Last week we hit an important milestone: President Obama’s Last 100 days in office. To mark the occasion, our executive director Annie Leonard called on President Obama to honor his promises to act on climate and cement his legacy by putting an end to federal fossil fuel leasing on public lands.
While he has made some very significant strides during his eight years in the White House — including putting a temporary pause on federal coal leasing and signing the United States onto the historic Paris agreement — President Obama’s administration has also been responsible for leasing more than 10 million acres of public land and more than 15 million acres of public waters to new fossil fuel development.
Decades of pollution, oil spills, contaminated water, and catastrophic climate change… It's time to #ActonClimate: https://t.co/yt9bHsvxFL pic.twitter.com/oVe71PyZBt
— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) October 15, 2016
It’s as if every step we take forward, we take one giant step back, keeping us in the exact same place. But in the final days of Obama’s presidency, the climate movement won’t let him get away with that anymore.
Over the past year, people all over the country have been rallying in their homes, their communities, on the streets, at massive extraction sites, at proposed pipeline sites, outside of the White House, and beyond to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
So what is this Keep it in the Ground movement all about?
At its very core, it’s about establishing a legacy of bold action. It is about putting climate and environmental justice and communities ahead of fossil fuel interests. And finally, it is about doing everything we can, at every moment we have, to leave a liveable climate for future generations.
We know President Obama can hear us. The question is, will the scale of his actions meet the scale of the climate challenge ahead of us?
A recent report from Oil Change International shows that emissions from the coal, oil, and gas already leased to fossil fuel companies would take us past the 2 degrees Celsius target set in Paris and into catastrophic climate change. Any new leases would only make things worse. We need a radical and immediate shift away from fossil fuels, one that President Obama can spearhead. As the old saying goes, when you are stuck in a hole, stop digging. And in this case, we mean literally.
While we know that climate change is a truly global crisis that will require a global solution, the United States is a major source of carbon emissions. President Obama has legal authority to do something about that — he needs to use it to end the federal leasing program and to accelerate our transition towards a clean energy economy.
You and I understand the urgency of the climate crisis. President Obama understands the urgency of the climate crisis. What we need now is a powerful movement to drive the change we need to see. That’s where you come in.
To make sure President Obama feels the pressure of the climate movement during his last 100 days in office, Greenpeace has joined with Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and others to renew our call to President Obama to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We’ve created a countdown clock just to remind President Obama that his time to make a historic and bold move for our climate and communities is fading — fast.
