May 14: The Global Wave of Action to Break Free from Fossil Fuels Grows
Every day since May 3rd people on all six continents have committed themselves to escalated action to shut down fossil fuel projects.
This Saturday, May 14th is the crest of the wave of action, with over 11 actions worldwide — some on their second day of consecutive mobilization — taking place across the planet.
In the same minute that people in Umuarama, Brazil were cheering their city council’s newly announced ban on fracking, activists in Germany were shutting down a massive power plant. As folks in the Pacific Northwest of the United States woke up to their second day occupying the tracks of oil by rail ‘bomb trains,’ hundreds of people in Albany marched onto bomb train tracks that run just feet from a public housing complex. Ecuadorian youth fighting to defend the Yasuni national forest from oil exploration confronted a refinery, just hours after Nigerians marched along the coast Exxon wants to drill to say that it’s time to put food and people ahead of fossil fuels and profits.
This kind of thing has never been tried before — in part because the world has never been this hot before, but also because there has never been an opportunity like this to initiate a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. With renewable energy on the rise, climate disasters escalating and people everywhere waking up to the threat of climate change — this is our moment to act.
“The time has come to turn up the heat on the small band of companies and people still willing to get rich off fossil fuels, even though it’s now utterly clear they’re breaking the planet. The time has come to show that we understand we’re in this together across borders and boundaries.”
Here’s some of what happened today:
Thousands of activists occupied the rail lines leading to one of Europe’s largest coal power plants, just outside a massive lignite coal mine. Together they have forced it to cut its capacity dramatically:
In South Africa, activists defied attempts to repress their protest with a rally outside the country’s most powerful family, the Guptas, leaving a coffin full of coal at their front door.
Outside Anacortes, Washington in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, dozens of people greeted the sun on their second day of blocking oil by rail lines heading to the biggest source of carbon pollution in their region.
In the Philippines, community members from Calaca, Batangas rallied outside the power corporation that wants to place more pollution from coal in their back yards. They have been fighting this plant for 35 years. Today they erected their own sign outside the plant — saying it’s time for this plant to close.
In Brazil, hundreds of people blocked the road to the country’s largest thermal power plant:
In Metro-Vancouver, Canada,unceded Coast Salish Territories, people on land and water blockaded the planned terminal for the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline, led by First Nations leaders defending their rights:
All this — and there’s even more to come tomorrow. This is an enormous moment for the movement. Join us!
