Protesters disrupt US presentation at Poland climate change event
487 views · Published 15 December 2018 · 2:01 · Indexed 29 September 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(10 Dec 2018) Indigenous and youth groups disrupted a US government event at the UN climate talks in Katowice on Monday, criticizing the Trump administration's policy of backing the extraction of fossil fuels, the burning of which increases global warming. About 100 protesters stood up and began chanting "keep it in the ground" - a reference to ending the extraction of coal, oil and natural gas - shortly after the start of the panel meeting called "US Innovative Technologies Spur Economic Dynamism". The meeting was taking place on the sidelines of the 4th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also known as COP24. As cameras swarmed around them, some of the protesters explained how their communities' lives are affected by fossil fuel extraction. After several minutes, the activists left the room chanting "shame on you." Protester Aneesa Kahn of youth-led advocacy group SustainUS accused the fossil fuel industry of hijacking the climate talks taking place in Katowice. The protest mirrored a similar action taken during a US-hosted panel at last year's climate talks in Bonn, Germany. Preston Wells Griffith, a Trump administration adviser speaking at this year's panel, said later that the US will continue extracting fossil fuels going forward, including through hydraulic fracking, and warned against "alarmism" over climate change. The panel's premise - that fossil fuels can be made "clean" through innovation - stands at odds with recommendations from scientists that countries should shift their energy generation to renewable sources as soon as possible or risk catastrophic levels of global warming by the end of the century. At the weekend, the Trump administration sided with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in blocking endorsement of a key scientific report on keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) - the most ambitious target in the 2015 Paris climate accord. Washington has announced that it's withdrawing from the Paris agreement, but has sent a small delegation to the summit in Poland because the US is technically still part of the accord. Ministers and senior officials arrived in Katowice on Monday for the second half of the meeting, which still has numerous hurdles to take before the scheduled end on December 14. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/d43bb1f4a0f62f2f6298e24be21ff849
