CREDO grantee Friends of the Earth Action is combating climate change in a humane, just and sustainable way

Note from the CREDO team: This May, Friends of the Earth Action is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO community will help the group bolster progressive leaders who see the importance of intersectionality in progressive issues and who understand the relationship between social justice and environmental protection.

Read this important blog post from Peter Stocker,  VP of Membership and Development, then click here to visit CREDODonations.com to cast your vote to help determine how we distribute our monthly grant to this organization and our other amazing grantees this May.

Friend of the Earth Action works to create a healthier and more just world with campaigns ranging in focus from combating the climate crisis, protecting people from toxic and potentially harmful technologies, low-pollution alternatives, organics for all, and a healthy food system. Our work with Friends of the Earth International helps to defeat harmful projects; mobilize people to take action; and transform the dialogue about environmental and climate justice in communities worldwide.

We continue to shine a light on the corrupt corporate system geared towards profit over people. Friends of the Earth Action fights for the rights of all people to create a safe and healthy living and working environment. The health of the planet and health of the people go hand in hand.

Fighting for Climate Justice

The climate crisis is the definitive environmental issue of our time, and addressing it in a humane, just and sustainable way is Friends of the Earth Action’s top priority. The horrific impacts of the climate emergency are already hitting home. Climate-change-driven wildfires burn in California and Oregon, while many environmental justice communities endure greater suffering and hardship due to their proximity to fossil fuel infrastructure. The climate crisis is already impacting the world’s most marginalized people. The window to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C is closing quickly. This marker is crucial, because an average increase of 1.5 degree C worldwide takes many systems that we rely on past the dangerous tipping point (IPCC).

One of the drivers of global climate change is fossil fuel extraction and transportation. To fight for justice and help prevent hitting that 1.5 degree tipping point, Friends of the Earth Action is working to expose potential fossil fuel industry influence over the U.S. response to the crisis in Ukraine.

We are shining a bright light on the secretive U.S.-European Union Energy Task Force embedded at the State Department that works behind the scenes to pressure Europe into long-term liquefied natural gas contracts. We are holding the State Department accountable to its open-government obligations at every turn.

We will put our findings to good use to build pressure in Congress and the Biden Administration against fossil fuel exports. We also called out Big Oil CEOs who have exploited the crisis in Ukraine to sell shares and reap massive profits at the expense of people and the planet. Our report identified the biggest profiteers and called for an end to the age of fossil fuels.

And we continued our work to stop subsidies and bailouts to fossil fuel polluters. We were pleased when the final version of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) removed some of the harmful kickbacks to the fossil fuel industry that we had been fighting in the legislative precursor to the IRA, the Build Back Better Act. We also advocated successfully for a strengthened definition of “clean hydrogen” in the IRA, improving on the weak standard in Senator Manchin’s original bipartisan bill.

Steps in the Right Direction

To have a fighting chance, we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Fossil fuel projects – from extraction to transportation – must be halted.

Part of that includes establishing National Monuments, preserved land on which extraction is prohibited. Biden Administration restored the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and restored and expanded the Bears Ears National Monument, both in Utah. We also successfully pressured the Biden Administration to designate Texas’s Castner Range and Nevada’s Avi Kwa Ame as National Monuments.

Along with allies, we submitted over 200,000 comments urging the Biden Administration to oppose the Willow oil and gas development project in Alaska’s Western Arctic—a region inhabited by the Inupiat people for thousands of years, and a haven for caribou and polar bears.