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Dear Friends,
I’m writing from the Philippines, where Typhoon Hagupit has forced over a million people into emergency shelters and taken more than 20 lives. This storm comes just one year after Typhoon Haiyan cost over 7,000 lives and caused nearly incalculable damage.
If climate change is left unchecked, warmer oceans and higher sea levels will make typhoons ever more frequent and intense. Together, we are refusing to accept a future where deadly storms become a way of life.
As we confront the impacts of climate change, world governments are at the latest round of United Nations Climate Talks in Lima, Peru. Amazingly, negotiators released a new draft climate text that goes directly after the fossil fuel industry.According to the Financial Times, the agreement would force companies like Exxon and Chevron to “cease to exist in their current forms.”
Already, the fossil fuel industry is fighting back. Unlike the World Health Organization, which bans tobacco lobbyists from tobacco control talks, the UN climate talks have no such protections against the fossil fuel industry. Their lobbyists are fighting hard to weaken the agreement — and take away protections for communities in places like the Philippines.
In the face of the latest climate disaster in the Philippines, allowing the fossil fuel industry to put a corporate stranglehold on the climate talks is unacceptable. It’s time to kick big polluters out and make the climate talks fossil free:
In Peru, global activists have directly confronted fossil fuel influence at the climate talks, protesting outside of an anti-divestment event with speakers from Shell and the World Coal Association.
From the record-setting People’s Climate March, to the rapidly spreading fossil fuel divestment movement, and countless fights for climate action around the world, there’s a growing call for justice rising everywhere.
We are a strong and resilient people here in The Philippines, and with everyone’s help we will regain strength and claim justice for our loved ones. We are not calling for sympathy, much less pity. We are calling for action from governments and solidarity from people around the world.
Storms like Hagupit and Haiyan remind us that climate change is about far more than the environment. It’s about justice. The world’s most vulnerable people — the ones that did the least to cause climate change — are the ones that will feel its impacts first and worst. This is why it is so important that we fight, not just for climate action, but for climate justice.
Please stand with us in this fight,
Zeph for 350.org
P.S. Please consider donating to the ongoing relief efforts in the Philippines. One year after Typhoon Haiyan 15,000 people were still living in tent cities trying to rebuild. Now Hagupit has caused another wave of destruction and another setback for people trying to rebuild their lives. Your donation will be directed to where it is most needed in the rebuilding effort.