January, 05 2018, 02:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lindsay Meiman,Senior U.S. Communications Specialist,lindsay@350.org,us-comms@350.org,+1 347 460 9082,New York, USA
350.org Launches Fossil Free US Campaign in Large-Scale Event the Day After the State of the Union
On January 31st, Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben, and Several Movement Leaders Begin 2018 By Showing Urgent Next Steps for Climate Movement
WASHINGTON
The day after the State of the Union, 350.org will launch Fossil Free U.S. in an immediate rebuke of the Trump administration's assault on climate and communities with a clear call to action and roadmap for resistance. After a historic year of hurricanes devastating Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico, floods across the South, and California and the Pacific Northwest's wildfires, speakers including Senator Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Cherri Foytlin, Varshini Prakash, and more will outline a clear path for the climate resistance leading up to 2020.
On January 31st in a large scale event in Washington D.C, which will be livestreamed to thousands around the country, speakers will communicate the urgent and clear road ahead: resist the Trump Administration's ongoing attacks on our climate, win back power through 2018 and 2020, and secure the lasting change we need. The event takes place a year after Trump's first executive orders rolling back climate and environmental protections.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org said, "2017 was tough-we resisted, but we lost a lot of ground. 2018 we take that ground back, and we'll do it with this Fossil Free campaign that helps unite progressive environmentalists to move us off oil and coal and gas and on to a world that works. We move into high gear on January 31-across organizations, across the arts and sciences, and across the country (with some help from our friends across the planet). If you can't be there in person, you can still be there live-and you should be."
Fossil Free U.S. calls for an immediate halt to all fossil fuel projects and a fast and just transition to 100% renewable energy for all. Across the U.S., people are already building bold and necessary climate solutions that work for everyone, and the Fossil Free campaign will ramp up and connect these initiatives through hundreds of targeted local campaigns across the country.
WHEN: January 31st, 2018 at 7PM
WHERE: Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University; 730 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20052 (livestream to be available)
WHO:
Senator Bernie Sanders
Bill McKibben, Co-Founder,350.org
Reverend Lennox Yearwood, President and CEO, Hip Hop Caucus
Cherri Foytlin, Director, BOLD Louisiana
Adriana Voss-Andreae, Executive Director, 350PDX
Jacqueline Patterson, Director of Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP
Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement
Jessica Lorena Rangel, Eyes of a Dreamer
MEDIA RSVP: Media must RSVP to media@350.org to secure a seat.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
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The ad was released as Americans learn of a growing number of women who have died because doctors would not provide standard miscarriage and abortion care under state abortion bans.
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"Dr. Davis, what do I do?" asks a man frantically, kneeling near his partner as she writhes in pain on the floor.
"John, she needs an abortion, or she's going to die from the pregnancy," answers the doctor over the phone.
But a Republican congressman suddenly appears and tells the man, "That's not happening," explaining that abortion care is now banned because the GOP is in control of the government.
The scenario plays out in the latest ad from Progress Action Fund, a Democratic political action committee that's produced a number of viral videos focusing on how Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's policies and those outlined in the right-wing agenda Project 2025 would impact both men and women's ability to make private decisions.
In the ad, the Republican lawmaker tells the man, "I won the last election, so it's my decision" whether the woman is able to receive the standard care needed to end her pregnancy.
"Don't worry, you can still have children," he tells the man. "Just not with her."
Watch:
The ad went viral on social media late Saturday, the day after ProPublica reported on Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year-old in Texas who died last year at six months pregnant, when she was diagnosed with sepsis—a fast-moving and potentially deadly condition that can result from an infection.
Because of Texas' six-week abortion ban, which threatens doctors with prison time if they terminate a pregnancy before a fetal heartbeat has stopped, Crain made three emergency room visits and was required to have multiple ultrasounds as she became increasingly ill. By the time doctors confirmed "fetal demise," Crain's organs had begun failing. She died hours later.
The investigative outlet has also reported on the deaths of another woman in Texas—Josseli Barnica—and two women in Georgia, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller—from state abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
"This is a healthcare crisis and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis," said Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, after the two Georgia women's deaths came to light in September.
Abortion bans and restrictions like those in Texas now exist in 21 states. Both Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have expressed support for a nationwide ban on abortion care—a position from which they have both attempted to distance themselves as polls have increasingly shown a majority of voters support access to abortion care.
Other viral ads by Progress Action Fund have been more risqué and have even used absurdist humor to warn voters about Project 2025's proposal to ban pornography and emergency contraception.
With two days to go until Election Day, the "terrifying but important" ad released Saturday shows that "MAGA abortion bans are killing our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters," said nonprofit progressive advocacy group DemCast.
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Officials at the international biodiversity conference that began in October were forced on Saturday to suspend talks without reaching an agreement on a key issue of the summit—a detailed finance plan for a dedicated biodiversity fund—after the meeting went into overtime and delegates began leaving.
The failure to reach an agreement on biodiversity finance was denounced by the head of environmental group Greenpeace's delegation at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which took place over two weeks in Cali, Colombia.
"Governments in Cali put forward plans to protect nature but were unable to mobilize the money to actually do it," said An Lambrechts. "Biodiversity finance remains stalled after a deafening absence of credible finance pledges from wealthy governments and unprecedented corporate lobbying... Closing the finance gap was not merely some moral obligation but necessary to the protection of people and nature that grows more urgent each day."
Lambrechts added that with international leaders now preparing to attend the 2024 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan this month, "the non-decision on a fund damages trust between Global South and North countries."
The conference was aimed at ramping up progress toward meeting goals set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Canada in 2022. That framework calls for the protection of 30% of land and sea areas and the restoration of 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
In Canada, delegations also agreed to phase out subsidies that are harmful to nature and to provide $200 billion per year for the protection of biodiversity by 2030, including $30 billion per year that would be transferred from rich to poor countries. A larger goal of ultimately generating $700 billion to protect nature was also part of the agreement.
About $15 billion was transferred in 2022, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and nations have pledged about $400 million to a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.
But in Cali in recent days, Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad offered a draft proposal for the establishment of a dedicated biodiversity fund—a priority for developing nations at the conference—only to have delegations including those from the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan reject the proposal.
"Two years ago, we made a commitment to do better and be better," said Jiwoh Abdulai, minister of environment and climate change for Sierra Leone. "This COP has neither delivered that additional funding nor given us confidence that governments will work together to deliver it in a transparent and urgent manner."
The Forests & Finance Coalition—which includes Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and Friends of the Earth U.S., among others—called the result of finance discussions at the meeting "disappointing."
"This latest development makes it all the more critical that banks and investors are stopped from financing destructive sectors that continue to drive nature loss and human rights abuses," said Tom Picken, RAN's forests and finance director.
Lambrechts acknowledged that "big pharma and big agribusiness failed to block a game-changing deal on corporate responsibility to pay up for nature protections."
COP16 delegates devised a plan to create a fund that would share the profits generated from digitally sequenced genetic data taken from plants and animals with the communities—mostly in the Global South—that the species come from.
Companies that make money from cosmetics, medicines, and other products that use digitally sequenced genetic data would pay into the fund, but the final agreement made participation voluntary, saying only that companies "should" contribute.
Indigenous delegates celebrated the creation of a permanent body within the CBD to represent the interests of Indigenous groups—a "historic victory," according to Leila Salazar-López, executive director of the nonprofit Amazon Watch.
A work plan was approved by the convention to expand the role of Indigenous people, local communities, and Afro-descendant people in the protection of biodiversity.
"Thanks to this new body and work plan approval, future COPs will work, amongst many other important issues, on land tenure, traditional knowledge and governance by Indigenous Peoples," said Isaac Rojas, forests and biodiversity coordinator for Friends of the Earth International (FOE). "It's a milestone in the struggle of Indigenous peoples for their rights. We congratulate them and share their joy following this win. But we have to remain vigilant, because these achievements may turn out to be empty words in view of the push for several false solutions."
FOE warned that false solutions, particularly biodiversity offsetting, were pushed heavily by corporations at the conference.
Corporate interests called for biodiversity credits—"tradeable assets intended to represent 'measurable outcomes'—such as protecting or restoring certain species or ecosystems, or parts of them," according to FOE. "Similar to carbon credits, they allow corporations to buy and sell these, to meet regulations or voluntary sustainability claims."
Nele Marien, forests and biodiversity co-coordinator for FOE, said Saturday that "corporations were here pushing very hard for all kinds of false solutions, for example on biodiversity offsetting, which had a lot of traction."
"They argue that they can keep pushing into new territories, and destroying these ecosystems, promising that they will compensate for this," said Marien. "This is simply impossible, because we don't have space in the world to compensate for these losses. Biodiversity offsetting is a mechanism that further perpetuates destruction, undermines human rights, and damages environmental justice."
A spokesperson for the CBD, David Ainsworth, told reporters that the conference would resume at a later date.
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The congresswoman was referring to an interview by Luke Radel, a student journalist at Syracuse University, who asked Johnson (R-La.) about Trump's recent comments that the CHIPS and Science Act is "so bad."
"You voted against it," said Radel. "If you have a Republican majority in Congress and Trump in the White House, will you guys try to repeal that law?"
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The exchange grew increasingly awkward as Radel asked Williams whether he would vote to repeal the legislation, signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, that Micron has said will create 50,000 semiconductor manufacturing jobs in the Syracuse area.
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For thousands of workers, the law represents "the jobs and especially the union jobs that result and are created, that people can actually take and will help them put food on the table without having to work triple or double overtime in order to accomplish that," said Ocasio-Cortez. "People in Buffalo, people in Upstate New York, people in Michigan, they hear about the plant that they work at."
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) echoed the congresswoman's sentiment, saying Johnson's plan to repeal the CHIPS Act would impact "tens of thousands of IBEW jobs created by this administration."
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Johnson's remark got the attention of other politicians whose states have benefited from the law, including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Less than two weeks ago, Whitmer announced that through the CHIPS Act, the Biden administration had provided $325 million in direct funding to Michigan manufacturer Hemlock Semiconductor, allowing it to create over 1,000 good-paying construction jobs to build a new facility as well as 180 permanent manufacturing jobs.
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Johnson attempted to do damage control, saying he had "misheard the question," but Radel noted that he was standing close to the House speaker when he asked about the CHIPS Act and others commented that the word "repeal" was said clearly. Williams and Johnson also tried to backtrack during their exchange with the student journalist, saying they aimed only to reform the law—but as Radel noted, the former president has made clear he opposes the CHIPS Act.
Vice President Kamala Harris' Democratic presidential campaign said Johnson's threat to repeal the CHIPS Act is the latest of several recent questionable "promises" made by Trump and his surrogates in the last days before the election.
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Johnson's comments came as Ocasio-Cortez, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and others were rallying Michigan UAW members at a labor-focused get-out-the-vote event in Detroit.
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