Reports in their dossiers, letters, and memos released in 2014 and 2015 proved fossil fuel executives knew for a couple of decades coal, oil, and natural gas are harmful to people and are treacherously increasing climate change.
With overwhelming evidence, it is hard for fossil fuel companies to continue to deny their involvement in the harm they are doing to people and the climate. Many of these energy oligarchs continue campaigns to deceive the public and pour millions of dollars into lobbying to spread propaganda about climate science and climate policy.
At a time when globally, we should be transitioning to renewable energies at high speed, we are ramping up to extract more fossil fuels by 2030. The United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia will be drilling for coal, gas, and oil, surpassing extractions in any other time in history.
“Governments are literally doubling down on fossil fuel production; that spells double trouble for people and planet,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, “We cannot address climate catastrophe without tackling its root cause: fossil fuel dependence.”
The IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) years of reporting climate science and adaptation studies that have been largely ignored, assess impacts and vulnerabilities. Science confirms the evidence that extreme weather we have been experiencing — droughts, floods, forest fires, locust plagues, environmental degradation — and very poor leadership, has created dire straits for tens of millions of people, giving them no choice but to migrate to survive. We are witnessing mass displacement across the globe.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre the number of people displaced by climate disasters, conflict, and violence continues to reach unprecedented levels. Vulnerable communities and countries under attack from wars for corporate ownership of resources are living with the worst impacts. We need to work more urgently on adaptation action, especially with those who are most vulnerable.
“It’s looking really dire,” said Niklas Hagelberg, the U.N. Environment Program’s global coordinator for climate change. “We’re really on life support here.”
There is a wide void of adaptation action taken and what lower income populations need. We are looking at billions of people in highly vulnerable hotspots as they are called, like Africa, South Asia, South and Central America, developed Islands, and even the United States. Recently, we are suffering with the witness of genocide and settler colonization, where an existing society is replaced with the society of the colonizers. This is happening in Palestine and other countries, all rich with cobalt, coal, uranium, natural gas, and oil.
Food security, clean water, healthy soil, breathable air, and peace, the very things all living beings need to survive, are being decimated by greed for wealth and power. Our dehumanization is in blatant view.
Georgia de la Garza, who is from the beautiful Shawnee Forest of Southern Illinois, has served on the front lines as an organizer for social justice for many years. De la Garza has fought for Indigenous rights, Environmental Justice, Labor and Women’s rights on national and global fronts. She serves on the editorial board of the People’s Tribune.
