Climate activists take part in a rally exterior of the Museum of Modern Art on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in New York. Climate activists with Extinction Rebellion NYC organized a rally exterior MoMA forward of this weekend’s “March to End Fossil Fuels,” calling on the museum to finish its partnership with KKR, a non-public fairness agency that has invested almost $15 billion in fossil gasoline initiatives.

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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Climate activists take part in a rally exterior of the Museum of Modern Art on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in New York. Climate activists with Extinction Rebellion NYC organized a rally exterior MoMA forward of this weekend’s “March to End Fossil Fuels,” calling on the museum to finish its partnership with KKR, a non-public fairness agency that has invested almost $15 billion in fossil gasoline initiatives.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Helen Mancini remembers the final main local weather march in New York City, when then-teenage activist Greta Thunberg spoke to a crowd of thousands, demanding world leaders take motion on world warming.

Mancini was in center college on the time. She remembers turning to her dad and mom in frustration.

“And I just looked at them and I was like, How could you not dedicate your lives to stopping this?” she mentioned.

But the wave of youth local weather protests subsided, stymied partly by the pandemic.

Now, 4 years later, protesters are once more gathering within the metropolis, and this time Mancini, now 16, helps set up it.

This time, protesters are marching with a selected message for President Biden: it is time for the U.S. to maneuver away from oil and fuel.

“[This] march is piercingly clear about what needs to be done to actually solve climate,” mentioned Jean Su, power justice director with the Center for Biological Diversity and one of many march organizers. “It’s actually seeking the end of fossil fuels.”

Protesters are calling on Biden to cease federal approvals of latest fossil gasoline initiatives, section out oil and fuel drilling on public lands, and declare local weather change a nationwide emergency. They need the U.S. to halt oil and fuel exports, and transition to a reliance on renewable power.

Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and fuel stays the first driver of world warming.

Setting the stage for ‘Climate Ambition Summit’

Organizers hope Sunday’s march would be the greatest local weather protest within the U.S. because the 2019 strike, which introduced tens of 1000’s of individuals into the streets in Manhattan whereas millions more marched worldwide.

The march comes after a summer season marked by excessive climate occasions exacerbated by climate change, from historic heat waves within the U.S., Europe and Asia, to the lethal wildfire in Maui and catastrophic flooding from Brazil to China to Libya.

And it comes simply days earlier than a “Climate Ambition Summit” hosted by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, geared toward pressuring world leaders to decide to extra fast emissions cuts. Guterres has mentioned solely international locations that current credible new plans – together with the phase-out of fossil fuels – will probably be invited to take part. Biden does not plan to attend.

Scientists say the world must restrict warming to 1.5 levels Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial ranges to keep away from essentially the most catastrophic impacts of local weather change. To meet that aim, the U.N. says emissions should fall 43 % by 2030, in contrast with 2019 ranges, and finally attain “net-zero” by 2050 – which implies contributing no new greenhouse gasses to the ambiance.

In a report this month, the U.N. discovered international locations are falling far short of assembly their current local weather targets, and warned there’s a “rapidly narrowing window” wherein to behave.

Activists hope the summit will shine a highlight on the function of fossil fuels, Su mentioned.

“This is a top down – from the U.N. – pressure point, and it’s being met with grassroots pressure from the bottom up in the United States,” she mentioned.

Challenging Biden as ‘local weather president’

Organizers say they’re particularly dissatisfied Biden hasn’t saved a marketing campaign promise to halt new drilling on federal lands. The administration has authorized some initiatives, notably the Willow mission, a significant oil improvement in Alaska, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which can carry pure fuel from West Virginia.

“I think the reality now is that Biden hasn’t been the climate president that he had promised,” mentioned Alice Hu, senior local weather campaigner at New York Communities for Change.

In a press release, the White House defended Biden’s local weather document, pointing to last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which directs a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} towards incentives for renewable power and different low-carbon applied sciences.

“President Biden has treated climate change as an emergency – the existential threat of our time – since day one,” a White House spokesperson mentioned.

The administration has additionally designated tens of millions of acres of public lands off-limits to grease and fuel improvement, and just lately canceled contentious oil and gas leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But Hu says the administration should do extra. She factors out the U.S. stays one of many world’s largest oil and fuel producers. And she argues Biden is vulnerable to alienating youthful voters.

“Does he want to be a candidate that enjoys high youth turnout in key swing states, or does he want to be a candidate that is not enjoying that?” Hu mentioned.

‘It’s about our future’

Mancini agrees. Now a junior in highschool, she’s been organizing college strikes with the youth local weather group Fridays for Future since her freshman 12 months. But she says she by no means received as a lot curiosity in her work from different college students as when news of the Willow Project went viral on TikTook.

“The Willow Project is something that Biden approved, and a lot of people in my generation know Biden approved it,” Mancini mentioned.

“That betrayal was so stark in that moment,” mentioned Keanu Arpels-Josiah, 18.

Arpels-Josiah mentioned he volunteered for the 2020 Biden marketing campaign whereas nonetheless in center college, as a result of he believed Biden could be a “climate president.” Now, he is marching to stress that president.

In the times earlier than the march, Arpels-Josiah has been busy. He traveled to Washington, D.C., for a rally on the Capitol steps, and met with U.N. officers. He’s behind on homework and burdened about when it would get carried out. Balancing highschool and local weather organizing is a problem. But, he says, he does not really feel like he has a selection.

“I have the ability to take action, and if you have the ability to take action, you have responsibility for everyone who doesn’t have that ability to take action,” Arpels-Josiah mentioned.

“And also, it’s personal,” he mentioned. “It’s about our future.”

NPR’s Michael Copley contributed to this report.