Area Students Fast, Call for Climate Action in the Wake of Typhoon Haiyan

Cambridge, Mass. - Thirty college students and community members gathered in Harvard Square last night for a candlelight vigil for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, and to bring attention to the disaster climate change has wrecked upon the Philippines.

The colossal damage of Typhoon Haiyan has left almost 4,000 dead, four million displaced, and 1,600 people missing, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In the wake of the tragedy, The Warsaw Climate Change Conference, opened on 11 November, the 19th Session of the Conference of Parties on Climate Change since 1995. Nadarev Saño, Climate Commissioner, and head of the delegation from the Philippines, announced his choice to fast until a meaningful accord is reached, a fast that has garnered many supporters and fasters around the world, including eighteen at the Harvard Square rally. In solidarity with Saño, and the thousands still without food or water in the Philippines, 350Massachusetts and Tufts University students organized the fast and rally to call attention to the conference and the typhoon in the Boston area.

Daniel Jubelirer, a peace and justice major at Tufts University, said in an interview with Open Media Boston, “We’re fasting with Representative Saño from the Phillippines, who is doing it this week at the UN climate conference in solidarity with thousands of his people who are without food in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. We should have acted years ago as a country to curb our carbon emissions.” Jubelirer is also involved in the fossil fuel divestment campaign at Tufts University. When asked about other tangible solutions he sees to the climate crisis, including shareholder advocacy, Daniel said, “Shareholder campaigns don’t work anymore. What fossil fuel companies do…their whole business model is immoral and reckless- and leads to this. There’s no way around that.”

Will Pearl, a sophomore at Tufts, said, “We’re showing support for the Filipino people. This is a symbolic act for the climate debt. The global north owes a great climate debt to the global south as our actions are causing people great trouble and poverty. We’re doing this for the Filipino people and our fellow activists at the Warsaw Conference. We hope this will bring attention to the issue so that policymakers can walk out with an international accord. The U.S. is one of the top carbon emitters in the world, and has options with it’s wealth and political stability. The problem is, we don’t have the political will." Pearl was one of many activists who took part in the protests around the Brayton Point coal-fired power plant in Somerset this summer, which resulted in the plant’s CEO announcing a plan to shutdown by 2017 in early October.

Craig Altemose, a staff member of the climate activism organization Better Future Project, explained, “We were all inspired by the fast. We’re currently living in a climate-changed world with global temperatures having already risen one degree.” Altemose was one of 44 act visits arrested this summer during a Brayton Point protest.

Students at Tufts University, Brandeis University, and Boston College agreed to fast, and signed on to an open letter to Todd Stern and State Department negotiator Trigg Talley, Special Envoys for Climate Change to the COP 19 conference in Poland. The letter states, “Superstorms like Haiyan will only become more common if we continue to recklessly burn fossil fuels. Worse, the people of the Philippines have contributed next to nothing to global climate change. These countries, the least responsible and least equipped to deal with these climate disasters, are being hit first and hit hardest. At the same time, in a shameful obstruction of democracy, the American corporations profiting from the carbon pollution that causes climate change are misleading the public and preventing government bodies from passing legislation to cut carbon pollution.” Fifty-five universities around the country are participating in the fast. The Warsaw Conference is scheduled to close on November 22nd. The full letter to the Special Envoys is here.