It’s Time to Break Free From Fossil Fuels

This February was the hottest in recorded history, scorching crops and flooding homes all across the planet. Record-breaking temperatures have robbed theArctic of its winter.

And yet despite this, governments around the world still plan to build massive new coal mines and open new oil and gas fields.

But everywhere they do, something remarkable is happening: resistance. This May, people will be joining hands in a new way to step up that fight on the front lines. This May, we’re breaking free from fossil fuels across the globe.

Next month, from the oil and gas fields of Nigeria and Brazil to the coal fields of Germany and Australia, people have made their intentions clear: they intend to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and are willing to put their bodies on the line to do it. Even as the ability to freely protest is constrained in many parts of the world—recent violent crackdowns in the Philippinesand Bangladesh mark a tragic uptick in a troubling trend—those who can, are standing up. Resistance is not fading away. It’s growing.

That’s what Break Free is about: escalating the global fight to keep fossil fuels underground and accelerating a just transition to the renewable energy driven economy we know is possible.

The good news is that the transition to renewable energy is coming sooner and faster than anyone thought. Ninety percent of the new electricity generation installed last year was renewable, leading to two years running of flat—though still too high—global carbon emissions.

But the real reason I see for hope is in the resistance to fossil fuels that is growing everywhere the fossil fuel industry turns. Break Free will be one of those moments that you will remember and if you can find a way to join in an action near you, you will be a part of something special.

It’s likely that this fight is the biggest humanity will ever face. It may look like the odds are stacked against us, but no fight worth fighting has ever been easy.