Date: 2024-12-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00017440
Climate Crisis
Who pays for the remediation
Make Big Polluters pay to fix the climate catastrophe they’ve caused.
I suggested to Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP at a book launch event that the oil and gas industry should be treated like the tobacco industry some years ago ... with a trust fund set up funded by the industry to pay to remediate the damage they have caused. He responded politely but completely avoided the idea that the energy industry had any responsibility! Not a surprise!
Peter Burgess
Make Big Polluters pay to fix the climate catastrophe they’ve caused.
For decades, Big Polluters like Exxon, Shell, and others have spent billions of dollars simultaneously fueling and denying the climate crisis, delaying action, and pushing false “solutions” at every level -- all while raking in billions in profits each year. And despite what their greenwashing advertising says, they’re still doing it, as are other major polluting industries like agribusiness.
People around the globe are fighting to protect their homelands from the rising seas, their loved ones from extreme weather events, and their lives and livelihoods from floods, drought, pipelines, brutal fossil fuel extraction, deforestation, destruction of natural ecosystems, land grabs, and other violations of their rights. Communities in the Global South, women, youth, indigenous peoples, and other communities on the front lines of the climate crisis urgently need funding to implement a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels and false “solutions” like carbon markets and offsets, bioenergy, and geo-engineering -- and toward the community-centered solutions that must power our future: solutions like leaving fossil fuels in the ground, practicing agroecology, protecting vital ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, and other solutions enshrined in the People’s Demands for Climate Justice.
That’s why communities around the globe are taking action toward holding polluting industries liable for the damage they have caused. We urge you to join them in doing so.
We are already experiencing the tipping points that indicate we are dangerously close to planetary collapse. It’s time for courage and justice in addressing the climate crisis. It’s time to listen to the Global South, frontline, youth, and indigenous peoples and communities leading the way. It’s time to stop Big Polluters and corporate climate lobbyists from writing the rules. It’s time to hold them liable -- for the loss and for the damage they have caused, and for a just transition to sustainable life models for impacted communities and territories, most especially in the Global South. It’s time to make them pay.
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To: Government officials around the globe From: [Your Name]
We urge you to act to hold the industries and corporations that have fueled and continue to worsen the climate crisis liable, as well as the individuals behind them, so that we may advance climate justice globally.
These real, just solutions to address climate change are within reach, and have been led and practiced by communities on the front lines of the climate crisis for decades. Implementing these solutions requires economic resources. This is a debt that is already owed by corporations-- and the individuals behind them-- to these communities, and its distribution must be accountable to them as they seek to restore balance with nature.
The industries that have fueled the climate crisis, funded climate denial, and blocked just climate progress for decades must pay for the damage they have caused. Holding them liable means ensuring that they are held criminally and financially responsible, and that they are made to end the practices that have driven this crisis in the first place.
The sponsors of this petition are:
- Corporate Accountability,
- 198 methods,
- 350.org,
- ActionAid USA,
- Amazon Watch,
- Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL),
- CPD Action ,
- CCAN Action Fund,
- Climate Hawks Vote,
- Common Dreams,
- Food Chain Workers Alliance,
- Friends of the Earth Action,
- Green America,
- Interfaith Power & Light,
- National Economic And Social Rights Initiative (NESRI),
- The Other 98%,
- Progress America, and
- The Nation,