This week, on Earth Day, representatives from 130 countries gathered at the United Nations in New York City to sign the climate treaty agreed upon in Paris last December. As they smiled for the camera and promised to do their best to hold the temperature down, climate activists posted an open letter stating that it is too late, the climate emergency is already here. The climate treaty further exacerbates the crisis by allowing fossil fuel emissions to escalate until 2030 and making commitments to address the crisis voluntary instead of mandatory.

The Paris Climate Treaty was a prime example of the political theater that has become the norm for government heads. As the planet heats up and the oceans rise, world leaders pretend they are doing something effective about it. In reality, they are promoting false solutions that enrich the economic elites.

To end the political charade, people who see through our mirage democracy are taking action and building alternatives. The political revolution has begun, locally and globally, and will continue long past the upcoming election season.

The People Lead

Leading up to the signing of the Paris Treaty this week were actions to stop the advance of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. We covered a portion of them.

‘Fighting Against Natural Gas’ (FANG) waged three days of unannounced actions in various offices in Rhode Island to stop new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Students at two universities, Columbia in New York City and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, are sitting in to pressure their schools to divest from fossil fuels. At U Mass, students continued their sit in after university officials verbalized support for divestment. Students are not satisfied with words, they are asking the university to take meaningful action.

Divest Harvard stepped up the pressure this week. Sadly, the Harvard administration remains entrenched in its fossil fuel investments while Yale University announced its intention to divest fossil fuel endowments on Tuesday. Harvard officials cite their research on climate change as their contribution to solving the climate crisis.

Two upcoming efforts to stop fossil fuels are the Break Free global week of actions and the Rubber Stamp Rebellion targeting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, DC.

The nuclear industry is attacking environmentalists, using the Washington Post and the New York Times as their mouthpiece, as being ‘anti-science’ when it comes to nuclear power. They claim that nuclear power is necessary to reduce carbon emissions. In reality, nuclear is more expensive, slower to be put in place and dirtier than wind and solar. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service recently launched a #NuclearisDirty campaign to counter the pro-nuclear propaganda. Every dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have been used to cut energy use by increasing efficiency and putting in place energy from the sun, wind and water.