Environmental Movement’s Largest Civil Disobedience Begins To Break Free From Fossil Fuels

350.org has announced the launch of Break Free, a global wave of peaceful protest that will last for 12 days, targeting the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects.

From the 3rd to 15th of May, a series of peaceful direct actions will take place across the world in an attempt to get the message across that humanity is not in favor of fossil fuels. 350.org, a global grassroots climate movement campaigning for “a safe climate and a better future,” announced the global action under the banner of Break Free on Tuesday, describing it as the “largest civil disobedience in the history of the environmental movement.”

The aim of the demonstrations “is to demonstrate the global resolve to break free from the shackles of polluting fuels to build a new kind of economy that works for people and the planet, and accelerate the just transition to 100% renewable energy.”

“There’s never been a bigger, more concerted wave of actions against the plans of the fossil fuel industry to overheat our earth–and for the just, fair, and sustainable world we can now envision,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder 350.org. “In the hottest year on record, we’re determined to turn up the political heat on the planet’s worst polluters.”

A number of peaceful protests have been scheduled in at least 13 different countries around the world, from the US and UK to Australia and Indonesia. A full list of the protests can be found here.

“By backing campaigns and mass actions aimed at stopping the world’s most dangerous fossil-fuel projects – from coal plants in Turkey and the Philippines, to mines in Germany and Australia, to fracking in Brazil and oil wells in Nigeria – Break Free hopes to eliminate the power and pollution of the fossil-fuel industry, and propel the world toward a sustainable future,” added May Boeve, Executive Director 350.org