Young and Kicking Out the Fossil Fuel Industry
By Allie Rosenbluth
Just this summer, communities across the West Coast suffered for three months while wildfires filled the air with toxic smoke. In my community in Southern Oregon people couldn’t leave their homes without masks and suffered major health consequences from just going outside. The unhoused community and outdoor workers, who are primarily low-income and communities of color, had no escape and faced the worst impacts. As temperatures warm and our forests dry up because of climate change, wildfire seasons are slated to become longer and more intense.
The reality is, those most affected by the climate crisis have contributed the least. Did you know that only 100 companies are responsible for creating the conditions that have already bred deadly wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes? Just 100 companies have produced more than 70% of the world’s climate pollution since 1988, according to a recent report.
Science tells us we only have 12 years left to address the climate crisis before it threatens the lives of hundreds of millions of people, impacting low income communities and communities of color first and worst. Hundreds of thousands across the world are already impacted, and over 80 people died in wildfires this year in California.
But while urgency should be at an all-time high, corporations and governments continue to extract and grow dependence on fossil fuels. In part, this lack of action is because the fossil fuel industry, the very industry to blame, has bought a seat at the table nearly everywhere solutions to climate change are being talked about.
Even in rural Oregon, where I lived for the last 3 years, we saw the influence of fossil fuel money show up in our local and state elections this year.
One of the biggest climate issues in Oregon right now is Jordan Cove LNG, the proposed 229-mile fracked gas pipeline that would terminate at a liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal on the coast. If built, Jordan Cove would likely become the first LNG export terminal on the West Coast and largest source of climate pollution in Oregon. To make matters worse, fracked gas shipped from Jordan Cove LNG would compete with new solar and wind projects in Asia.
Jordan Cove LNG wouldn’t just be a huge step backwards for the climate, thisproposal also threatens our clean drinking water, Tribal burial grounds and cultural resources, and poses major safety threats to nearby communities by putting an explosive gas pipeline and terminal in a region prone to wildfires, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
Every month, Pembina Pipeline Corporation, the company behind Jordan Cove LNG, pumps $10 million dollars to fight the strong and growing opposition to their fracked gas proposal in my community.
This election season, that money went into campaign bank accounts across Oregon. Jordan Cove made political contributions totaling over $200,000 this year across the state. But because of long and sustained grassroots pressure, many politicians rejected the money, even calling it “tainted.”
On Tuesday, I left Oregon to join 11 youth climate activists at the United Nations Climate Talks (COP24) to demand global leaders and key decision makers in communities worldwide prioritize the health and well-being of people and our planet over fossil fuel industry interests and profits. This can only happen if the fossil fuel industry can no longer buy a seat at the table in these meetings. Right now, however, the world’s biggest polluters are invited to participate in the talks as “observers,” thus dismantling progress through lobbying and corporate side events that hold back real climate solutions from emerging at the UN.
The report “Polluting Paris: How Big Polluters are undermining global climate policy” details numerous examples of corporations holding back climate solutions at the UN.
For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is funded and run by major polluters, including Exxon Mobil, has criticized both the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, the measures proposed to meet them, and has aggressively undermined any movement on domestic climate policy. Yet the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is still given a seat at the table at these talks.
At COP24, SustainUS youth will stand with community leaders from across the globe to demand that industries profiting from fossil fuels and the climate crisis can no longer influence international and national climate policy forums. This is the year global leaders will meet to decide how the frameworks of the Paris agreement will be implemented. The time is now for young people, like me, to rise up to close the door on the fossil fuel industry at the UN by advocating for a binding conflict-of-interest policy.
Allie Rosenbluth is a US Youth Delegate with SustainUS and is the Campaigns Director at Rogue Climate, a grassroots organization fighting the Jordan Cove LNG Export Terminal and Pacific Connector Pipeline.
