These are not just natural disasters. These are disasters that have become unnatural, that have become unnaturally catastrophic, because of the impacts of climate change, but also because of the impacts of deregulation, because of inequality, of racial injustice.
Our call from Africa and from the so-called Global South, what people call the developing countries, to the people of the United States right now is that we do not judge you on the basis of what a crazy president has just done. We will judge you by how you respond to President Trump. And we call on the people of the United States today to mobilize the biggest-ever civil disobedience against the president of the United States.
Scenes from Democracy Now!’s reporting on the 22nd U.N. climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco. See our COP 22 coverage here.
This is COP 22. For us, it’s like Catch-22, because, either direction, Africa is going to lose. The rich countries are forcing the process to go in the direction of polluters continuing to pollute without stopping pollution. And if polluters continue to pollute, no matter how much money anybody makes from carbon trading, from carbon offsetting, like reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, and all the other marks of marketed environmentalism, it’s not going to add up to actually reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which means the temperature is going to rise.
We spoke with UC Berkeley professor Kirk Smith, lead author of the article in The Lancet, on his findings. Watch and read the interview: Climate Study: By 2085 All U.S. Cities Except San Francisco Will Be Too Hot to Host Summer Olympics
This is the problem with Hillary: She is willing to say ‘yes’ to green technology and green jobs, but she is showing no signs of being willing to say ‘no’ to the oil and gas lobby, which we know is funding her campaign significantly.
Pope Francis talks about natural resources as something that everybody has a right to. This, of course, is a challenge to a pretty basic principle of private property under capitalism.
Climate justice activists — including a group of “kayaktivists” — are gathering in Portland to blockade a ship commissioned by oil giant Shell to break up Arctic ice in order to pave the way for Arctic drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
“These activists, in the air and on water, are right now the last thing that stands between Shell Oil and its absolutely pathological plans to drill for oil in the Arctic this summer,” says Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA. Watch her update, live from the blockade, on Democracy Now! today.
In a corrupt culture, we cannot believe that laws will be enough to change behaviors that affect the environment.
Three protesters locked themselves to the entrance of a fracking well in Denton, Texas. A police sergeant thanked the three and shook their hands before putting them in handcuffs. Hear their story on Democracy Now! today.
