John -

As we dive into the new year, we wanted to look back and reflect on some of our incredible wins from 2022.

Here’s just some of what you helped accomplish this year to stop fossil fuel infrastructure, cut off the flow of funds to fossil fuels, and invest in climate justice:

We passed a historic climate bill in Congress

In August, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a climate and energy bill worth $369 billion dollars that opens huge doors for the climate movement.

We won massive investments in accelerating the transition to renewable energy, speeding up the U.S. economy’s fossil free transition, and significantly reducing emissions. This bill will:

👷‍♀️ Create up to 9 million jobs in clean energy, clean manufacturing, and green transportation
🌎 Reduce greenhouse gasses by 40% by 2030
💰Dedicate $60 billion for environmental justice in communities hardest hit by climate change and fossil fuels
☀️ Allocate $369 billion to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy sources
📈 Lengthen the tax credits for green energy projects from two to ten years to ensure steady growth in the wind and solar industry
🔌 Provide incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles

We know the bill is far from perfect, and we've got lots of work ahead of us. However, this step forward is a clear indicator that our movement-building is working. 2023 will be all about how we implement the IRA in a just and equitable way that creates millions of new jobs in renewables and shows a path forward with real climate solutions.

We defeated Manchin’s dirty deal for the third time

Earlier this year, Senator Joe Manchin proposed a bill that would require the Interior Department to sell at least 2 million acres of our public lands and 60 million acres of offshore waters for oil and gas leasing each year for a decade.

It would also make it easier to build fossil fuel projects – allowing big-polluting oil and gas companies to more easily force through dirty, dangerous fossil fuel projects in any neighborhood and community where they want to build them, limiting the voice of the public in the process.

Following the lead of frontline and grassroots groups, we made calls and signed petitions and successfully stopped this bill that would have undermined our bedrock environmental laws, fast-tracked fossil fuels, sacrificed frontline communities, and endangered public health.

We held the Federal Reserve accountable for allowing fossil fuel finance

Each year, officials from the Federal Reserve (along with influential bankers, asset managers, and government officials) gather for the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Wyoming. The event sets important policy goals and has a huge ripple effect across the entire global financial system.

From August 25 to 28, we showed up at the meeting with our partners at 350 Colorado to peacefully demand action. Our goal was to tell the leaders at the Symposium that finance policy and the Fed have to do more to protect the climate, recognize the critical risk fossil fuel investments pose to our economy, and get on board with the imperative to keep warming under 1.5° Celsius.

The Federal Reserve is supposed to protect the stability of the U.S. economy and the financial well-being of all Americans, and there’s no bigger threat to our economy than the worsening impacts of the climate crisis.

Thanks in part to our efforts, in September, the Federal Reserve announced its plans to perform an analysis of climate change financial risks next year, and are working on ways for banks to “identify, measure, monitor, and manage the financial risks of climate change."¹

We celebrated some major wins at COP27

Some of these victories include:

– President Biden pledging $100 million to the Adaptation Fund

– The final COP27 agreement including the creation of a fund for losses and damages from the climate crisis, and the U.S. committed to support it

That has never happened before and is the direct result of the pressure from the most impacted nations and our global climate movement. At the start of COP, the U.S. was reluctant to commit to loss and damage funding – but because of our movement and the leadership of advocates in the Global South, they committed to the historic Loss and Damage Fund.²

Youth climate activists march at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh.

In 2023, we must hold Biden accountable and demand that the U.S. fulfill its climate finance pledges immediately.

We got 5 new banks and a major PR firm to pull out of EACOP

French oil giant, TotalEnergies, is attempting to build the world’s longest crude oil pipeline right through the heart of Uganda and Tanzania – the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

In May 2022, the #StopEACOP movement celebrated another batch of victories when five banks including Deutsche Bank, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley (and some major insurance companies) all said they wouldn’t fund EACOP.

This takes the number of banks who have rejected EACOP project loans to 20 and the number of insurers who’ve rejected to eight. The list of banks who’ve rejected the project includes seven of Total’s ten largest lenders. In addition, Total lost a major business relationship with the huge U.S. PR firm, Edelman, over EACOP.

After one of the most powerful U.S. insurance brokers, Marsh McLennan, announced that they are trying to help get this pipeline over the finish line by finding insurance for the project, 350 U.S. launched a campaign calling on the CEO to drop their involvement. In 2023 we will continue to put pressure on Marsh to drop EACOP.

There is so much more work to be done, but all of our progress thus far proves that together, we can stop this project for good.

We know there were many other victories across the country and the globe! If you have one you want to share, you can share your climate victory with us here.

Share your climate wins »

Thank you for being part of this crucial work. We couldn’t do it without you.

In solidarity,

- Team 350

1 - Reuters
2 - The Guardian