Climate activists march in New York calling on Biden to stop fossil fuels – live

At the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice.

“We’re at our lunch counter moment for the 21st century,” he said.

A native of Louisiana, he said he was excited to see demonstrators support environmental justice activists’ fight to end petrochemical buildout in the south-west US.

“We need to end fossil fuels in all forms,” he said.

Protesters chanted: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”

Others sang Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Veteran environmental activist Bill McKibben travelled to New York City to attend the march.

“I think it’s a real restart moment after the pandemic for the big in-the-streets climate movement,” he said. “It’s good to see people get back out there.”

The crowd, he said, reflected the diversity of New York City.

“I’m glad to see there’s a lot of old people like me here,” said McKibben, who founded Third Act, an activist group aimed at elders. “We’ll be marching in the back because we’re slow!”

Climate scientist Peter Kalmus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab also spoke at the press conference, saying that he has two kids in high school and that he’s “terrified for their future”.

“I’m terrified for my future right now,” he added.

“We are so clearly in a fucking climate emergency. Why won’t Biden declare it?” he said.

Actor and climate activist Susan Sarandon opened her speech by congratulating the students of New York University on the news of their university divesting from fossil fuels after years of pressure, as the Guardian first reported last week.

Addressing the crowd, she said, “You guys give me hope,” adding: “What we have to do is take responsibility and press those that are at the top to finally step up.”

For the full story on the Guardian’s report of NYU’s divestment from fossil fuels, click here:

Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York led the crowd in chanting: “Climate justice now.”

“We are the revolution,” he said, adding: “It’s going to be our love, our heart, our vision that rebuilds America and saves it from itself.”

He railed against US subsidies to oil and gas companies, as well as the nation’s investments in the military.

“We continue to give almost a trillion dollars a year to our military-industrial complex, which is the number one contributor to carbon emissions in the world,” he said.

“This is unfair. This is wrong. And this is unjust,” said Vanessa Nakate a climate activist from Uganda.

When we say that we want climate justice. We’re not just talking about transitioning to solar panels. We are talking about leaving no one behind when you’re talking about addressing the injustices that come with the climate crisis.

We shouldn’t allow corporations to have the license to destroy our lands, to destroy the air we breathe and to poison the water.

Last September, Nakate spoke to the Guardian on her climate fight, saying: “Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis but it’s not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. Every activist who speaks out is telling a story about themselves and their community, but if they are ignored, the world will not know what’s really happening.”

New York state senator Zellnor Myrie spoke about the oil industry’s attempts to sow doubt about climate science:

We need to acknowledge they lie to the public, lie to investors and confuse the conversation.

“This isn’t just about climate action,” Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity said at the press conference.

She added: “This is getting to the culprit of the climate emergency, which is burning fossil fuels.

“President Biden, we need you to still step through those doors and to actually commit to no new fossil fuels because that’s the only way we are going to survive.”

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and the UN high commissioner for human rights, is at the march’s press conference.

“I’m here as chair of the elders, but I’m also here as a grandmother and angry granny because we are subsidizing what is destroying us,” she said, adding: “Our house is burning as Greta Thunberg said, so the elders strongly support phasing out fossil fuel and incentivizing clean energy.”

Sharon Lavigne, director of Rise St James, an environmental justice organization based in the notoriously polluted region known as “Cancer Alley”, laid out the activists’ asks at a press conference held by Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity ahead of the march.

“We demand that [Joe Biden] stop all new fossil fuel approvals, phase out existing fossil fuels and declare a climate emergency,” she said.

If the president doesn’t phase out fossil fuels, she said, “our blood will be on your hands.”

At the march, Eagle Woman/Kandi White, who traveled here from North Dakota with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said:

“A lot of our native people are here today because as has been the case for over 500 years, we’ve had to hold the line in the protections of the fight of our earth.”

“The resources that we should be most concerned [about] are not oil, coal and gas. They are the air we need to breathe, the water we need to drink,” she added.

Here is what a few youth climate activists and organizers told the Guardian’s fossil fuels and climate reporter Dharna Noor ahead of today’s march:

Bree Campell, a 17-year-old organizer with Fridays for Future NYC, said:

Next year, myself and millions of young people will be newly eligible to vote – and climate is our number one priority.

People are expected to travel from far and wide to attend Sunday’s march.

“As an 11-year-old girl living with asthma in south-west Louisiana, I’ve experienced first-hand the harmful effects of air pollution on my health,” said Kamea Ozane, an 11-year old from Sulphur, Louisiana – part of the notoriously heavily polluted “Cancer Alley” region – who will attend the march with her mother, Roishetta Sibley Ozane.

She added:

Every child deserves clean air to breathe and a future free from the dangers of fossil fuels.

Good morning, blog readers.

Thousands of activists are expected to show up in New York City on Sunday for the march to end fossil fuels. The protest will begin at 1pm ET and a rally headlined by New York’s Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is expected to begin at 3pm ET.

The demonstration will fall days before the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, which the UN secretary general, António Guterres, says will focus on on bold new climate pledges.

On Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden was not currently scheduled to attend the UN climate summit – a decision that is “unacceptable”, said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups organizing the march.

She added:

The time is now for Biden to lead on the world stage, and show he means it when he calls climate change the existential threat to humanity.

More than 650 global climate actions took place earlier this week and more are expected in the coming days. Youth-led organizations, including Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future, played leading roles in organizing the mobilizations.

Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.