SAN FRANCISCO, April 20, 2001 – Leaders of more than a dozen environmental justice organizations from the United States and around the world delivered an Earth Day letter to President George W. Bush offering a scathing response to the U.S. abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol.
The letter calls on Bush to ”reconsider your position on climate change
before the United States becomes universally known as an environmental
rogue state, and you go down in history as G.W. Bush, the Global Warming
President.”
The letter, which is signed by organizations such as the Southwest Network
for Environmental and Economic Justice (USA), the Indigenous Environmental
Network (USA) and Oilwatch Africa marks a significant broadening of the
constituency involved in the climate change issue.
”Until now the climate change discussion has primarily been limited to
elite policy wonk debates,” said Amit Srivastava, Climate Justice
Coordinator for CorpWatch, the US organization which coordinated the letter
to Bush. ”But we’re here to say that climate change is larger than that.
It is a moral issue, a human rights issue and perhaps the biggest
environmental justice issue ever. And we are building a global grassroots
response.”
The groups argue that the Bush administration’s climate policy will have
profound ramifications on poor people and people of color in the United
States and around the world. Particularly hard hit will be groups already
affected by the oil industry–among them; the Artic Village in Alaska,
Louisiana’s ”cancer alley”, and Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
They further argue that those who depend on farming, fishing or forestry
are most likely to bear the bunt of climate change. ”It is no longer a
question of whether sea levels will rise, but rather of how many
coastlines, people, communities, and entire island nations will be
submerged” they write.
The groups write the President that his turning his back on the Kyoto
Protocol ”borders on nothing short of gross global negligence.”
The letter calls on the United States government, whose population makes up
four percent of the world’s population and generates one-quarter of all man
made carbon dioxide-the leading global warming gas-to take a lead in
reversing its role as the main contributor to this looming global crisis.
The groups tell the President that he should to support the Kyoto Protocol
internationally, while fostering a just transition for fossil fuel industry
workers and fenceline communities at home, and investing the United States’
resources in energy efficiency and renewable energy resources, such as
solar, wind and biomass.
