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Frontline & Grassroots Climate Activists Mobilize Across America to Urge Biden to Declare a National Climate Emergency
Today, members of the People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition carried out a number of actions across the country to pressure President Biden to declare a climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects. Grassroots organizers from San Francisco, to Boston, to Washington, DC. took to the streets to demand that the Biden Administration to hold the line against fossil fuel expansion. This follows a week of climate emergency actions, including an Indigenous action led by Ikiya Collective at the Department of the Interior and a press conference with Members of Congress.
"Yesterday, Ikiya Collective shut down the Department of Interior demanding Biden declare a climate emergency and put Native lands back in Native hands by ending an era of approving fossil fuel projects that target our communities. Today, we joined Greenpeace outside the White House with the same message, Black, Indigenous and communities of the global majority are not your sacrifice zones." said Ikiya Collective's Jennifer K. Falcon.
"The climate crisis is moving towards us faster than the pace of Congressional compromise. It's high time that President Biden took executive action to declare this crisis an emergency and act swiftly to end the fossil fuel era," said Food & Water Watch Senior New York Organizer Santosh Nandabalan. "Biden must keep his promises and declare a climate emergency now."
Biden broke his promise to end new federal fossil fuel leasing, failed to stop mega-polluting projects like the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, and is backing false promises from the industry like "carbon capture & storage" that serve to extend the fossil fuel era.
"Like many people, I'm watching my favorite places on earth burn again this summer. Last summer, the fires came within two miles of my home on the Klamath," said Konrad Fisher, Director of the Water Climate Trust in a statement for the action in the Bay Area on Tuesday. "President Biden .. loves to talk tough about climate change and environmental justice, but won't stand up to the powerful interests that profit from the extraction and injustice. It's time for Biden to walk his talk, declare a climate emergency, and give future generations a fighting chance."
"Today we delivered a 16-foot Earth to the White House along with nearly half a million petition signatures demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency," said Ashley Thomson, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA. "Last week more than 85 million people in the U.S. were under heat-related advisories and 42 states are currently in a drought. The climate emergency is happening. President Biden needs to act like it now if he wants to preserve a livable future."
"Today we joined with other groups across the country, our lands, to tell Biden to do what is right, declare a climate emergency," said Joye Braun, National Pipelines Organizer at Indigenous Environmental Network. "Our Indigenous communities are often the first to experience the disastrous effects of climate change with the least amount of resources to help our relatives. We are under attack from fossil fuel expansion and the threats of false solution projects that threaten our sovereignty. We are the first to be sacrificed and the last to be listened to. This must stop. Biden has the authority to declare a climate emergency and put processes in place that could save our lives and our communities. There is no more time to be had."
On July 27, a reconciliation deal between Senators Schumer and Manchin was announced with provisions that would require massive oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, reinstate an illegal 2021 Gulf lease sale, and mandate that millions more acres of public lands be offered for leasing before any new solar or wind energy projects could be built on public lands or waters. These leasing provisions lock in decades of additional fossil fuel pollution and continue a racist legacy of sacrificing environmental justice communities.
Declaring a climate emergency signals to the world that the President is ready to play hard ball on climate and unleash all his executive powers to make real climate progress. President Biden should not have wasted a year and a half negotiating with a coal baron. He has all the powers he needs right now to act boldly on climate.
Legally, a climate emergency declaration unlocks important emergency powers to rapidly shift off of fossil fuels:
-Ban crude oil exports - The US exports about 1/4 of the crude oil it produces. This production is largely taking place in the Permian Basin. Banning crude oil exports can cut greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount a year as closing 42 coal plants.
-Stop Foreign Fossil Fuel Investment - Halting the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. federal investment in fossil fuel projects abroad will prevent locking in decades of reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure and halt fossil fuel proliferation in other countries.
-Roll out Renewable Energy and E-Transportation Infrastructure - Direct Pentagon Funds toward the pieces that will ensure our climate security with renewable energy systems, climate-resilient technologies, and electric transportation.
Activists are also calling on the President to go beyond emergency powers and do everything in his non-emergency executive powers to beat climate chaos by ending oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, denying all new federal permits for fossil fuel infrastructure like the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Formosa plastics plant, restricting gas exports to the extent allowed under the Natural Gas Act, and more.
Fossil Free Media is a nonprofit media lab that supports the movement to end fossil fuels and address the climate emergency.
'A Corporate CEO's Dream': Labor Unions Blast Trump-Vance Ticket
"This ticket isn't pro-worker or pro-union. It's the billionaire ticket through and through," said one labor leader.
Leading U.S. unions warned voters on Monday not to be fooled by the pro-worker facade constructed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio who has opposed
congressional efforts to strengthen organizing rights, allowed corporate lobbyists to influence his legislating, and raked in donations from the elites he claims to despise.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO—the nation's largest federation of unions—said in a statement the combined records of Trump and Vance make clear that, if elected, they "would eviscerate unions and empty workers' pockets just to boost the profits of their corporate friends and donors."
"Donald Trump has a miserable record of breaking every promise he's made to working people—from failing to pay his workers and crossing a picket line to his disastrous four years in the White House," said Shuler. "That betrayal would continue if he is reelected—so it's no surprise Trump chose a vice president who will be nothing more than a rubber stamp for that anti-worker vision."
Shuler continued:
Sen. JD Vance likes to play union supporter on the picket line, but his record proves that to be a sham. He has introduced legislation to allow bosses to bypass their workers’ unions with phony corporate-run unions, disparaged striking UAW members while collecting hefty donations from one of the major auto companies, and opposed the landmark Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would end union-busting "right to work" laws and make it easier for workers to form unions and win strong contracts.
"A Trump-Vance White House," she added, "is a corporate CEO's dream and a worker's nightmare."
Service Employees International Union president April Verrett offered a similar assessment of the Trump-Vance ticket, saying that while Vance "may portray himself as a working-class hero," his "record tells another story."
"The truth is that Senator Vance's loyalties lie with the Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley billionaires who have bankrolled his political career," said Verrett. "Together, Donald Trump and JD Vance will seek to protect the wealthy and corporations while enacting their insidious Project 2025 agenda. There's a stark contrast between Biden-Harris, who have backed workers and taken action to lower prices and raise wages, and Trump-Vance, who side with price-gouging, union-busting corporations."
BREAKING: Donald Trump has selected JD Vance as his running mate.
Vance claims that he's all about taking on elites.
But the donor list from his Senate campaign tells another story. His top donor occupation was CEO. pic.twitter.com/zFrEx9vMKY
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 15, 2024
The unions' statements came as Republican delegates at the party's convention in Wisconsin—a state that's been
described as a "laboratory" for the GOP's anti-union agenda—formally nominated Trump as their presidential candidate, just days after an assassination attempt.
GOP delegates also approved their party's platform, which includes the vague promise to put "American workers first" but does not mention the word "union." The nation's union membership rate fell to an all-time low last year thanks to a long-running war on labor rights waged by corporate America and its GOP allies.
The Republican platform contains an ostensibly pro-worker pledge to exempt tips from taxation, a vow that—according to one critic—"appears to be a way for Republicans to change the subject if anyone questions their opposition to raising the minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 for the past two decades."
Despite backlash from within his union, Teamsters president Sean O'Brien delivered a primetime address to the Republican convention Monday night, praising Trump for his supposed willingness to "hear from new, loud, and often critical voices."
But other union leaders expressed a much harsher view of the former president, given that during his first term he stacked federal agencies and courts with opponents of organized labor and worked to gut worker protections. Trump's reelection campaign is backed by at least a dozen billionaires, including the world's richest man.
"This ticket isn't pro-worker or pro-union," said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, urging workers not to buy the "slick rhetoric" of Trump's running mate.
"It's the billionaire ticket through and through," Nelson added.
Climate Movement Sounds Alarm on Trump Picking 'Big Oil Sellout' JD Vance for VP
"JD Vance will sell out to the highest bidder, whether that's Trump or the fossil fuel industry," said one Sunrise Movement campaigner. "That makes him dangerous."
Climate campaigners reacted to former U.S. President Donald Trump's selection of Sen. JD Vance as his running mate Monday by highlighting the Ohio Republican's climate denial and strong support for the fossil fuel industry—one of his top campaign contributors.
"Like Donald Trump, JD Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs," Sunrise Movement communications director Stevie O'Hanlon said in a statement. "Vance is one of Congress' biggest recipients of donations from oil companies."
"JD Vance not only flip-flopped on supporting Trump, he flip-flopped on climate," she continued. "He went from expressing concern about climate change before running for the Senate, to voting to gut [Environmentl Protection Agency] protections and denying that there even is a climate change crisis."
O'Hanlon added: "JD Vance will sell out to the highest bidder, whether that's Trump or the fossil fuel industry. That makes him dangerous. Donald Trump was the worst president for climate in U.S. history. JD Vance will empower Donald Trump to enact even worse damage on our planet in a second Trump administration."
Some of Trump's key first-term Cabinet appointees—including Rex Tillerson, his first secretary of state, and Ryan Zinke, who headed the Interior Department—were former fossil fuel executives or had track records of supporting the oil, gas, and coal industries.
Trump's White House tenure was also marked by an
aggressive rollback of climate and environmental regulations and protections.
Food & Water Watch Action deputy director Mitch Jones said that "just like Trump himself, JD Vance is a fossil fuel backer and climate change denier that poses a serious risk to public health and our environment."
"Among the countless reasons that Trump and Vance shouldn't be elected to lead our country, the duo represents an existential threat to a livable climate future for all Americans and people around the globe," Jones added.
JL Andrepont of 350 Action asserted that "we are facing a dire need to ward off further climate catastrophe and injustice, so let's be clear: JD Vance is another climate-denying authoritarian who poses massive danger to this country."
"He has praised the horrific Project 2025 plan and said there are 'good ideas in there,'" they continued. "He says he would be totally fine with a federal ban on abortion. And as the effects of climate change accelerate at an alarming pace right in front of our eyes, Vance is a strong supporter of the oil and gas industry who claims that climate change is not a threat."
"We must reject him and all climate deniers at the polls," Andrepont stressed.
Targeting Corporate Landlords, Biden to Unveil National Rent Control Plan
"The rent is too damn high—and rent control is a real fix," one group said, praising the proposal.
As former U.S. President Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination and announced his running mate on Monday, Democratic President Joe Biden prepared to unveil a proposal that would cap annual rent increases at 5% for tenants of major landlords.
After Biden briefly previewed the proposal during a press conference last week, The Washington Postreported on the planned announcement Monday, citing three people familiar with the matter. The Associated Press separately confirmed the plan.
Biden is set to formally introduce the proposal on Tuesday in Nevada, which "has seen among the biggest explosions of housing costs in the country," the Post noted. "Democrats have grown increasingly concerned that Trump could win the state in November."
The president, who is seeking reelection, will propose taking a tax benefit away from landlords who hike rents by more than 5% annually, according to the reporting. The plan would only apply to the existing housing stock of landlords who own more than 50 units and would require congressional approval—so it is not expected to go anywhere unless Biden wins in November and Democrats secure majorities in both chambers of Congress.
As the newspaper detailed:
The Biden administration is also pushing numerous policies to increase housing construction, through incentives to local governments to change their zoning codes and new federal financial incentives for builders.If implemented, they could bring 2 million new units to the market in addition to the 1.6 million already in the pipeline.
"It would make little sense to make this move by itself. But you have to look at it in the context of the moves they propose to make to expand supply," said Jim Parrott, nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and co-owner of Parrott Ryan Advisors. "The question is: Even if we get all these new units built, what do we do about rising rents in the meantime? Coming up with a relatively targeted bridge to help renters while new supply is coming online makes a fair amount of sense."
While housing industry representatives criticized the reported proposal, Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The Associated Press that having it in effect in recent years could have helped renters.
"The recent unprecedented increases in homelessness in communities across the country are the result of those equally unprecedented—and unjustified—rent hikes of a couple years ago," she said. "Had such protections against rent gouging been in place then, many families could have avoided homelessness and stayed stably housed."
Other rent control advocates and progressive officials also welcomed the plan, with Kendra Brooks—the first Working Families Party member ever elected to Philadelphia City Council—declaring that "this is exactly the kind of leadership that working families need!"
Jacobin's Branko Marcetic said that "this is huge," particularly considering that "housing has rapidly climbed as a cost-of-living concern (and is also under 30s' most important issue)."
Multiple campaigners and organizations credited housing advocates for pushing rent control at the national level.
"It's amazing how rapidly the conversation around rent caps has changed," noted Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. "Tenant organizing has created this change. It's a proposal for Congress which will face serious headwinds but the president just called for rent caps (even if only temporarily)."
The Debt Collective said, "We will say it over and over again: The rent is too damn high—and rent control is a real fix."
"Rent caps wouldn't be a national policy proposal without tenants unions across the country making it possible through organizing," the group added. "On our way to land without landlords, remember that rent control works. The 99%'s need for a roof over our head should not be 1% profits."