Giant Earth and Half a Million Signatures Demand Biden Declare ‘Climate Emergency’

As fires and floods wreak havoc across the United States—from California to Kentucky—activists armed with a 16-foot inflatable globe and nearly half a million petition signatures gathered outside the White House on Tuesday to yet again demand that President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency.

Greenpeace USA explained that “the action, which symbolized that a livable planet is in Biden’s hands, kicked off a day of climate emergency rallies in 19 cities across the country.”

Ashley Thomson, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA, pointed out that “last week more than 85 million people in the U.S. were under heat-related advisories and 41 states are in a drought.”

“The climate emergency is happening,” she said. “President Biden needs to act like it now if he wants to preserve a livable future.”

Additionally, Biden in recent weeks has faced mounting pressure from climate activists and congressional Democrats to issue an emergency declaration, which supporters of the move stress would unlock key powers for his administration to take on the fossil fuel-driven global crisis.

“Yesterday, Ikiya Collective shut down the Department of Interior demanding Biden declare a climate emergency and put Native lands back in Native hands by ending an era of approving fossil fuel projects that target our communities,” said one of the group’s members, Jennifer K. Falcon.

“Today, we joined Greenpeace outside the White House with the same message,” Falcon added. “Black, Indigenous, and communities of the global majority are not your sacrifice zones.”

While speaking about climate action at a shuttered coal plant last month, Biden admitted that “this is an emergency,” but he declined to issue the long-demanded declaration.

Despite some progress in Congress since then—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reached a deal on a budget reconciliation package, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022—activists have emphasized that Biden must still declare a climate emergency.

As a Greenpeace statement outlined, specific actions the groups are calling for Biden to take include:

• Working with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to end fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters to protect them from any further pollution, contamination, or destruction at the hands of Big Oil;
• Halting the export of crude oil by reinstating the export ban; and
• Expanding on the June 6 order under the Defense Production Act to spur electric transportation development and create millions of good-paying union jobs.