A week of actions to End Fossil Fuels kicks off with a powerful action in DC today to #StopMVP led by frontline Appalachians. Activists will be joined outside the White House by members of Congress, including Rep. Justin J. Pearson and Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Today’s protest calls out the president for approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile incomplete fracked gas pipeline project expanding from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia, which was included in the debt ceiling deal penned by Biden.
Currently, there are 65 actions in 26 states as activists mobilize to turn up the heat and make Biden take real climate action – to use his executive powers to end the era of fossil fuels and declare a climate emergency! Find your closest action on the map here & make some noise on social media using this toolkit! –
Demonstrations will take place in 65 locations across the US from June 8–11th, and are endorsed by 64 Indigenous, climate, labor, and environmental justice organizations, including Sunrise, 350.org, and Indigenous Environmental Network. Lead sponsors include the Center for Popular Democracy, Zero Hour, the 350 Network Council, Fridays for Future, the Climate Organizing Hub, and the People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition, which includes over 1,200 organizations across the country.
Along with today’s mass rally and sit-in on the doorstep of the White House, other actions range from Paddle out Zenith, a land and water rally in Portland, Oregon, to a series of demonstrations across the Great Lake states to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline. Across the country, communities are lifting up how each and every new fossil fuel project exacerbates the climate emergency and sacrifices Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities.
This national outcry signals the need for change in the Biden administration’s continued approval of new fossil fuel projects ahead of the UN Climate Ambition Summit in New York this September. Since President Biden’s disastrous approval of the Alaska Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and Willow oil project and his debt ceiling deal that fast-tracks the Mountain Valley Pipeline, millions of people across the country have taken action to oppose new fossil fuel projects and hold Biden accountable for the promises he made when these climate activists helped elect him.
The national week of action to end the era of fossil fuels reignites that fight and kicks off months of coordinated action to hold Biden accountable to his climate promises leading up to the UN Climate Ambition Summit. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres chided leaders like Biden at the White House climate summit, saying, “The science is clear: New fossil fuel projects are entirely incompatible” with the goals set in the 2015 Paris climate accord, “yet many countries are expanding capacity. I urge you to change course.”
Biden has the power right now, without Congress, to direct agencies to reject new fossil fuel projects and phase out federal fossil fuel production on public lands and waters. By declaring a national climate emergency, Biden could also unlock additional powers to limit fossil fuel exports, increase the availability of clean energy technologies, and ensure communities hit hardest by climate disasters receive the resources they need to rebuild.
Biden promised to be a climate president – yet under his watch, the U.S. continues to be the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world. In the first few years of his term, he approved more lease sales for new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters than Trump. And his administration has approved new oil and gas projects, like the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and multiple oil and gas export terminals in the Gulf. Frontline communities & global scientists have been abundantly clear – we cannot avoid the very worst impacts of the climate crisis if we allow for any more fossil fuel development.