2015 was the year President Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, specifically citing climate change in his reasoning. That’s entirely the product of our movement’s work over the past four years, holding more than 750 actions and bird-dogging President Obama and Secretary Kerry at over 100 events.

Map of Keystone XL actions over the past 4 years.

But we knew stopping Keystone wasn’t enough to halt the expansion of the tar sands. So we held a series of Climate Welcome actions for incoming Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, where 300 people risked arrest over four days of sit-ins to hold him accountable to his promises on climate change. Led by indigenous elders and women, people gathered from every corner of the country and delivered welcome gifts, including solar panels, for the new Prime Minister.

Photo: Robert Van Waarden/Survival Media

Earlier in the year, our team in Canada worked with partners to organize two massive days of action in July to send the message that We > Tar Sands. These actions were capped by a huge march led by frontline and indigenous communities in Toronto of over 10,000 people demanding real action on jobs, justice, and the climate.

In the upper Midwest of the US, we helped organize 5,000 people for the Midwest Tar Sands Resistance March, which added momentum to the fight to stop the Alberta Clipper pipeline and other proposed Enbridge tar sands projects. That action brought together Native, frontline, and environmental communities from across the Midwest to demonstrate growing tar sands opposition. Since the march, the activists have been targeting statewide decision makers, and building a louder drumbeat for stopping tar sands pipelines throughout the Midwest.

In Brazil, the anti-fracking campaign is racking up victories: 51 municipalities have passed fracking bans. The campaign had another big victory in July 2015 when the environment commission of the National House of Representatives approved a five-year moratorium on fracking in National territories. On October 4, 2015, we organized a Day of Action in solidarity with the Brazilian fight against fracking. In total, there were 23 countries and 39 Brazilian cities that symbolically said no to fracking during the day of action. At an oil and gas auction to lease public lands, 350.org supported an action organized by COESUS - No Fracking Brazil Coalition, where indigenous peoples and activists protested against fracking. Of the 266 blocks being auctioned, only 37 were sold.

Photo: Kelly Johnson

In the US, we played integral roles in two national fracking coalitions and helped organize the March for Real Climate Leadership, which drew over 8,000 people to a march in Oakland, CA to call for a ban on fracking — the largest anti-fracking march in U.S. history. We’ve also worked with community members to photograph, document, and collect stories in California about how fracking is impacting their lives. We garnered media attention and countered the narrative that fracking is "safe."

350.org Australia, an independent entity and 350.org partner, drew attention to and built resistance against the Galilee Basin coal development, which would be Australia's largest coal development, and one of the largest in the entire world. Following months of sustained pressure from 350.org Australia’s #RaiseTheHeat campaign, 12 international and two domestic banks — including two of Australia’s four largest banks — have publicly ruled out funding the project due to the financial and environmental risks.

Photo: Therene Quijano

In the Philippines, our team connected with the community in Palawan, who were facing the construction of a coal-fired power plant. In April 2015, 350.org Philippines launched a petition against the power plant and the mine: delivering over 6,000 petitions to the government.

Our team held multiple trainings in June to build the capacity of the local organising team in Palawan and elsewhere in the Philippines, and pressured authorities to not permit the plant. In February 2016, due to grassroots activism, the government ruled that no new coal plants would be built in Palawan!

In Germany, from August 14-16 2015, our team supported a grassroots-led mass action to stop the world’s largest coal diggers in their tracks for a day. The mass action was called Ende Gelände, which translates as “This far, and no further.” Over 1,500 people participated directly in the action, and we estimate that 350–400 people traveled from outside of Germany to take part. Many of the 1,500 people who participated in this epic act of civil disobedience had never done anything like it before.

Ende Gelände, 2015. Photo: Paul Wagner