The dust is still settling from the dramatic two weeks of UN talks and grassroots mobilisation surrounding Paris. Now we enter the most critical part of the road through Paris – the part where we, the people, step things up another notch and make sure the promises are kept, and strengthened.
World governments have agreed, in principle, to global action, but without a clear commitment to how and when they will transition off fossil fuels.
The way to make that transition a reality is by organising to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerates the just transition to 100% renewable energy.
And we have no time to lose. Today, alongside partners in 12 countries, we are announcing a moment of global escalation against the fossil fuel industry from May 7 to 15, 2016.
It’s called Break Free from Fossil Fuels, and it will be unlike any project we’ve ever joined before: not a day of action, not a single march echoed around the globe, but coordinated, major actions of thousands of people taking on iconic fossil fuel projects and companies across the globe.
This is what we mean by ambitious:
The plan is to grow the number of people participating in the movement, and organize actions that do more to disrupt the power of the fossil fuel industry, whether in the halls of power, or on the sites where they dig up carbon.
A major global mobilisation of thousands of people at a dozen or more locations will build on the many battles against oil pipelines, coal terminals, and fracking wells already happening around the world. It will continue the work of the divestment movement in undermining the social license of the fossil fuel industry.
And it will show the fossil fuel industry that this is the end of the road: it will no longer benefit from the consent of the people.
350 is partnering with some of the bravest fossil fuel fighters around the globe for this project: from activists in Nigeria who pioneered the idea of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, to communities defending their homes from coal in the Philippines, to organizers in the olive fields of Turkey opposing enormous coal plants.
We’re coming together in May so that people in both Northern and Southern hemispheres can act together, and link arms to show that this is no longer just a fight about our backyards: it is a fight about our collective survival.