Joint Release: Global Justice Ecology Project and 50 Years Is Enough Network

CONTACT: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project-mobile 802.578.0477 Sameer Dossani, 50 Years Is Enough Network-mobile 202.340.0216

Protests Planned for DC as Hurricane Advances Toward Coast

Iraq War, Global Warming Induced Hurricanes and World Bank Linked

Washington, DC--Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to descend on the nation's capitol this weekend to protest the Iraq War. Protests are also planned for the World Bank, which is holding its annual fall meetings. More and more people are beginning to connect global warming to the war and to the World Bank as a second massive storm prepares to pound another U.S. coastal area.

"What we have in Iraq is a war for oil to fuel an economy that depends on more and more oil as fossil fuel-driven global warming intensifies," stated Anne Petermann, co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project. "This is an untenable situation-one that people in the U.S. and the world must start to address," she continued.

Climatologists are coming to consensus that the increased severity of storms, as witnessed in Katrina and now Rita, is a direct result of the global warming-induced rise in the temperature of ocean water. Continued increases in fossil fuel emissions, they warn, will lead to more and increasingly severe weather-including droughts, floods, hurricanes, blizzards. The United Nations estimates that global warming related catastrophes have claimed over 500,000 lives in the last decade alone.

The World Bank will be meeting this weekend in Washington, DC and one of the items on their agenda is global warming. The G-8 meetings in Scotland this summer put the World Bank in charge of identifying solutions to global warming. "The World Bank is probably the agency most responsible for developing fossil fuels in the world. They have ignored the recommendations of their own Extractive Industries Review to get out of fossil fuel development, and now the G-8 wants to put them in charge of finding 'solutions' to global warming? It's ludicrous," said Sameer Dossani, Director of 50 Years Is Enough Network.

Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, is the new head of the World Bank, which spent $28 billion since 1992 on developing fossil fuels, 80% of which was exported to G-8 countries. "Essentially, the World Bank wants to make money from causing global warming and then they want to make even more money as the world's broker in the trading of fossil fuel emissions. It's incredibly cynical," 50 Years Is Enough Network's Dossani added.

Climatologists warn that the devastation that has occurred on the Gulf Coast is just the tip of the iceberg. We have only seen a one degree rise in the temperature of the world's oceans at this point, where a three to five degree rise is predicted by the end of the century, leading some to argue that Global warming is a much greater threat than terrorism. "We need to get out of Iraq and away from this oil-driven economy and focus resources on addressing global warming before its too late," said Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project.