SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
wecan
As Extreme Heat Bakes US, 160+ Global Groups Demand 'Real' Climate Action
"Reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
Jun 23, 2025
As about 265 million people across the United States face advisories for this week's "climate change-driven heatwave," over 160 groups from 45 countries on Monday collectively called for "real" and urgent action to "keep global warming below 1.5ºC to preserve a healthy and livable planet for ourselves and future generations."
The "call to action" was released as United Nations climate meetings are wrapping up in Bonn, Germany, and in anticipation of the next U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), set to be held in Belém, Brazil in November.
The joint call was published on the first day of the virtual Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond, organized by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism."
"The climate crisis is not just an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of justice, of society, and of humanity itself. How we respond, and who is centered in that response, matters profoundly," said WECAN founder and executive director Osprey Orielle Lake in a statement. "We are calling for systemic transformation—one that delivers climate, social, and economic justice for all generations."
"While governments and corporations push us deeper into climate chaos, movements around the world are rising," she noted. "From every corner of the Earth, women leaders are coming together with solutions and strategies to defend our planet and our communities. We call on governments and financial institutions to heed their voices and ensure effective and equitable policies—from Bonn to Belém and beyond. We must rise boldly, because climate change is not waiting for politics. Our movements are not bending. We are not breaking. We are defining and building a healthy and just future for all."
The new call to action points out that "last year, the world breached this threshold with global average temperatures exceeding 1.5ºC above preindustrial levels. This alarming milestone is not yet a permanent breach of the Paris agreement guardrail, which refers to long-term warming, although scientists predict that 2024 will be the first of a 20-year period reaching 1.5ºC warming."
"Although the pathway is drastically narrowing, the International Energy Agency affirms that the goal of the Paris agreement is still attainable," the publication continues. "Scientists assert that limiting global warming to 1.5ºC will require significant and urgent action from governments and financial institutions."
Specifically, the coalition outlined 10 broad actions for governments and financial institutions, beginning with urging both the public and private sectors to end fossil fuel expansion and extraction, and to "reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
The collective also called for accelerating a just transition, promoting women's leadership and gender equity, protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples, safeguarding forests and biodiversity, preserving oceans and freshwater, advancing food security and sovereignty, implementing the Rights of Nature, providing robust climate finance, and cutting off financial institutions' support for "harmful projects and redirecting resources into climate solutions."
STARTING SOON! The first day of the Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond is kicking off today at 1:00 PM EDT! Join us via Zoom for interpretation and chat moderation or be welcome to watch live on Facebook and Youtube! tinyurl.com/CJ-2025
[image or embed]
— WECAN International (@wecan-intl.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 11:49 AM
In addition to WECAN, signatories include Amazon Watch, Journalists for Human Rights, MADRE, MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Urgewald, and over 100 other organizations.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism," said Zukiswa White, a project specialist and social justice consultant, and speaker at the WECAN assembly. "Corporations, financial institutions, and governments have criminalized and penalized those fighting to defend life, protect the integrity of the planet, and fight for climate action. All this, while the wealthy elite profit off of extracting and burning our planet's resources."
"If we are to prevent the worst of climate change—a crisis that is already impacting most people on the planet—we demand that we insist on a different path," White continued. "Choosing to keep the status quo is neither a coincidence nor is it our inevitable destiny. Rather, it is a political choice. So too is upholding systems that violate planetary boundaries. To counter this, we must center the work of frontline leaders and experts around the world—move into implementation of policies that not only halt climate devastation, but also champion democratic, gender transformative, and community-based solutions."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Citing 'Imminent Danger,' Indigenous Women Demand Biden Shut Down Line 5 Pipeline
"Every single one of us has agency and a responsibility to take action, honor the treaties, and protect Mother Earth," asserted one Oneida Nation leader. "It is the time to be brave and courageous."
May 25, 2023
Native American women leaders and more than 150 allied advocacy groups from across the United States on Thursday implored the Biden administration to decommission a Canadian-owned oil and gas pipeline that, according to one group, has spilled more than a million gallons of fossil fuels in over 30 incidents during the past 55 years.
In a letter to President Joe Biden, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, and other administration officials, leaders of the Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance—which is facilitated by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)—called on the president to "immediately revoke the presidential permit for Canada's deteriorating Enbridge Line 5 pipeline before environmental calamity strikes with oil spills into the Great Lakes."
"We write to you as Indigenous grandmothers, mothers, aunties, daughters, sisters, and relatives. We are of the Great Lakes, where our sacred food manoomin (wild rice) grows on water," the letter states. "We hold a responsibility to protect our water, our ecosystems, and our cultural lifeways for the next seven generations."
\u201c\ud83d\udce2 Today, Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance, WECAN & 150+ groups are sending an urgent message to @POTUS @JoeBiden to respect Indigenous rights, protect the Great Lakes, and #ShutDownLine5 before it is too late!\n\nLearn more \ud83d\udc49https://t.co/ifb6MwCdfa\u201d— WECAN, International (@WECAN, International) 1685020571
Manoomin "is fundamental to the physical, spiritual, and cultural survival of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa," the letter's signers explained. "Our sovereignty and treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, and gather food and medicine are all at risk. Diverse fish populations spawn in the Bad River Watershed. These fish are economically and culturally vital to the Bad River Band, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the entire region."
Treaty rights and manoomin were at the center of Indigenous-led opposition to replacing Line 3, another Enbridge pipeline running from Canada through the Great Lakes region. Despite fierce resistance from Indigenous, climate, and environmental activists, the Biden administration declined to block Line 3's replacement, which went online in October 2021.
"An oil disaster would permanently devastate the exceptional ecology of the watershed, the wild rice, and fish populations," the new letter continued. "At the Bad River Reservation, recent flooding has eroded one riverbank to within 11 feet or less of Line 5's centerline, creating an immediate threat."
\u201cWe've filed final arguments with the Bay Mills Indian Community over the proposed Line 5 tunnel project. Enbridge wants to dig a pipeline tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. This untested project could lead to an explosion & oil in the Great Lakes. https://t.co/ngY5H38Jkc\u201d— Earthjustice (@Earthjustice) 1684782060
Last September, U.S. District Judge William Conley found that Enbridge was trespassing on lands belonging to the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northwestern Wisconsin, and profiting off Line 5 at the tribe's expense. However, Conley said earlier this month that since the tribe cannot prove that an "emergency" exists along the flooded riverbank, he is unlikely to order Enbridge to shut down the pipeline.
"This is a nearly 70-year-old pipeline running almost two decades past its engineered lifespan," the new letter stresses. "Erosion from receding waters or the next rainfall could cause a 'guillotine rupture'—a vertical break causing oil to gush from both sides, poisoning the Bad River watershed and Lake Superior."
As the Oil & Water Don't Mix coalition explained:
Nearly 23 million gallons of oil daily flow through two aging pipelines in the heart of the Great Lakes, just 1.5 miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. Constructed during the Eisenhower administration in 1953, the two 20-inch-in-diameter [pipelines]... lie exposed at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac—a busy shipping channel...
Line 5 has spilled 33 times and at least 1.1 million gallons along its length since 1968.
The pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac cross one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the world. The Great Lakes are home to 21% of the world's fresh surface water. The pristine straits area supports bountiful fisheries, provides drinking water to thousands of people, and anchors a thriving tourism industry with historic and beautiful Mackinac Island right in the center.
In November 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer moved to revoke Line 5's easement, with a shutdown order coming the following May. However, Enbridge ignored Whitmer's order and kept running the pipeline.
\u201c#Line5 is only a few yards away from causing catastrophe in #Wisconsin Bad River and @LakeSuperior. #ShutDownLine5 for the ecosystem and all who rely on it! https://t.co/C0GErPs3xB\u201d— Oil & Water Don't Mix (@Oil & Water Don't Mix) 1684358132
"Revoking the presidential permit and forcing Enbridge to cease Line 5's operations is consistent with your administration's directives for climate, nation-to-nation relations, and environmental justice. It is also consistent with the knowledge we share that the Great Lakes—one-fifth of the world's surface freshwater at a time of growing water scarcity—are invaluable treasures that must be protected, regardless of political pressures, special interests, and short-term profits," the new letter argues.
"Water is life," the signers added. "We are... calling on you to protect essential water, as well as wild rice, fisheries, and cultural survival."
Jannan J. Cornstalk, a citizen of Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and director of the Water is Life Festival, said in a statement Thursday that "our very lifeways and cultures hang in the balance as Line 5 continues to operate illegally in Indigenous territories and water."
"These are our lifeways—when that water is healthy enough that rice is growing—that not only benefits our communities, but that benefits everybody up and downstream," Cornstalk added. "Allowing Line 5 to continue to operate is cultural genocide, and the Biden administration must listen and shut down Line 5. That water is our relative, and we will do whatever it takes to protect our water, our sacred relative."
\u201cStanding Up for Water, Land and Climate: Meet 10 Indigenous Women Fighting the Line 5 Pipeline - Ms. Magazine https://t.co/kOKlE6w5JM\u201d— Kelly Sheehan (@Kelly Sheehan) 1665619048
Aurora Conley of the Bad River Ojibwe and Anishinaabe Environmental Protection Alliance said: "I am calling on the Biden administration to shut down Line 5 immediately. Our territories and water are in imminent danger, and we do not want to see irreversible damage to our land, water, and wild rice."
"We do not want our lifeways destroyed," Conley added. "The Ojibwe people are here in Bad River because of the wild rice. A rupture from this oil spill will irreversibly harm the Great Lakes and wild rice beds. This is unacceptable. We will not stand for this. Shut down Line 5 now."
Carrie Chesnik of the Oneida Nation Wisconsin and founder of the Treaty Land Trust, asserted that "we have an opportunity here to shut down the Line 5 pipeline, and protect what we all hold dear."
"We all have the responsibility and agency to act in a good way, to care for the land and waters," she continued. "What our communities have known for a long time is that the water is hurting, Mother Earth is hurting, and pretty soon we won't have clean water for our kids, for future generations."
"As a Haudenosunee woman, an auntie, daughter, and sister, I have an inherent responsibility to the water and our children," Chesnik added. "Every single one of us has agency and a responsibility to take action, honor the treaties, and protect Mother Earth. It is the time to be brave and courageous."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular