Young climate activists are finally becoming a powerful voting bloc

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

While world leaders were gathered for the United Nations General Assembly and the subsequent “climate ambition summit”, over 70 thousand climate activists they filled the streets of New York on Sunday 17 September, to ask the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to stop the approval of new fossil fuel projects.The demonstration was supported by more than 700 global climate organizations who participated in protests in numerous other countries.

“Thousands of people around the world are returning to the streets to demand that we stop what is killing us.We need to think about who will be living on our planet in 30, 40, 50 years.And negative responses are not contemplated,” he said Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during the rally.

Among the participants was 8-year-old Athena Wilson of Boca Raton, Florida.She and her mother Maleah flew from Florida to New York.We care about our planet.I really want the Earth to be better,” Athena said.

“People in the South, especially where the oil industry is located, and in the global South, don't feel listened to,” added Alexandria Gordon, 23, originally from Houston, Texas, one of the American states that founded much of of its development on the fossil fuel industry, on which it still depends heavily.

15% of the demonstrators were participating in a demonstration for the first time and were mostly women, explained American University sociologist Dana Fisher, who studies environmental movements and did research among the march participants.

Of the people Fisher spoke to, 86% had recently experienced extreme heat waves, 21% had floods and 18% had experienced severe drought.Most reported feeling sad and angry.

The protests continued the following day.On September 18, more than 100 protesters were arrested outside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in what was the largest climate-related civil disobedience in New York since the 2014 Wall Street Flood Action. reports Inside Climate News.

The protest, organized by Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Oil and Gas Action Network and Planet over Profit, called for central banks and financial regulators to tighten rules on fossil fuel investments.

Stop the Money Pipeline policy advocate Eren Ileri said the Fed's actions do not reflect the urgency of the climate crisis:“We have five years to end the fossil fuel industry,” he said."We're really talking about a huge change in the survivability of our civilization over the next 10 years.I don't see a better actor than financial regulators to do what's needed."

The protests were not limited to the United States.Also on September 17, hundreds of climate activists they marched in Edinburgh and Berlin, where the protesters they sprayed orange and yellow paint on the columns of the Brandenburg Gate.

In The Hague, Netherlands, the Dutch police he used water cannons to clear out several hundred people who were blocking the highway.In Sweden, Greta Thunberg and other activists from the environmental group Reclaim the Future blocked the road for trucks carrying oil in the port of Malmö and were forcibly removed by police.

And climate causes don't stop either.After the success of the lawsuit filed by 8 young people against Montana, six Portuguese boys, aged 11 to 24, brought 32 countries to the European Court of human rights.The six young activists they will support in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that nations' policies to address global warming are inadequate and in violation of their human rights obligations.

From the USA to Ecuador, civil society is mobilizing to stop climate change [podcast]

In short, the climate protesters are striking back in a massive and participatory way after four years.Having been held back by the pandemic just as the climate movement was in full ascendancy, just months after its largest global strike in September 2019, when millions of people around the world,  mostly young, took to the streets.

And it wasn't a given.“Keeping the movements alive is hard work:they run on the energy of volunteers and can be derailed by too many successes, too many failures, too many internal conflicts, too many competing interests", writes Bill McKibben on New Yorker. 

The September 17 March to End Fossil Fuels wasn't as big as the demonstration 4 years ago, but that wasn't the most important aspect.What mattered was getting back on the streets and yet "the march was considerably more attended than the organizers expected", explains McKibben.“Now it's time to expand again:our citizens continue to march.We can't pretend not to hear them."

The big difficulty is translating all this energy and proactiveness into political representation.“Even though the climate crisis is the most important issue facing humanity, it is not yet perceived as the most important issue of an election campaign.We are light years away.It is not seen as a problem by politicians and citizens and we in the climate movement must admit it,” explains to NPR Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of an environmental voters project in the United States.“However, things are changing and the data is quite clear that climate voters are becoming a more powerful voting bloc.”

The first United Nations summit on climate ambition in New York.UN Secretary General Guterres excludes China, USA, UK, India and United Arab Emirates

As part of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, convened the first summit on “climate ambition”, to which the leaders of 34 countries were invited “in recognition of the their strong action on climate change."The exclusion of the United States, United Kingdom, China, India and the United Arab Emirates from hosting the next United Nations Climate Conference due to their inaction made headlines.“Every continent, every region and every country is feeling the heat, but I'm not sure that all the leaders of those countries are feeling it the same way,” he said in his opening address to the presidents and prime ministers gathered for their meeting annual at the General Assembly.“It's time to understand that the fossil fuel era has failed.”

In the last year alone, governments have only increased fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, reaching a record $7 trillion.To better understand the scope of these subsidies, it is 13 million dollars per minute or almost a thousand dollars per person per year:and all of this goes to an industry that posted record profits in the same year and which has cut climate targets and reduced funding for clean energy programs.

During the summit, Guterres called on world leaders to “make up for lost time due to delays, arm wrestling attempts and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels” and urged richer countries to join to a "Climate Solidarity Pact", according to which the States that have contributed most to the climate emergency must "accelerate" the reduction of emissions and help economies in difficulty to transition to cleaner forms of energy.

Guterres, in his second and final term, has made climate action his central theme and as time passes he is increasingly insisting on the need to reduce fossil fuel production and focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from their use.“We have opened the doors of humanity to hell,” he added.“The terrible heat waves are having devastating effects.Distraught farmers see crops washed away by floods, stifling temperatures causing disease:we are heading towards a dangerous and unstable world."

Dennis Francis, diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago, he warned the summit from the catastrophic effects of rising sea levels, describing how “fertile river deltas such as the Mississippi, Mekong and Nile” are sinking.

But the response to Guterres' appeals it was disappointing.While China and the United States, the world's two biggest polluters, have not had the chance to talk, less than encouraging signals have come from the United Kingdom, which has backtracked on the pace of its commitments to net zero emissions, and from the European Union. European Union which insisted on the goodness of the work done so far and opposed, through the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Guterres' request to bring forward the achievement of climate neutrality to 2040 (the EU aims to become neutral from climate point of view by 2050).

During the General Assembly, leaders of several island nations criticized rich countries.Marshall Islands President David Kabua called for “the establishment of an international financing facility to assist small island nations and low-lying atolls particularly exposed to the effects of the climate crisis.”Surangel Whipps Jr, president of Palau, also he asked “an increase in climate finance that adequately recognizes the context” of small island developing states, while Nigerian President Bola Tinubu he declared that Africa's fight against climate change must happen “on our terms”.

The general impression, writes Political, is that individual states do not share the sense of urgency that Guterres is trying to instill on climate action, calling on countries to accelerate climate neutrality, strengthen investment in clean energy and phase out fossil fuels.The planet is already 1.1°C warmer than in the pre-industrial era and estimates say that global warming could reach 2.8°C if industrialized countries - responsible for 80% of global emissions - do not will be able to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

“The rules of multilateral diplomacy and multilateral summits are not suited to the rapid and effective response we need,” comment Richard Gowan, expert at the International Crisis Group.

But it wasn't all bad news.The biggest news came from Brazil which he announced a plan to reverse former President Jair Bolsonaro's cuts and further strengthen his climate goals.The Carioca country plans to reduce emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030.

For the first time ever, Commonwealth Environment and Climate Ministers met and “noted the role of ecosystem-based approaches, ocean action, land restoration and food systems transformations in resilience climate change and sustainable development".Also during the United Nations General Assembly, 76 countries and the EU signed the High Seas Treaty “to protect marine biodiversity in international waters”.Each state will now have to ratify the treaty according to its own procedures.

UK Conservative Prime Minister Rishi's U-turn on climate policies Sunak

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, has significantly downsized the country's climate policies, announcing "exemptions and delays" to a series of plans and programs envisaged by previous executives.These include a five-year postponement of the ban on the circulation of new petrol and diesel cars, originally scheduled for 2030.The prime minister rejected accusations that he had "watered down the government's commitments to net zero emissions".

The government could face a series of lawsuits.Good Law Project and Friends of the Earth have in fact written to ministers fearing the possibility of legal action.Despite the outcry of Sunak's announcement, Labor does not seem willing to counter the Conservative prime minister's decision, clearly going against their plans for the energy transition, demonstrating how difficult it has become to abandon fossil fuel heating by Great Britain.

According to a in-depth analysis of the British site Carbon Brief, Sunak's proposals could put the UK's legally binding climate targets and commitments under the Paris Agreement at risk.

However, the last word may not have been written yet.Under the terms of the 2008 Climate Change Bill, Sunak's decision will likely need approval from the House of Commons and Lords to pass.This means that the measure could be blocked by some "rebel" Conservatives (at least twenty) who oppose the reduction of climate policies.

The State of California ha sued major oil companies for lying about climate change 

The State of California sued some of the world's largest oil companies, arguing that their actions have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and that they have misled the public by downplaying the risks posed by fossil fuels.

The civil suit, filed in San Francisco, represents the most significant legal action against oil, gas and coal companies for their role in climate change.The lawsuit, against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, calls for the creation of an abatement fund to pay for future damages caused by climate disasters in the state.

“These people knew and they lied to us.We could have avoided some of the most significant consequences...It's shameful.It disgusts you to the core." he declared the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom who also announced that he will sign a historic climate law requiring large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions.

Brazil, historic ruling by the Supreme Court:the land will remain with the indigenous people

With 9 votes against 2, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) he established that using the date of the introduction of the Brazilian Constitution to define indigenous land rights is unconstitutional.This is a historic ruling that closes a controversy that began in 2016.

The “marco temporal” thesis consider indigenous lands only those actually occupied by natives when the Constitution came into force on 5 October 1988.If it had passed, this thesis would have prevented Indigenous people from reclaiming traditional lands that they had not physically occupied before October 5, 1988, the date of promulgation of the Brazilian Constitution.Second Brazil Reports, this provision would have "overlooked the fact that during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-85), many indigenous peoples were persecuted and forced to leave their lands", in addition to the "obvious difficulties" in obtaining proof of the occupation of the Earth.

According to the Guardian, the ruling will “reshape how the state addresses indigenous land rights in Brazil,” setting a precedent that will have “widespread implications for all land boundary disputes in Brazil.”However, according to the newspaper, the ruling will not completely resolve long-standing tensions related to land conflicts.Indigenous leaders said they were still “concerned about attacks by non-Indigenous tenants.”Farmers also said they were concerned about potential conflicts, as "frictions emerge when indigenous ranchers and farmers live in the same region."

The Court's ruling increases pressure on Congress which is instead voting on a bill that goes in the opposite direction.

Data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

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