza
Israel's "sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory" pushed Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier to view the assault on Gaza as a genocide.
May 14, 2024
A widely respected humanitarian law expert who has resisted using the term "genocide" for Israel's killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza—a word used "sparingly" in the international human rights movement, he noted—said Tuesday that he has concluded a genocide is indeed taking place, evidenced particularly by Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid.
Aryeh Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch in 1978, served as its executive director for 12 years, and also led the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Foundations, noted in an essay in The New York Review of Books that his organizations have used the term "genocide" to describe few mass killings.
Neier was not convinced of South Africa's genocide claim against Israel when it argued its case with the International Court of Justice in January, even though he was "deeply distressed" by the human impact of Israel's relentless U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Gaza.
The 2,000-pound bombs being used against Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians were "clearly inappropriate," wrote Neier in the magazine's June 6 issue. "Yet I was not convinced that this constituted genocide."
Neier wrote that he believed at the time that Israel's retaliation against Hamas for the October 7 attack it led in southern Israel could "include an attempt to incapacitate" the Palestinian group, necessitating the wide-scale assault on Gaza, where it operates.
"I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," wrote Neier, whose family escaped Nazi Germany as refugees when he was an infant. "What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory."
Israel's intent to block aid—and to treat Gazans as "collectively complicit for Hamas's crimes"—has been clear since shortly after the October 7 attack, when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: "There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."
"I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory."
The result of that policy, wrote Neier, has been the deaths of at least 28 Palestinian children from starvation, according to numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry in April.
"That number could multiply many times over if reports on food insecurity are valid," he wrote, citing warnings from U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain that famine has already taken hold in parts of Gaza.
Under the "complete siege" ordered by Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted Neier, Israel has severely restricted the number of aid vehicles allowed into Gaza, where the population relied on deliveries from about 500 aid trucks per day before the current escalation. Trucks have been subjected to "time-consuming and onerous inspections," with shipments turned away for including items like children's medical scissors and maternity kits.
Neier also cited Israel's killing of more than 200 aid workers and its persuading of international donors to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—based on unproven allegations that a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza-based staffers had connections to Hamas—as evidence that Israel is taking numerous steps to stop aid from getting to Gaza's starving population, while killing at least 35,173 Palestinians.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to Neier's essay that "no one has more authority among human rights advocates than" the author.
"Aryeh Neier is an immensely respected—and not at all politically radical—figure in the human rights community who can't be credibly accused of having any sort of obsession with Israel," said writer Abe Silberstein.
Neier wrote that after working to protect human rights for more than six decades, "there is much about [Israel's attack on Gaza] that is deeply depressing, including how difficult it is to find a way to give victims any hope that justice will eventually be done."
"I myself hope that the frequent citation of international humanitarian law as the standard for judging the conflict will have a positive effect," he wrote. "Whatever else emerges from this war, and whatever judgment comes from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-term harm."
The ICJ is currently considering South Africa's claim that Israel is committing genocide, having issued a preliminary ruling in January that the case was "plausible" and that Israel must take steps to prevent genocidal acts.
Although the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate war crimes or crimes against humanity charges, wrote Neier, "if it ultimately finds that Israel has committed genocide, that will be a resounding defeat for a state that was born in the aftermath of a genocide that many of its founders had barely survived."
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FTC Chair Lina Khan Should Take Jim Cramer's 'Unhinged' Obsession as 'Badge of Honor'
A spokesperson for the American Economic Liberties Project called the CNBC host a "mouthpiece and cheerleader for monopolists across the economy."
May 14, 2024
The American Economic Liberties Project on Monday called outCNBC's Jim Cramer for at least dozens of "hostile" televised attacks on Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and her "historic pro-working families record."
The left-leaning group has been compiling Cramer's "most egregious on-air outbursts" over Khan since early last year and its tracker now features more than 30 clips from "Mad Money" and "Squawk on the Street."
When President Joe Biden nominated Khan to lead the FTC in 2021, she was an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School who had previously worked for the Open Markets Institute, the office of former Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.
As the clips collected by the project show, Cramer has described Khan as an "empty suit," "stupid," and a "total hack." The ex-hedge fund manager has also compared the agency leader's views to those of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and Don Quixote.
Cramer has called out specific FTC actions under Khan—repeatedly blasting a lawsuit against Amazon, a company founded by one of the richest persons on the planet—and broadly accused the "rogue" agency of "torturing all the companies that America likes."
When one of Cramer's colleagues pointed out last October that he has taken "every opportunity to just come back to Khan," he responded, "No, I've missed opportunities and I regret that."
The tracker page states that "if Cramer was accurately reporting what the FTC is doing, he would see that Chair Khan is pursuing a pro-business, pro-innovation, and pro-worker agenda. And he is capable of it: he did, for example, proclaim the FTC's case against Kroger-Albertsons to be strong."
Noting Cramer's praise for Jonathan Kanter, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice whom the host has called a "heavyweight" and "rigorous thinker," the page adds that "he is so blinded by his obsession of Chair Khan that he sometimes even rails against her for suits brought by the DOJ and forgets to give the Antitrust Division credit for its work."
American Economic Liberties Project spokesperson Jimmy Wyderko said in a statement Monday that "Jim Cramer's anger over the FTC's enforcement record has turned into a full-blown obsession, launching nearly weekly barbs at Chair Khan with the zeal of a carnival barker defending his turf."
"This has manifested on national cable news through a series of unhinged, incoherent, and often inaccurate rants from Jim Cramer attacking the FTC for standing up to big corporations and delivering kitchen table wins to working families," he continued.
"Given Jim Cramer's role as mouthpiece and cheerleader for monopolists across the economy, Chair Khan should consider his harassment a badge of honor," Wyderko added. "We hope to see Jim Cramer get over his fixation syndrome, which is evidently even starting to frustrate his colleagues, as soon as he is able."
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