“Keep It In the Ground” Movement Gears Up for More Action
In Louisiana, the Keep it in the Ground movement leaders said that “Hundreds of people marched around the Superdome in New Orleans on Wednesday and then headed inside to disrupt a federal oil and gas auction held by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on behalf of the Obama administration”.
“The keep it in the ground movement has completely taken off,” said
May Boeve, Executive Director for 350.org. “People around the world recognize that their local fight against a fossil fuel project is connected to a global movement to save the climate. Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is the new test of climate leadership. Communities are paving the way and it’s time for our politicians to follow.”
The “Keep It In The Ground” campaign is a global effort to stop the development of new coal, oil and gas projects and accelerate a just transition to 100% renewable energy. Led by frontline communities, indigenous organizations, environmental justice campaigns, and national climate groups, the effort has built up surprising momentum over the last six months by targeting federal fossil fuel lease sales.
Keep it in the ground organizers have rallied outside over a dozen lease sales across the country, from Washington, D.C. to Reno, Nevada, forcing the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies to preemptively cancel many of the events. Wednesday’s protest in New Orleans was the largest yet and will by no means be the last: many more auctions are scheduled this year and activists plan to try and be at all of them.
“Our message to the Obama administration is simple: if you auction, we will come,” said Sara Shor, US Keep It In The Ground Campaign Manager for 350.org. “We saw how a strategy of constant opposition and repeated protest helped push the President to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, we want him to build on that success and stop new fossil fuel development on federal lands. Our government shouldn’t be in the business of climate destruction.”
The movement is gearing up for its biggest mobilization yet: Break Free, ten days of global protests at major fossil fuel projects around the world. Actions in the United States include: an protest near Chicago targeting new tar sands pipelines in the Midwest; a protest against fracking at a federal lease sale in Denver, Colorado; a protest against ‘bomb trains’ carrying fracked oil and gas to a port in Albany, NY; a rally against Shell’s devastating refinery pollution north of Seattle; a mobilization in Washington, D.C. against offshore drilling; and a protest in Los Angeles against oil and gas drilling in California.
“Break Free will be the biggest ‘keep it in the ground’ mobilization yet,” said Shor. “We want to show that this resistance to the fossil fuel empire has spread all across the country. People are thinking globally and protesting locally. And together, they’re changing the political dynamic one action at a time.”
Category: Fuels
