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WATCH LIVESTREAM: NYC Climate Convergence: The Warm Up to People's Climate March
[Editor's note: Can't make it to NYC for the People's Climate March? Watch it on EcoWatch here, tomorrow, Sunday, Sept. 21 starting at 10:30 a.m.]
Watch the livestream of NYC Climate Convergence starting Friday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m.:
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
NYC Climate Convergence: The Warm Up to People's Climate March
As environmental activists pour into New York City for Sunday's People's Climate March, expected to be the largest climate action in history, some climate advocates will already be there participating in the NYC Climate Convergence, a conference advocating for "people, planet and peace over profit," Sept. 19-21. EcoWatch will be livestreaming many parts of the event courtesy of @StopMotionsolo, so if you can't get to NYC, be sure to stay-tuned to EcoWatch. Subscribing to EcoWatch's Top News of the Day is the best way to stay connected.
Organizers of the Convergence are billing it as an "alternative summit" intended to strengthen and grow the environmental movement by addressing the underlying social and economic causes of the climate crisis and including all types of voices, not just those of the select world leaders attending the UN Climate Summit in NYC next Tuesday. Panels, workshops, performances, meet-ups and speeches will be taking place all over Lower Manhattan, engaging artists, activists, communities leaders, academics, writers and artists as well as ordinary citizens from all over the world, exploring how a more just society and climate protection go hand in hand.
“After 19 years it’s clear that the UN climate change negotiating process is broken,” said Pace University physics professor Chris Williams, co-founder of System Change Not Climate Change, one of the groups organizing the conference. “A profound shift in emphasis and action toward confrontation with the priorities of corporations, neoliberalism and the political bankruptcy of world leaders is required."
There are too many events for us to list—or for a single person to attend. But you can access a full schedule here. Here are a few highlights.
The opening plenary takes place Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. at St. Peter's Church, 619 Lexington Avenue. Speakers include Bolivian water rights activist Oscar Olivera, Philippine trade union leader Josua Mata, hip hop artist Immortal Technique, executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project Anne Petermann, Nastaran Mohit from the New York State Nurses Association and Erica Violet Lee from indigenous peoples justice movement Idle No More.
Riverkeeper and Waterkeep
Watch it here:
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
Bread and Puppet Theater, started more than 50 years ago to combine social and political activism with avant-garde theater, will perform its Anti-Tar Sands Manifesto Pageant, described as "an outdoor pageant with caribou, the tar sands monster and Christopher Columbus," on Sept. 20 at 4 p.m. at El Jardin Del Paraiso Community Garden on East 5th, between avenues C & D.
The closing plenary on Sat., Sept. 20 at 7 p.m., also at St. Peter's Church, will feature noted Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein, whose new book This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate sums up the conference theme. She'll be joined by 2014 South African community organizer Desmond D'Sa, Olga Bautista from the Southeast Side Coalition against Petcoke and Jaqui Patterson from the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program.
All day Saturday, panels and workshops take place at multiple locations, covering topics such as "Privatization and Cuts: How Our Communities Are Losing Our Rights," "Uniting Our Strategies to Stop War and Save Our Planet," "Logging, Deforestation and Climate Change," "Mapping the Fracking Boom in New York State" and even "From Trayvon Martin to Mike Brown: The Plight of African American Men Today and What It Means for the Climate Movement."
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Readers of this blog know how concerned EDF is over the Trump EPA's approval of many dozens of new chemicals based on its mere "expectation" that workers across supply chains will always employ personal protective equipment (PPE) just because it is recommended in the manufacturer's non-binding safety data sheet (SDS).
By Grant Smith
From 2009 to 2012, Gregory Jaczko was chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves nuclear power plant designs and sets safety standards for plants. But he now says that nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive — and not part of the answer to the climate crisis.
By Brett Walton
When Greg Wetherbee sat in front of the microscope recently, he was looking for fragments of metals or coal, particles that might indicate the source of airborne nitrogen pollution in Rocky Mountain National Park. What caught his eye, though, were the plastics.
In a big victory for animals, Prada has announced that it's ending its use of fur! It joins Coach, Jean Paul Gaultier, Giorgio Armani, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Vivienne Westwood, Michael Kors, Donna Karan and many others PETA has pushed toward a ban.
This is a victory more than a decade in the making. PETA and our international affiliates have crashed Prada's catwalks with anti-fur signs, held eye-catching demonstrations all around the world, and sent the company loads of information about the fur industry. In 2018, actor and animal rights advocate Pamela Anderson sent a letter on PETA's behalf urging Miuccia Prada to commit to leaving fur out of all future collections, and the iconic designer has finally listened.
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If people in three European countries want to fight the climate crisis, they need to chill out more.
That's the conclusion of a new study from think tank Autonomy, which found that Germany, the UK and Sweden all needed to drastically reduce their workweeks to fight climate change.
"The rapid pace of labour-saving technology brings into focus the possibility of a shorter working week for all, if deployed properly," Autonomy Director Will Stronge said, The Guardian reported. "However, while automation shows that less work is technically possible, the urgent pressures on the environment and on our available carbon budget show that reducing the working week is in fact necessary."
The report found that if the economies of Germany, Sweden and the UK maintain their current levels of carbon intensity and productivity, they would need to switch to a six, 12 and nine hour work week respectively if they wanted keep the rise in global temperatures to the below two degrees Celsius promised by the Paris agreement, The Independent reported.
The study based its conclusions on data from the UN and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on greenhouse gas emissions per industry in all three countries.
The report comes as the group Momentum called on the UK's Labour Party to endorse a four-day work week.
"We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet," Emma Williams of the Four Day Week campaign said in a statement reported by The Independent. "In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less."
Supporters of the idea linked it to calls in the U.S. and Europe for a Green New Deal that would decarbonize the economy while promoting equality and well-being.
"This new paper from Autonomy is a thought experiment that should give policymakers, activists and campaigners more ballast to make the case that a Green New Deal is absolutely necessary," Common Wealth think tank Director Mat Lawrence told The Independent. "The link between working time and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions has been proved by a number of studies. Using OECD data and relating it to our carbon budget, Autonomy have taken the step to show what that link means in terms of our working weeks."
Stronge also linked his report to calls for a Green New Deal.
"Becoming a green, sustainable society will require a number of strategies – a shorter working week being just one of them," he said, according to The Guardian. "This paper and the other nascent research in the field should give us plenty of food for thought when we consider how urgent a Green New Deal is and what it should look like."
- Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change ›
- How working less could solve all our problems. Really. | ›
- Needed: A shorter work week – People's World ›
Amazon shareholders voted down an employee-backed resolution calling for more aggressive action on climate change at their annual meeting Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times reported.
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Washington became the first U.S. state to legalize human composting Tuesday, offering residents a more environmentally friendly way to dispose of their remains, AFP reported.