This weekend (March 21st and 22nd), organizers from around the country will be converging in Houston for a Confronting CERAWeek convergence. CERAWeek is one of the world’s largest oil, gas, and energy conferences and will feature executives from tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services. Also featured are mining companies Rio Tinto and Glencore, who work with these tech companies to extract more resources from sovereign countries, often creating horrific labor conditions and murdering millions to gain access. And of course, oil and gas companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, and dozens of others will be there.
So why is the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization “committed to climate justice” a partner in this conference? Why don’t they instead join those organizing to confront it? Amidst a horrific new resource war on Iran, we need to be building a mass movement for the people and planet, not working with war mongers and climate villains.
CERAWeek is now over, but we still have the same questions and concerns as we did when we originally sent out this petition. Add your name before we deliver this petition, along with our follow-up, to the Environmental Defense Fund!
We, the undersigned, are writing because we are concerned about the Environmental Defense Fund’s partnership on CERAWeek, a conference organized by the very people destroying the Earth. We are writing as environmentalists, organizers, and individuals concerned about the devastating impacts of the intertwined fossil fuel, tech, and war industries to the health of the planet. We deeply value the Environmental Defense Fund’s goals for a clean energy transition, climate justice, and creating real energy solutions.
We admire the Environmental Defense Fund’s scale and broad reach, and we want to build a large coalition that can take on the planet’s biggest threats and challenges. This is why we were incredibly disappointed to see your partnership on CERAWeek, a conference organized and funded by those working against all of those goals. These people are currently pushing for an environmentally devastating war on Iran that the vast majority of people in the U.S. oppose.
The speakers for CERAWeek, as you likely know, include tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services. These companies are regular partners with the Pentagon—the world’s largest institutional polluter—and have worked with Israel in its genocide in Palestine over the past two years. Speakers also include mining companies like Rio Tinto and Glencore, which have both fueled devastating resource wars where millions have been murdered. The participating companies have also been involved in producing data centers around the U.S., which consume enormous amounts of water and energy and which poison the surrounding communities. And, representatives from the U.S. military, like General Randall Reed, head of the U.S. Transportation Command, the division of the military facilitating the extremely high-emitting movement of the world’s largest tools for destruction, to its over 800 toxic bases globally.
Recent military strikes on Iran have resulted in toxic rain and black smoke over the skies of Tehran, all for access to the world’s 3rd largest oil reserves. This is a war on behalf of the oil industry, tech industry, and military industrial complex, and it could result in a much wider regional war that pushes the planet closer and closer to climate destruction.
We need a united climate movement bringing together organizations for the people and planet and against more extraction. We would love to set up a meeting to learn more about your approach and ways to build a united movement. We also invite you to sign onto our letter, Environmentalists Unite: War Fuels the Climate Crisis.
Sincerly,