Everything 350 Europe, all at once!

We’re trying something new! Here’s an audio version of this blog if you prefer:

Extreme heat has just gripped three continents with record breaking temperatures above 50C in China and the US. Wildfires are raging in Canada and Southern Europe and India and China have seen deadly floods.

We know that these extreme weather events are largely due to the climate crisis. And it’s at times like this that it becomes extra important for the climate movement to step up and provide an alternative to the climate-wrecking future that the oil and gas companies are pushing us towards. That’s why we wanted to send you an update on the various ways we’ve worked together over the past few months towards a just, fossil free world for all.

Demanding the UK Government sticks to their promises

When the news broke in the UK the other week that the Government was considering scrapping their £11.6bn climate funding pledge, we realised that urgent action was needed. Together with like-minded organisations across the UK we set up a petition to call on Rishi Sunak to stick to his Government’s promise. So far, the pressure and media attention seems to be working: the Government insists that they’ll stick to their pledge. But we won’t stop pushing until they provide a clear plan of how and when this money will be paid out! If you haven’t already, it’s not too late to sign and share the petition here. 

Representatives from partner organisations showed up at 10 Downing Street to demand answers from Rishi Sunak. 

Tommy from our UK team also recently took action with partners to organise a demonstration outside the LGBT Awards in London. The awards were sponsored by mega polluters BP and Shell and were a clear example of the climate-wrecking oil industry trying to clean up their image – while continuing to pollute the planet.

Together with partners, we managed to ramp up the pressure so much that nominees dropped out of the official ceremony before it took place. The awards organisation even issued a statement saying they were rethinking their current sponsorship model and BP and Shell were removed from the sponsors page! Watch a video of the demonstration here!

Kickstarting a campaign for large-scale change in Germany

In Germany, our team has launched their ambitious new campaign to drive local and national change for clean energy. It’s all based around the local energy providers called Stadtwerke – 80 of which are members of a fossil gas lobby group called “Zukunft Gas”. 350 Germany has launched a joint campaign with partners to urge the energy providers to quit the gas lobby group and become a “Stadtwerk of the future” instead. They’ve already met with representatives, sent out press releases, taken action online and offline and worked with groups across Germany to target their local Stadtwerke – and that’s just them getting started!

Showing up at Macron’s summit in Paris

For our France team there was a key event in their calendars at the start of summer: President Macron’s global climate finance summit in Paris at the end of June. Together with other 350 teams and partner organisations across France, they helped organise bold actions and demand ambitious commitments from world leaders.

While the summit failed to produce the kind of outcome that we hoped for, there was no way global leaders and financial institutions could miss our collective demand: prioritise people over profit – which we’ll continue to push in the coming months! Check out this Twitter thread to find out more about the summit and its outcomes. 

Stopping a climate-wrecking treaty

We’ve also been working hard to push for countries to quit the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) – a dangerous global agreement that allows mega polluters to sue governments for taking action! We’ve organised online actions to push for both the EU and the UK to quit the ECT and produced a handy explainer video – because this is the most dangerous treaty that almost no one has heard of! Just to give one example of how truly terrible the ECT is: In 2021 energy companies RWE and Uniper sued the Netherlands for €‎2.4 billion for wanting to ban coal-fired power plants after 2030!

There’s real momentum in the fight to stop the ECT. France, Poland, the Netherlands and Spain have all said they want to leave, and recently the EU Commission proposed to exit the treaty (which needs to be agreed on by Member States next). The fight isn’t over, but we’re getting closer to a future without the dangerous Energy Charter Treaty!

Check out these ‘Must Reads’! 

• Many of us are probably wondering: “Why haven’t we solved the climate crisis yet??”. Find out what some of our staff think about this ‘million dollar question’.
• More extreme heat is predicted this summer. Here’s our guide with 5 ways to stay cool in a heatwave.

We couldn’t do any of this without people like you, {name}, taking action together with us – thank you! We also rely on small donations from people all over the world to do this work. If you’re able to chip in a few euros today, it would help ensure that we can step up the pressure on polluters even more – and move further towards a greener future for all – but if you’re not able to, no worries! There will be plenty of other ways to take action too.

Onwards,

Matilda, Laura, Lisa and the 350 Europe team

PS: We’re keen to know what you think about the work we’re doing in Europe. Is there anything else you’d like to know more about? Would you like more audio versions of our blogs? Is there a campaign you’d like to suggest to us on renewable energy solutions? We’d love to hear from you! Send an email to: europe.community@350.org.

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