BP just posted US$3.2 billion in profits this quarter — more than double what it made in the same period last year. TotalEnergies? US$5.4 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone — while our analysis shows that oil and gas price spikes will likely cost ordinary households and businesses up to US$ 1 trillion by the end of the year if the war in South West Asia (Middle East) continues.

These companies didn’t earn this. They extracted it — from a war, from a broken system, from us. While people are being killed in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and beyond, and families across the world choose between heating and eating, oil executives are doing just fine.

But this is no surprise, it’s how a fossil fuel dependent system is supposed to work. The industry spends billions lobbying, buying political influence, and funding disinformation to keep us locked in. And it’s working… for them.

Oil, gas and coal prices swing wildly with every war, every supply shock, every act of market speculation. And every time they rise, we all pay more. The knock-on effects touch everything. And when the climate crisis strikes — driven by the very same fossil fuels — it’s communities and governments that foot the bill for emergency response, rebuilding homes, overstretched hospitals. Those costs don’t appear on any company’s balance sheet.

We pay, they profit. We can’t afford this anymore.

Right now, people all around the world are dealing with sky-high energy bills and the growing devastation of extreme weather — floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves — at the same time. These are not separate crises. They share a common root: our dependence on fossil fuels. But we have a way out!

“The lesson is clear: the less reliant we are on fossil fuels, the more protected ordinary people are from price shocks. Renewables have surged ahead as the cheapest option available, while fossil fuels have become a shock-prone liability. It’s time to make Big Oil pay and shift power back to the people.”  – Savio Carvalho, 350.org Head of Campaigns and Networks

Renewable energy is now the cheapest source of electricity in history. The sun and the wind are free. Once built, they produce energy without fuel costs or sudden price spikes. In 2024 alone, renewables helped the world avoid US$467 billion in fossil fuel costs. What’s missing isn’t the technology — it’s the political will to choose people over polluters.

That’s what The Great Power Shift is here to change.

Today, we’re launching a flagship global campaign to end fossil fuel dependence and ensure affordable clean energy for all. We’re demanding that governments shift public money away from fossil fuels and into renewables, make fossil fuel companies pay their fair share through a permanent windfall tax, and invest in energy systems that deliver affordable, clean power for everyone. No family left in the dark. No community priced out of the clean energy future.

Clean, affordable energy is not a privilege. It’s a right. And people aren’t waiting. From Tokyo to Brasília, from Paris to Nairobi, they’re already in the streets.

The world is rising — here’s what’s happening:

France — Activists took to the streets outside a TotalEnergies gas station in Paris with fake pumps pouring money straight into corporate pockets. The launch of Nos factures, leurs profits was timed to coincide with TotalEnergies’ Q1 results, demanding a permanent windfall tax, now.

Action in a TotalEnergies petrol station in Paris (Photo credit: Rémy El Sibaïe/ 350.org)

Japan — Activists gathered at the National Diet Building demanding the government end fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies and invest in energy efficiency and renewables. Japan’s clean energy future can’t wait.

Action led by 350.org Japan in front the National Diet Building in Tokyo (Photo credit: 350.org Japan)

Indonesia — A joint press conference and actions across three cities under the rallying cry Yang merusak, yang bayar — make them pay. Stop hiding the true cost of fossil fuels. Tax the windfall. Give the money back to the people.

Action in front of an oil terminal in Lombok, Indonesia (Photo credit: Climate Rangers Nusa Tenggara Barat)

Brazil — A giant electricity bill will land in front of the National Congress with a message that couldn’t be clearer: this is where your expensive and dirty electricity bill begins. The campaign: Isso é da Sua Conta demands cleaner, cheaper energy from every candidate this election.

Activists protested in front of Congress with a big “expensive and dirty” electricity bill in front of the National Congress in Brazil, demanding cleaner, cheaper energy from candidates (Photo credit: Jhaimes Sousa)

South Africa — We launched the call for Free Basic Electricity Now, with webinar mobilizing communities ahead of local elections. The demand is clear: a guaranteed minimum so that no household is left in the dark simply because they can’t pay. Electricity is a right, not a luxury.

Pacific & Caribbean — Communities gathered outside fossil fuel company HQs with banners reading They Profit = We Pay, demanding Australia stop extracting and start paying its fair share for a fossil-free Pacific future.

Action in front of the Melbourne headquarters of BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance (Photo credit: Jacynta Fa’amau / 350.org)

Türkiye —  In Antalya, the host city of the COP31 UN climate talks, campaigners highlighted that the surge in oil and gas prices during the first 60 days of the Iran war has already cost ordinary households and businesses in the country an additional US$3 billion. The Geleceğe Güç Kat campaign is building a movement around community energy — because a just and affordable energy system is not a dream, it’s a plan.

350.org activists in Antalya calling on Türkiye, host of COP31, to lead on global climate action. (Photo credit: 350.org Türkiye)

Canada — A digital action and webinar brought together powerhouse speakers and three concrete ways to demand that oil windfall profits get taxed and returned to Canadian families and communities. Earlier this month, we delivered a petition to authorities demanding a East West grid for clean energy access.

Delivery of 350.org Canada petition with 34,000 signatures demanding public funds for the East West Grid in Ottawa (Photo credit: Kashmiri Kage)

East Africa — A press conference demanding local governments ring-fence budgets for decentralized, affordable clean energy. Because Mustakabali wetu, mikononi mwetu — our future is in our hands.

350.org and partners held a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

2026 must be the year of The Great Power Shift.

From fossil fuel corporations to people. From prices that keep rising to clean energy that is stable and affordable. From a system built for the few to one that works for all of us.

The technology is ready. The economics are clear. The justice behind it couldn’t be more obvious. All we need now is the political will — and enough people demanding it loud enough that governments can’t look away.

Sign the petition. Join the movement.

Shift the power →

The post It’s time for The Great Power Shift! appeared first on 350.

This is a guest blog by Nicole Pita, Programme Manager at IPES-Food, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, a global think tank and expert group guiding action for sustainable food systems around the world.

If you’ve been feeling like your grocery bills keep climbing, you’re not alone. In the United States, families are paying nearly 25% more for food than they did in 2020. In Germany, food costs 43% more than five years ago, while in Mexico and Brazil prices have jumped 42% and 50%. Now experts are warning of a looming food price crisis as a result of the global energy price spikes triggered by the US and Israeli war on Iran. 

Why is this happening? Ultimately, it’s because our food systems run on fossil fuels, and every time there’s a crisis – a pandemic, a war, a drought – we all pay the price. At the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) we have outlined this in our report, Fuel to Fork. 

Food systems consume 15% of global fossil fuels. Source: Global Alliance for the Future of Food. (2023). Power shift: Why we need to wean industrial food systems off fossil fuel.

How is our food connected to fossil fuels?

Food systems consume 15% of all fossil fuels globally. From chemical fertilizers and diesel tractors to long-distance transport and cooking gas, fossil fuels power every step of producing, processing, and consuming food. When oil and gas prices spike, food prices follow. 

Food, fertilizer and fossil energy prices are deeply interlinked.
Source: Levi, IMF Primary Commodity Price Index.

This fossil fuel dependence creates a triple threat. First, it makes food vulnerable to oil price spikes. Second, it drives climate breakdown, causing droughts and floods that destroy harvests. Third, a handful of corporations control the system and profit enormously every time there’s a crisis. 

This isn’t a new problem, but it’s getting worse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions pushed food prices up. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, energy, fertilizer, and wheat prices soared, driving grocery bills higher. Each time, pushing millions of people into hunger, especially in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable regions.

Now, as war erupts in the Persian Gulf, it’s happening again. Global oil and fertilizer prices have increased by 50% since the war began. Food prices haven’t spiked yet – but they will. One-third of crude oil and one-third of fertilizers all normally pass through shipping routes now blocked by the conflict. Even if the war ended tomorrow, it would take months for supply chains to recover. 

The shocks of COVID and the Ukraine war accounted for nearly half of all grocery price increases in the US and 35% of price increases in the EU over the past five years. During 2021-2022 alone, 45 million more people went hungry because they couldn’t afford food.

There’s another reason food keeps getting more expensive: the fossil-fueled climate crisis. Droughts in the US Midwest and Canada destroyed harvests in 2022. Floods in India and South Asia pushed up rice prices in 2023 and 2025. The climate crisis is affecting crop production itself, making food harder to grow. The irony is that food systems produce one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, making them both a victim and a driver of the crisis.

A carefully designed system built to stay dependent on fossil fuels

Fossil fuel dependence in food systems didn’t happen by accident. Governments and funding institutions pushed farmers toward growing commodity crops for export using chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. Today, governments spend close to $800 billion per year supporting this chemical-intensive agriculture, while sustainable farming gets only a fraction of that support. 

And corporate lobbyists are spending hundreds of millions to keep it that way. In Europe alone they spend at least €343 million per year on lobbying – with fossil fuel and agribusiness firms increasing their spending since 2020. Companies like Shell and Bayer follow the same playbook: delay action, weaken regulations, protect profits. 

This fossil fuel-dependent system ends up being incredibly profitable for a few corporations. Just a handful of corporations control how food is produced, transported, and sold. They set the prices and we have no choice but to pay them. And when crises hit, they exploit the chaos.

During COVID and the Ukraine war, the largest fertilizer companies hiked prices far beyond their actual costs. Grain traders, food manufacturers, and retailers did the same. In the US, corporate profiteering accounted for 54% of food price increases between 2020 and 2021. During a food price crisis, while families struggled to afford food, these corporations posted record earnings.

These three problems feed each other. Fossil fuel dependence creates vulnerability to shocks. Climate chaos makes food scarce. And corporate concentration lets companies exploit both for profit. Breaking this cycle means completely reconfiguring the way we grow, process, and consume food.

A better, more affordable food system is already taking root

Another food system is possible – one that’s resilient to shocks, protects the climate, and works for people instead of corporate profits. Across the world – from Cuba to India to France – millions of farmers have already transitioned to agroecology, sustainable farming that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels or chemical inputs. These farmers build fertility naturally by planting beans that enrich soil, rotating crops, and composting waste instead of buying chemicals. Studies show these farms match or exceed conventional yields, can be profitable for farmers, and feed communities better. 

The transition takes time and farmers need support, but it makes farming systems more resilient rather than vulnerable to price shocks. It’s also clearly needed as part of the fight to tackle the climate crisis. 

The solutions exist, what’s missing is the political will. Governments have the tools to make food affordable right now while building a better food system for the future. Here’s what must happen:

• Tax the corporations that profit from crises. Windfall taxes on fossil fuel and agribusiness firms could immediately bring down costs for consumers and farmers.
• End the subsidies that keep us locked into dependence. Stop giving billions to fossil fuel corporations and chemical-intensive agriculture. Redirect that money to renewable energy and sustainable farming.
• Invest in local and regional food systems that don’t depend on long, fragile supply chains vulnerable to shocks, as outlined in our IPES-Food report Food from Somewhere. 

If we want to stabilize food prices, we have to break food’s dependence on fossil fuels. Otherwise, every new crisis will keep showing up at the checkout.

Ending fossil fuel addiction isn’t just about climate – it’s about making food affordable.

Governments won’t change course unless we demand it. Tell your leaders: End fossil fuel subsidies and tax polluters. Invest in renewable energy and sustainable, chemical-free farming. 

The post Out of Pocket: the real cost of fossil fuels on our groceries appeared first on 350.

The wars being waged right now in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Ukraine are not abstract. They are children pulled from collapsed buildings. They are families who fled their homes carrying nothing. They are entire neighborhoods reduced to dust by weapons manufactured far away, financed by governments that call themselves defenders of democracy. 

Ceasefires come and go, are announced and broken. But ceasefires are not peace – they are pauses in the same ongoing violence. What we are demanding is something far more urgent, far more real: a complete and permanent end to these wars.

As someone born and raised in Puerto Rico, an island that knows what it means to live under the shadow of militarization, colonial extraction, and disaster without accountability, I feel a deep, bone-level solidarity with the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Ukraine. We may be separated by oceans and languages, but we share the same wound: the wound of being considered expendable by empires that never asked for our consent.

The people of Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine and other war zones are not symbols or numbers. They are neighbors, parents, scientists, teachers, humans with lives and dreams. Their suffering demands that governments act, that arms supplies stop, and that the international community treat civilian life as non-negotiable – wherever those lives are lived.

Here in Puerto Rico, I learned that when the hurricane comes, whether it is María or military occupation or economic austerity, it is always the women, the children, and the poor who suffer most. The same is true in all of Palestine, in southern Lebanon, in Iranian cities and Ukrainian villages. And when the fighting drives up food prices and energy costs worldwide, it is working people, families already in debt, communities already stretched thin, who absorb that blow. 

This is the deal we were never asked about. That’s enough. Governments must stop hiding behind strategic interests and geopolitical calculations and start protecting the people whose lives hang in the balance. A permanent end to these wars is not a radical demand. It is the bare minimum of human decency.

Solidarity is not sympathy from a distance. It is the recognition that our struggles are connected, that no one is free while others are bombed into hunger and displacement. From Bayamón to Beirut, from San Juan to Kyiv, we stand together in demanding what should never have been in question: peace, dignity, and the right to a future.

Join the global call at https://350.org/they-profit-we-pay-fix-it-now/

The post End the War appeared first on 350.

As world leaders gather in Washington this week (April 13–18) for the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings to discuss debt and economies, a global coalition of 130+ organisations has a clear message for them: the system is failing ordinary people and it needs to change now.

While people in Iran, Lebanon, and across the region are being killed, while families struggle to heat their homes and put food on the table, fossil fuel companies and arms corporations are posting record profits. This is a system working exactly as designed. For them, not for us.

From Bangladesh to Brazil, Zimbabwe to Japan, we are all watching the same thing unfold and but we’re also letting our representatives know through an open letter: enough is enough.

We stand unwavering in our demands

In just one month of war, over $100 billion was extracted from ordinary people through soaring energy prices. That same money could have powered 150 million homes with renewable energy. Instead, it padded the wallets of fossil fuel executives and weapons manufacturers.

The letter calls for four urgent actions:

• a complete and permanent end to the war
• windfall taxes on the corporations cashing in on the crisis
• investment in food security and homegrown renewable energy
• and cancellation of the crushing debt that leaves Global South countries with nothing left to protect their own people.

Ceasefires are not enough. Temporary pauses don’t rebuild homes, bring back the dead, or lower energy bills. The war must end and those who profited from it must be made to pay. Learn more here.

Why this moment matters

This represents a genuinely global movement. From trade unions to climate groups, from faith organizations to youth activists — the breadth of voices shows this is not a fringe position. It is the growing consensus of people worldwide who are tired of paying the price for a crisis they didn’t cause.

The connection between war, fossil fuels, debt, and inequality is not abstract. It shows up in your energy bill. In the price of bread. In the public services disappearing around you.

What you can do right now

Simple: share this letter.

Post it on Facebook. Send it on WhatsApp. Put it on Bluesky. The more people who see these demands, the harder they become for governments to ignore. Every share builds the pressure.

This war is their business. Our pain. Our movement.

Share now and help make these demands impossible to ignore.

Share on Facebook
Share on WhatsApp

Share on Bluesky

The post They Profit, We Pay. It’s Time to Fix It. appeared first on 350.

This is a guest blog by Lucia Simmons, Marketing & Communications Lead at the Carbon Literacy Project. The Carbon Literacy Project is an UN-recognised global initiative, delivered by UK charity The Carbon Literacy Trust, providing a day’s worth of accredited climate action training and certification. Over 155,000 people and 14,000 organisations across 47 nations are certified Carbon Literate. Find out more at www.carbonliteracy.com. 

Imagine waking up to find no water running from your taps. No water to drink. To flush the toilet. Wash your clothes. Your body. Your plates. That was the reality for Zofia, and thousands of other local home and business owners in the South of England in January this year, with no warning from the water company over supply failures. 

Water is part of our daily lives. We drink it, cook with it, clean with it, and grow food with it. We expect it to be there when we need it with a twist of a tap. Unfortunately, that won’t be our reality forever if we continue as we are. For many, it already isn’t. 

A UN report released at the start of this year declared that we’re now living in an era of ‘global water bankruptcy’. What does this mean?

Around the world, reservoirs and lakes are shrinking, floods and droughts are intensifying, and water supply is becoming less reliable. This isn’t random. Our burning of fossil fuels is heating the planet and disrupting the systems that keep water flowing. We are already paying the price.

How are water supply and fossil fuels connected?

Water systems depend on a naturally balanced cycle of evaporation, rainfall, and replenishment, and global heating driven by burning fossil fuels is breaking that delicate balance. 

Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn increase global temperatures. Hotter air pulls more moisture from land and water. This speeds up evaporation and dries out rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. 

Rainfall also becomes less predictable as the planet heats. Some places face longer droughts. Others see heavier downpours that overwhelm drains and flood homes, roads and green spaces. The same community can face both within a year. Nearly 1 in 4 people experienced drought conditions between 2022 and 2023 alone. The number of people exposed to floods around the world has risen by 25% from 1970 to 2020.  

Low water levels in Woodhead Reservoir, Derbyshire, England, in June 2025, following the driest spring in England since 1893. Image credit: Alastair Johnstone-Hack / Climate Visuals

Rising global temperatures are melting glaciers and increasing flood risks in the short term. Around 2 billion people rely on water from mountains and glaciers for drinking water, farming, and energy generation. As glaciers shrink and disappear, so does their water supply. Communities from the Himalayas in Asia to the Andes in South America are already living with severe water shortages.

Fossil fuel extraction also directly harms the local water. Mining and drilling pollute rivers and groundwater, leaving local communities without safe water and forcing costly treatment or replacement. 

Who pays the price for water losses?

When water supply becomes less reliable, everyday costs rise for all of us. Here are just a few ways how: 

1. Household bills creep up: Water companies have to do more, already energy-intensive work to treat and supply water, as climate change disrupts water sources. But, to preserve profits, they pass on those costs to consumers, showing up in our household bills. In New Orleans, US, water bills now average $115 a month, more than twice that of comparable Southern cities. This is partly because ageing infrastructure must treat drinking water from the Mississippi River for pollutants and saltwater intrusion linked to sea level rise.
2. Food gets more expensive: When drought reduces crop yields, food prices increase. Intense drought in Southern Europe from 2022 to 2023 severely reduced olive production, causing a 50% price increase in olive oil across the EU from January 2023 to January 2024. Agriculture uses around 70% of global water, so any disruption hits food systems quickly. 
3. Energy becomes less stable — and pricier: Water is needed to cool power plants and data servers. Power plant cooling is responsible for 43% of total freshwater withdrawals in Europe and nearly 50% in the USA. When water levels fall, energy supply becomes less stable and more expensive. Heatwaves in 2022 forced French Energy supplier EDF to reduce power output as high water temperatures and low river levels threatened cooling systems. The projected water and electricity demand from the many new AI data centres being built by big tech firms worldwide will make this even worse.
4. Flooding caused by unpredictable rainfall patterns, as well as sea level rise, sends costs spiralling: Homes are damaged. Insurance premiums rise or become unavailable. Taxes are spent on repairs. We are paying for all of this through bills, taxes, and lost income. Initial costs of the devastating floods in Valencia in 2024 were estimated at €31.4 billion.

Extensive flooding submerges agricultural land in Somerset, England. Image credit: Alastair Johnstone-Hack / Climate Visuals

The good news though? People are already aware and taking action.

Across the world, Carbon Literacy training is helping people to understand these connections and take action to reduce these costs.

An international cruise operator has reviewed water use across its fleet and identified ways to reduce consumption by 12% each year, with associated cost savings. At a beach resort in Kenya, staff are working to cut water use per guest by up to 15%. This reduces pressure on local water supplies and lowers operating costs. 

In Britain, a ballet company is installing water butts to collect rainwater for green spaces. This reduces reliance on mains water and cuts bills. Meanwhile, a racecourse grounds team is learning how to harvest and store rainwater. This helps manage dry periods and reduces both water costs and emissions linked to mains supply.

It’s not a fair share

Not everyone experiences this crisis in the same way. In wealthier areas, people can adapt more easily. The cost of higher bills might not be crippling; installation costs for new water-saving systems can be fronted.

Lower-income communities don’t have the same options. Around four billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. When supplies become unreliable, the impacts are immediate. Crops fail. Jobs are lost. Health risks increase.

Communities in the Global South, which have contributed least to climate change, are facing the highest costs. Many depend directly on natural water systems for farming and daily life. When those systems change, there is little to buffer the impacts.

Water contamination also hits hardest where regulation is weaker. Communities living near extraction sites often face polluted water without the resources to fix it. For example, decades of oil spills and illegal oil leaks by fossil fuel giant Shell have contaminated the primary drinking water sources for the Agore and Bele communities in Nigeria, leading to poison levels 90 times higher than elsewhere in the country. This has rendered water unsafe for consumption and washing, forcing residents to buy water they cannot afford.

Who has the control? 

Governments continue to support fossil fuels through subsidies and incentives. At the same time, water infrastructure is often underfunded and unprepared for a changing climate. So fossil fuel conglomerates and private water companies keep the profits while communities pay the price. 

But we’re not powerless. We can all use our unique roles to drive change. In Wales, after completing Carbon Literacy training, one specialist advisor is requiring water companies to report on expected emissions linked to infrastructure proposals. This helps shift responsibility back to those driving the problem. 

Meanwhile, one Carbon Literate project manager is working to clean up water pollution from historic mining sites and bring low-carbon design and carbon management into all construction projects. This not only improves water quality in the short term but also reduces long-term costs for communities. 

With more awareness, we can hold those responsible to account, and share knowledge and best practice, so the burden does not fall solely on individual households or businesses. 

Action builds resilience

Across sectors, through Carbon Literacy training action plans, people are building solutions that make water systems more resilient.

Throughout Britain, local authorities that have embedded Carbon Literacy are working to improve drainage and reduce flood risk. Many projects focus on sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) that slow water flow and reduce pressure on infrastructure.

The Grey to Green Development in Sheffield, England, is the UK’s largest retrofit sustainable urban draining scheme (SuDs). Planting beds take rain and surface water back into Sheffield’s rivers. Image credit: Alastair Johnstone / Climate Visuals

One Carbon Literate engineer at a local council is designing developments with features like overland flow routes and water recycling systems. These reduce flood risk and make better use of available water.

One county council planning team is mandating that new planning applications include drainage systems that support biodiversity and community wellbeing alongside flood protection.

One district council enterprise team is creating short videos to show how local businesses are reducing operational costs through water-saving strategies, creating models that other businesses can adopt. 

Such actions are some practical solutions that protect homes and local businesses, reduce damage costs, and strengthen communities. Born from Carbon Literate people gaining the understanding, motivation and confidence to apply specialist skills they already have. 

Scaling up solutions

But more permanent solutions to protect our water already exist. What is needed is speed, scale and support for those bearing the brunt of the costs. 

• The most obvious one is switching to clean, renewable energy that reduces the emissions that are putting water under threat. More stable temperatures mean more predictable water systems. That means lower costs for households, businesses, and governments.
• Ending fossil fuel subsidies would free up resources to invest in water systems that can cope with a changing climate.
• Holding polluters accountable would reduce the financial burden on the public.

We are all paying for fossil fuels through higher bills, damaged homes, and growing uncertainty. But we all have agency and a voice to demand more action from our governments and big corporations. Together, we are harder to ignore than any of us alone.

The post Out of Pocket: the real cost of fossil fuels on our water appeared first on 350.

Your salary doesn’t stretch like it used to. The air in your city is getting worse. Politicians promise change, and then nothing changes.  At some point, most of us have the same thought: what’s the point? The status quo will never change because the forces behind it are too entrenched, too powerful, too far gone.

But history tells a different story. Every unjust system has looked permanent and untouchable until ordinary people challenged it. All major shifts in society start the same way: someone refuses to accept things as they are. They organize. Others join them. And they don’t stop.

Again and again, local citizens have come together through peaceful, nonviolent organizing — strikes, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, blockades — and changed the course of history. Here are seven moments that show that people power can change the rules: 

1. The US civil rights movement dismantled legal segregation

In 1950s America, segregation was the social custom and the law.  Black Americans were barred from attending the same schools, eating in the same restaurants, or even using the same restrooms as white Americans. Simple acts like even sitting in the “wrong” bus seat, could lead to arrest, violence, or worse. 

American civil rights activist Rosa Parks on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. © Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and activist,  refused to give up her bus seat to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested. Within days, 42,000 Black residents boycotted the city’s buses for 381 days. They walked miles to work. Racial segregation on public transportation was abolished soon after, in 1956. The Civil Rights Act followed in 1964 making discrimination illegal once and for all. 

2. The women’s global liberation movement rewrote the rules

Until 1974, women in the US couldn’t get a credit card in their own name. In the UK, a married woman needed her husband’s signature for a bank loan until 1975. In France, women couldn’t open a bank account or get a passport without their husband’s permission until 1965. These weren’t just “rules”, they controlled women’s everyday lives, locking millions out of economic independence, healthcare, and political power.

Women’s Strike for Peace-And Equality, Women’s Strike for Equality, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, August 26, 1970. Photo: Eugene Gordon/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images

Until women themselves organized for change. In 1968, women machinists at Ford walked out over unequal pay, halting car production across the UK and forcing the government to pass the Equal Pay Act two years later. In 1970, tens of thousands of women marched in New York for the Women’s Strike for Equality demanding equal pay, free childcare, and abortion rights. And in 1971, Swiss women won the right to vote after decades of campaigning, one of the last countries in Europe to grant it. In 1975, 90% of Icelandic women refused to work, in offices, at home, everywhere, for a single day. The country stopped working. In 1979, the UN adopted CEDAW — the first international treaty to define discrimination against women and oblige governments to end it, now ratified by 187 countries. Women demanded these rights loudly, collectively, and across generations.

3. The anti-apartheid movement brought down a regime in South Africa

Apartheid was one of the most brutal systems of racial control ever built. Introduced in 1948, it dictated where Black South Africans could live, work, travel, and whom they could marry. The government enforced it with arrests, bans, torture, and killings.

Fed up with the system, ordinary workers went on strike. Then, in 1976, Soweto’s students marched against being forced to learn in Afrikaans and were met with live ammunition. Nelson Mandela,  the leader of the African National Congress, the liberation movement that had been fighting apartheid since 1912, was locked away for 27 years to silence the movement. But it didn’t work. In 1994, after years of internal resistance, international pressure, and hard-won negotiations, South Africa held its first democratic elections with Mandela becoming president. For the first time in decades, Black South Africans could vote, run for office, and access public services without restrictions. Segregation laws were dismantled, neighborhoods and schools were legally integrated, and the country began rebuilding a more equitable society. 

Young men protest in front of police photographers in Soweto in June 1976. Photo: Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising

4. Standing Rock said no to a destructive pipeline in the US

The Dakota Access Pipeline was first planned to cross near Bismarck, North Dakota — a predominantly white city. Residents raised environmental concerns, and the route moved. This time, that meant crossing half a mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation’s only water supply, meaning any leak or rupture would contaminate the drinking water of thousands of people with oil, with no alternative source to fall back on. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe set up camp and refused to move. The protests became the largest gathering of Indigenous nations in over 150 years, with 300+ tribal nations standing together leading to the Obama administration halted construction in December 2016. The pipeline ultimately went ahead under Trump but Standing Rock changed what the world understands about whose land and water fossil fuels actually cost. The legal fight continues.

Women and children plant willow trees and corn along the pipeline route. Photo: Indigenous Environmental Network

5. Millions took to the streets to defend democratic freedoms in Hong Kong

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule, the deal came with a promise: the city would keep its own laws, courts, and civil liberties for 50 years under the principle of “one country, two systems.”

By 2019, many people in Hong Kong felt that promise slipping away. A proposed extradition law would allow residents to be sent to mainland China to face trial in a legal system with no independent judiciary and conviction rates close to 100%. For many, it felt like the beginning of the end for the city’s freedoms.

In June 2019, over two million people took to the streets, in a city of just 7.5 million. They kept marching for months, despite arrests, tear gas, and escalating repression. Beijing eventually imposed sweeping national security laws. While the movement didn’t win all its demands, it galvanized a generation, forced international attention on Hong Kong’s freedoms, and inspired ongoing efforts to protect civil liberties.

Millions gather on the streets of Hong Kong. Photo: By Studio Incendo – Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protest, CC BY 2.0

6. Indian farmers defeated three unjust laws by a government that wouldn’t budge

Nearly 60% of India’s population depends on agriculture. The government’s  2020 farm laws, framed as market liberalisation, proposed to dismantle a guaranteed minimum price system protecting small farmers from destitution. In a country where farmer suicides are already a public health crisis, the stakes were existential. Farmers responded with one of the largest protests in modern history. They set up camps outside Delhi and blocked highways for more than a year, in the cold, the heat, the rain and through COVID. Women were on the frontlines and around 700 farmers died during the protest. In November 2021, the government repealed all three proposed laws. Organised, patient, collective power worked against a government that looked immovable.

Indian farmers protesting in the national capital. Photo: Randeep Maddoke

7. A global movement put the climate crisis on the agenda, and kept it there

Scientists had been warning about climate change since the 1980s. By the 2000s, the evidence was overwhelming: burning coal, oil, and gas was heating the planet and pushing ecosystems toward collapse. But governments were still stalling, and fossil fuel companies were still expanding. So ordinary people organized. In 2009, ahead of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, people in 181 countries took to the streets. In 2014, 400,000 people marched in New York — the largest climate march in history at the time. The following year, that pressure helped deliver the Paris Agreement, the first deal to unite nearly every country on earth around a shared commitment to limit warming to 1.5°C, the threshold beyond which climate scientists warn the consequences will become catastrophic and irreversible. Addressing the climate crisis and switching to renewable energy is now a priority on the global political agenda, because millions of people refused to stay silent.

But the fight is far from over. Today, climate disasters might still feel distant. Something happening somewhere else. But they’re getting closer. To our cities. Our homes. Our lives. And just like every movement before us, we have a choice: Watch them happen or change what happens next. See what we can do: 

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The climate crisis doesn’t always arrive as a sudden headline-grabbing disaster. Sometimes, it creeps up quietly: in shrinking rivers, failing wells, and communities being forced to “use less” of what they barely have. But make no mistake: what looks like scarcity is actually theft. Theft of a stable climate. Theft of reliable rainfall. Theft of the water systems that have sustained life for millennia.

A new report from the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era”  warns that the world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy.” It means we are using and damaging freshwater systems faster than nature can replenish them and in many places, the damage is irreversible.

This is what the climate crisis looks like when it hits the systems that sustain life. And it’s being driven by the same forces destroying our climate: fossil fuel extraction, industrial agriculture, and an economic system that treats nature as an infinite resource to exploit for profit.

From “Crisis” to “Bankruptcy”. What’s the difference?

For decades, policymakers and researchers have described global water challenges as a “water crisis” or “water scarcity.” But scholars have long warned that this crisis framing fails to capture the reality of long-term, structural decline. The word “crisis” sounds temporary. Bankruptcy means something more permanent and more concerning. It describes a system that’s been used up so badly that it can no longer simply bounce back.

The UNU report documents a scale of loss that makes this distinction unavoidable:

• Roughly 70% of the world’s major aquifers (underground layers of rock and soil that store water) are in long-term decline. 
• Rivers that once flowed to the sea now run dry for months each year. 
• Over half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s. 
• The world has lost an estimated 410 million hectares of natural wetlands over the past five decades, nearly the size of the entire European Union. These were ecosystems that once stored water, buffered droughts, and regulated local climates.

Perhaps most alarming, the world has lost more than 30% of its glacier mass since 1970. These “frozen water towers” once released meltwater during dry seasons, sustaining billions of people. Their disappearance is the liquidation of nature’s water savings account — with no mechanism for repayment.

Almost all the world’s glaciers are shrinking and fast. Credit: Copyright 2011 Michael C Smith

Bankruptcy essentially means you can’t restore what’s been permanently lost. Compacted (squeezed out) aquifers can never store water again. Extinct species don’t return. Glaciers that took millennia to form won’t regrow in our lifetimes.

Fossil Fuels > The Climate Crisis > Water Collapse

Water bankruptcy is being locked in by climate breakdown, which in turn is driven overwhelmingly by the burning of fossil fuels i.e. coal, oil, and gas. Here’s how climate change is destroying our water systems:

• Rising temperatures intensify the water bankruptcy spiral: Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases evaporation from soils, rivers, and reservoirs. Hotter air sucks moisture from the land, turning what would have been manageable dry spells into devastating droughts. The report documents how drought is increasingly “anthropogenic”, meaning it’s not just about lack of rainfall, but about human-caused warming, land degradation, and over-extraction combining to create permanent water deficits.

An Indian man takes bath under the tap of a water tanker on a hot day in Ahmadabad, India. Heat wave conditions prevailed as temperature rises in many parts of India. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

• Extreme rainfall creates the cruel paradox – floods without recharge: At the same time, climate change is intensifying rainfall. Storms arrive in violent bursts that flood cities and wash water away before it can infiltrate soils. More than half of global agricultural land is now moderately or severely degraded, meaning it cannot absorb and store water. Communities experience the cruel paradox of flooding and water shortage in the same year or sometimes in the same month.

• Melting glaciers: short-term surge, long-term catastrophe: Glacier melt illustrates the danger of mistaking short-term increases for security. As glaciers melt faster, rivers may briefly swell. But once glaciers shrink past critical thresholds, dry-season flows collapse permanently. For the 1.5 to 2 billion people who depend on glacier-fed river systems such as the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra, and Andean rivers, this means water supplies that sustained entire civilizations are disappearing.

• Industrial agriculture and extractive industries devour and pollute water: Around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals go to agriculture, much of it for water-intensive monocultures in regions that cannot sustain them. Meanwhile, mining, fossil fuel operations, and industrial pollution render vast volumes of remaining water unusable. Water may still exist on paper, but functionally it is gone, too contaminated for drinking, farming, or healthy ecosystems.

The Human Cost: Who’s Paying?

The scale of water bankruptcy is quite extensive and ever- growing: 

• Nearly 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity at least one month per year
• 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water
• 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation
• Over 1.8 billion people were living under drought conditions in 2022-2023
• Drought-related damages cost over $307 billion per year worldwide — more than the annual GDP of three-quarters of UN member states.

But statistics only tell part of the story. Water bankruptcy shows up in daily realities no one should have to face. Farmers watch wells fail after generations of reliability and go into debt drilling deeper into aquifers that will soon collapse. Girls walk farther for water instead of attending school. Informal settlement residents pay more for less reliable water from tanker trucks while wealthy neighbourhoods maintain green lawns. Entire communities are forced to move as water sources disappear. Rising food prices as irrigation fails and harvests decline, pushing the poorest households into deeper poverty and hunger. 

Young women and girls carry water in Nigeria. Credit: Flickr

And here’s the brutal irony: the communities facing water bankruptcy today are often those who’ve contributed least to the climate crisis but are protecting the water systems everyone depends on like Indigenous water guardians stewarding watersheds, small-scale farmers practicing sustainable agriculture and communities resisting extractive industries and defending rivers from pollution.

Their knowledge and their resistance are being ignored while their water is being stolen by the same systems driving climate chaos.

The Fossil Fuel Era Has to End Now

Every year governments delay ending coal, oil, and gas, ordinary people pay the price, not in abstract climate targets, but in higher food prices, worsening health, lost livelihoods, and growing insecurity. Water bankruptcy is another consequence that makes those costs impossible to ignore.

The solution is not complicated. End fossil fuel expansion. Phase out coal, oil, and gas. Invest in clean energy and resilient, public, community-led water systems. Set binding limits on industrial water extraction. Align climate policy with the reality that there is no livable future without functioning water systems.

What happens next depends on whether leaders continue protecting polluters or finally choose people, justice, and a livable planet.

Sources

• Global Water Bankruptcy Report – UNU-INWEH (2026)
• Fossil Fuels Did This: How the Industry Drives Drought – 350.org
• The Planetary Boundaries Framework – Stockholm Resilience Centre
• Water Conflict Chronology – Pacific Institute
• UN 2023 Water Conference Outcomes

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War impacts us in many more ways than we realise. When conflicts erupt, people suffer immediately. Civilians lose their lives, families flee their homes, and communities are torn apart. But wars also send shockwaves far beyond the front lines: through our energy systems, our economies, and the climate.

Right now, we’re watching this unfold in real time. A few weeks ago, on 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran, triggering a rapid escalation across the Southwest Asia (the Middle East)*. Iran struck back at US bases, Gulf states, and oil infrastructure across the region — and declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping. This region sits on more than half the world’s oil reserves. What happens there doesn’t stay there. Within days, the price of oil and gas across the world was in chaos, and everyone everywhere started footing the bill.

What is the Strait of Hormuz and why is it so important?

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow strip of sea between Iran and Oman. It connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and rest of the world’s oceans. It is only about 33 km wide at its narrowest point: roughly the sort of distance you could cycle in an hour.

But its size is deceptive. The strait carries one-fifth of all the oil consumed globally every day, as well as large quantities of gas. Oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE must pass through it before reaching the rest of the world. Any disruption like conflict, attacks, or blockades can instantly shake energy supply worldwide.

The Gulf of Oman connects the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/NASA/The Visible Earth

Following the strikes on 28 February, Iran shut down the strait, not by a formal blockade but through military actions and threats which have made the strait too dangerous for most commercial vessels and caused major disruption to global oil shipping in March 2026.  Around 1000 vessels, including over 400 oil tankers, are currently backed up or waiting near the Strait of Hormuz. Oil traffic has dropped by approximately 70%. Roughly $20 million barrels of oil per day are now off the market, which around 20% of energy the world consumes. Iran also struck a major refinery in Saudi Arabia and a gas facility in Qatar, taking about 20% of the world’s natural gas supply offline.  

Analysts warn that if the strait stays closed, oil could spike to $150 a barrel. Every time that number goes up, your bills go up too. 

How this conflict is hitting our household bills

In the first week after the conflict began, Europe effectively paid around €1.4 billion extra for gas, according to new analysis by 350.org. Gas prices jumped from around €30 per megawatt hour to nearly €50 — a spike driven purely by market fear about supply disruptions. For households and businesses already struggling with high living costs, these spikes translate quickly into higher bills and deeper economic pressure.

Oil prices also spiked around 8% in a single day. By the end of that week, oil had surged 36% to over $90 a barrel. Diesel prices in Europe doubled. Jet fuel prices in Asia rose by nearly 200%.

Europe is not alone. Around 84% of the oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Asia, meaning more import-dependent countries are now all facing supply disruptions. In India, restaurants are warning of shutdowns as governments ration gas. Thailand has suspended civil servant travel. The Philippines and Vietnam have introduced workplace measures to cut energy use. 

Fossil fuels are driving both this conflict and the climate crisis

While the conflict continues and fuel prices spike, the deeper crisis keeps accelerating. Fossil fuel-induced global warming has nearly doubled in pace since 2015 — rising from about 0.2°C per decade to roughly 0.35°C per decade. At this rate, the world could breach 1.5°C of warming within just a few years. New research also suggests sea levels may be significantly higher than previously estimated. All these changes will (and already) have significant impacts on our lives and livelihoods.

The fossil fuelled system driving geopolitical instability is the same one pushing us toward climate breakdown.

The real lesson from the Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz shows us something we already knew but perhaps keep forgetting: fossil fuels are not just dirty. They are dangerous. They tie the price of heating or cooling your home to wars you have no say in. And they give enormous power to whoever controls the pipelines, the tankers, and the chokepoints.

Oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, prior to the conflict. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Renewable energy offers a fundamentally different way of powering our world. Locally-led solar and wind systems cannot be blockaded at sea. They do not spill into oceans. They do not tie your energy bills to conflicts happening thousands of kilometres away. And once built, renewables provide energy for decades while fossil fuels must be burned and re-supplied every day. They are a long term solution for stability and lower prices. 

Every step away from fossil fuels is a step away from the instability and wars that come with them.

*The conflict is first and foremost a human tragedy. As violence escalates in the region, we mourn the lives lost and stand with the communities whose homes and futures are being shattered.

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This is a guest article written by Mariel Vilella, Director Global Climate Program at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, which supports local environmental justice efforts around the world to end waste pollution and implement regenerative zero waste solutions.

Around the world, momentum is growing to tackle the waste crisis in ways that also confront climate change, protect health, and strengthen local economies. This shift reflects a simple truth: the future of waste is not burning, it is prevention, reuse, recycling, and composting.

Recent reporting by the BBC described waste incineration as the dirtiest form of energy generation in the United Kingdom, reinforcing long-standing scientific and community concerns. Far from being a clean solution, waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration accelerates climate pollution, destroys valuable resources, and locks cities into outdated systems just when a circular, low-carbon transition is most urgent.

Burning waste drives the climate crisis

Incinerators convert nearly all carbon in discarded materials directly into CO₂, releasing it immediately into the atmosphere. Plastics, derived from fossil fuels, are especially harmful: burning one metric ton of plastic waste produces about 1.43 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent, even when energy is recovered.

Rather than reducing emissions, WTE reinforces the same linear model responsible for environmental breakdown, resource extraction, overproduction, and overconsumption. It delays the systemic change required to meet global climate goals.

The WTE incineration industry often portrays criticism of their facilities as emotional or ideological rather than science-based. This is an old-fashioned tactic to undermine the real concerns people have and the growing body of scientific evidence showing just how problematic burning waste is.

Incineration plant converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. Source: Trish Walker/Flickr

Lock-in that blocks the circular economy

Large incinerators require enormous and continuous waste streams, often 100,000 tonnes or more every year for decades, to remain financially viable. The United Nations Environment Programme warns that such investments can create long-term lock-in, discouraging waste prevention, reuse, and recycling while even pushing municipalities to import waste to keep facilities running.

Several high-income regions that heavily invested in incineration, across Europe and parts of Asia—now face overcapacity, stranded assets, and slowed progress toward resource efficiency, often so-called circularity. These experiences show that burning waste is not a bridge to sustainability, but a barrier.

Toxic pollution and hidden costs

Incineration does not eliminate waste, it transforms it into toxic air pollution and hazardous ash. Between 25% and 30% of burned material remains as contaminated residues that must be landfilled under strict controls. Monitoring near incinerators has revealed dangerous dioxin contamination in soil, vegetation, and food sources, with public health authorities in parts of France warning residents not to consume locally produced eggs due to toxic exposure.

These burdens fall disproportionately on marginalized communities, raising profound environmental justice concerns. For example, in the UK, waste incinerators are three times as likely to be located in the most deprived and ethnically diverse areas, raising fears about air quality and the health of vulnerable people. This pattern is not unique to the UK; around the world, wealthier neighborhoods rarely have incinerators at their doorstep, while poorer communities bear the brunt of the pollution and risks.

Expensive energy that wastes resources

Despite being framed as energy infrastructure, WTE is inefficient and costly:

• Electricity generation efficiency typically reaches only 20–30%, meaning it produces power at less than half the efficiency of coal-fired and modern natural gas power plants.
• Incinerators contribute around 1% of Europe’s total energy demand.
• Valuable materials, and the energy embedded in producing them, are permanently destroyed.

In many lower-income countries (e.g. Ethiopia), high organic moisture content makes incineration technically unreliable, leading to failed or underperforming projects. Far cheaper and more effective climate solutions already exist.

A just transition means choosing zero waste

A truly sustainable waste and climate strategy must also deliver a just transition. In contrast to that, waste-to-energy incineration displaces the livelihoods of waste pickers and recycling workers, especially across the Global South, where millions depend on materials recovery for income, but also in the Global North, where reuse, repair, and recycling create far more employment than disposal.

By destroying recyclable materials and centralizing waste management, incineration replaces many community-based jobs with fewer capital-intensive roles. Zero waste systems do the opposite, expanding dignified work in collection, sorting, composting, reuse, and recycling while strengthening local economies and delivering rapid climate benefits.

This is why movements led by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and Zero Waste Europe are calling for:

• An end to new incineration projects
• Accountability for the toxic impacts of existing facilities
• Public investment in prevention, reuse, and recycling
• Policies that prioritize zero waste solutions and just transition for workers’ rights

Our campaigns and research make clear that burning waste undermines climate action, public health, and economic justice, while zero waste delivers benefits across all three.

Free plough on landfill site image, public domain CC0 photo. Photo: rawpixel.com

The global shift is already underway

Governments, cities, and communities are increasingly moving beyond incineration toward circular, low-carbon waste systems. Financial frameworks in Europe are withdrawing sustainability recognition from waste burning, while zero waste cities worldwide are demonstrating faster emissions cuts, more jobs, and healthier neighborhoods without destroying resources.

The path forward

Waste-to-energy incineration belongs to the past. Zero waste belongs to the future.

Choosing zero waste means:

• Cutting climate pollution quickly
• Protecting communities from toxic exposure
• Creating far more jobs and fairer livelihoods
• Breaking the cycle of extraction and waste

Most importantly, it ensures the transition to a low-carbon world is just, inclusive, and truly sustainable.

The solution is already in our hands.

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When we wrote about the five ways Big Oil is trying to stop us last year, we told you about lawsuits, jailings, corporate capture of climate talks, violence against frontline defenders, and a misinformation machine in overdrive. Since then, the attacks have escalated. But so have we. Here’s the latest — and why, despite everything, we are more defiant than ever.

The $345 Million SLAPP Against Greenpeace

Let’s pick up where we left off i.e. on the most brazen legal attack on the climate movement in recent memory.

In March 2025, a North Dakota (United States) jury ruled that Greenpeace must pay Energy Transfer (ET), the corporation behind the destructive Dakota Access Pipeline, a staggering US$660 million. It was a number designed to do one thing: destroy one of the most powerful environmental organizations in the world, and send a message to every activist watching.

This is what’s known as a SLAPP: a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPPs are notorious lawsuits that are not about winning in court. They are about burying nonprofits and activists in legal fees, pushing them toward bankruptcy, and ultimately silencing dissent. The absurdity of this particular case speaks for itself. Greenpeace is being held liable for peacefully protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose water supply is threatened by the pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River upstream from their reservation. 

To this day, the Dakota Access Pipeline does not have full legal authority to operate and was previously delayed by decisions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet Greenpeace has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to Energy Transfer. A proportion of this penalty stems from something as simple as co-signing a letter — alongside 500 other groups — that echoed findings published in United Nations reports.

Last week, the court upheld parts of that verdict, and ordered Greenpeace to pay ET US$345 million. Although the total was reduced from USD$660 million after the judge dismissed several elements of the original jury award, it still is an enormous, unjust sum with no sound basis in law.  

This is Big Oil’s playbook: when you can’t win the argument, weaponize the law.  Speaking out is not a crime. But it is being treated like one.

This is everyone’s fight

SLAPPs are not just a threat to Greenpeace. They are a threat to free speech, democratic debate, and public participation itself. Every day, journalists, activists, human rights defenders and even everyday people face lawsuits simply for doing their jobs: exposing wrongdoing, standing up for communities, telling the truth. These legal attacks are designed to protect profits, drain time, money, and morale, to scare people into silence and to push critical voices out of public life.

When corporations can sue environmental groups into oblivion for signing a letter, for standing with Indigenous communities, for peaceful protest — every one of us who has ever spoken out against power is at risk. Public participation is the backbone of democracy. We need laws that protect those who speak truth to power, and we need to enforce them.

Fighting back

Greenpeace is not backing down, and we’re supporting them. They are:

• appealing the judgment in the North Dakota Supreme Court, and pushing for a new trial in the United States. 
• And in Europe, Greenpeace International has taken the fight directly to Energy Transfer — filing the first ever test case of the EU’s new anti-SLAPP directive in a Dutch court in Amsterdam. The EU anti-SLAPP directive was designed to stop exactly this kind of foreign corporate interference, and this case will help determine whether that protection has teeth. The next hearing is scheduled for April 2026

Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years. But the wins are already stacking up! Greenpeace France defeated TotalEnergies’ SLAPP in March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forced Shell to abandon its SLAPP entirely in December 2024. In Paris, France’s first ever climate trial against a multinational oil company is now underway, with a ruling against TotalEnergies expected in June — another sign that the legal tide is turning.

Big Oil is not invincible! When we stand together, we win.

With free speech and peaceful protest under increasing pressure, Greenpeace USA lit up Houston’s landmarks with striking projections calling for resistance and solidarity. Photo: © Greenpeace

The playbook doesn’t stop at lawsuits

Lawsuits aren’t the only weapon in Big Oil’s arsenal. While they fight critics in court, they are running an equally aggressive campaign to control the narrative outside of it. A report from December 2025 examining over 300 climate-related advertisements from the world’s four biggest oil and gas companies between 2000 and 2025 found a consistent pattern: for 25 years, these corporations have been deceptively portraying themselves as climate leaders while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production and failing to meaningfully cut their emissions. This is greenwashing on an industrial scale — and it has been deliberate, sustained, and calculated. In fact, just this month, after devastating floods in Mozambique affected over 700,000 people, TotalEnergies announced a donation of food and hygiene kits worth around $500,000 — less than one dollar per person affected. Meanwhile, the same company is leading a $20 billion LNG gas project in northern Mozambique expected to produce up to 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon pollution over its lifetime — more than the entire EU emits in a year. This is plain and simple climate impunity, dressed up as generosity. Profits are privatised; the damage is borne by ordinary people.

What you can do right now

Big Oil wants us divided, drained, and silent as they continue padding their wallets and destroying our planet, health and livelihoods. Here is how we refuse:

• Stand with Greenpeace. Their legal fight is our fight. Support them as they appeal. Every voice, every donation, every shared post tells Energy Transfer that intimidation is backfiring. Sign this open letter. 
• Spread the truth. The Dakota Access Pipeline has no legal authority to operate. Five hundred organizations signed that letter. Share these facts. Disrupt their narrative. #TimeToResist 
• Keep showing up. In the streets, online, at town halls, at the ballot box. The climate movement has faced setbacks before. We have always come back stronger.
• Demand governments make polluters pay: Higher taxes on polluting fossil fuel giants will help keep their power in check, unlock billions for the energy transition, and help the most vulnerable communities bear the cost of climate destruction they did nothing to cause. Sign the petition. Call your representative. Tell them: no more free passes for Big Oil.

© Gosse Bouma / Greenpeace

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