Standing Together for Clean Energy Action

This month, tens of thousands of people will be participating—across the globe—in “Break Free” demonstrations calling on our politicians and our business leaders to do all they can to end our dependence on polluting fossil fuels. They know, and we know, that the time is now to deliver the clean energy solutions that will help us arrest the climate change crisis we face.

This two-week series of actions is intended to use our power as consumers and citizens to tell corporations to invest in clean energy and reduce their pollution footprint; to tell elected leaders to create and enforce the policies that will take us off the destructive path of fossil fuels.

NRDC stands in solidarity with those who are participating in these actions. Their efforts are a tangible reflection of the growing momentum for the changes that must occur if we are to avert the worst impacts of climate disruption.

These actions are also a reflection of the shared sense of resolve and collective responsibility that has been integral to the great social movements of our time—the fight for civil rights, for suffrage, or to protest oppressive regimes. In each of those movements, citizens chose to engage in acts of peaceful civil disobedience. In that tradition, many will now choose to engage in such actions as an expression of their commitment to combating climate change. Those decisions, now as then, are decisions of conscience, to be made by individuals.

At NRDC, an institution whose mission is to promote and utilize the law to advance environmental protection and justice, we will be participating directly the U.S. events planned in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, but will not be engaging in any act of civil disobedience.

We will continue to focus our resources and speak on behalf of our 2.5 million members and activists in calling on all our leaders to fulfill the commitments made in Paris to bequeath to the next generation clean air, clean water, and a climate-safe future powered by the wind and sun.  We will use every tool in our tool box to make that promise a reality.  And we stand in solidarity with all those who share our deep commitment in whatever way they choose to participate—because to change everything, we need everyone.