In March, we launched a petition to the Environmental Defense Fund amidst CERAWeek: one of the world’s largest oil, gas, and energy conferences, featuring executives from tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services, mining companies Rio Tinto and Glencore, oil and gas companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, and military executives.
We asked the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization “committed to climate justice,” why they’re a partner in this conference? Why not instead join the directly impacted communities organizing to confront it? We’re following up because we didn’t receive an initial response. We want to learn more about their strategy and see if they will address the elephant in the room: war and militarism. We can’t save the planet without confronting the world’s largest institutional polluter, and the resource wars that move us further and further away from an energy transition. We’re inviting the EDF to use their immense resources in true pursuit of their mission, and join the movement for the people and planet!
We, the undersigned, are writing to follow up on our last petition. We became deeply concerned about the Environmental Defense Fund’s partnership on CERAWeek, a conference organized by the very people destroying the Earth, as well as the general lack of attention to war and militarism in your work. 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 value the Environmental Defense Fund’s goals and mission for a clean energy transition, climate justice, and creating real energy solutions. At the recent first ever conference for the phase out of fossil fuels, the parallel people’s summit, made up of over 1000 civil society organizations from around the world, very clearly stated the truth: an energy transition is impossible without demilitarization.
We are profoundly aware of the Environmental Defense Fund’s scale and broad reach. This is why we are incredibly disappointed to see the absence of anti-militarism in your work, in a time when U.S. aggression for fossil fuels, from Venezuela to Iran, is at its highest. We were also incredibly disappointed to see your partnership on CERAWeek, a conference featuring speakers from the tech companies, mining companies, and Pentagon officials, all spearheading the destruction of the earth.
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. Your mission statement of “preserving the natural systems on which all life depends by finding practical, lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems” is directly threatened by war.
The EDF has incredible influence and power — your revenue is hundreds of times that of most anti-war organizations put together. Now, more than ever, we need to be working together.
We need a united climate movement bringing together organizations for the people and planet and against more extraction and destruction. We ask you to meet with us to learn more about the cost of war to the planet and how you can join with the growing movement to bring an end to this madness. We also invite you to sign onto our letter, Environmentalists Unite: War Fuels the Climate Crisis.
Sincerely,