The Case for USCAN on the International Stage

Dear reader,

As I write this message, I’m sitting in my home office in Western Montana, looking out my window at the gray skies and fallen leaves that portend the beginnings of winter. And yet, my spirit (and indeed my jetlagged brain) are thousands of miles away in tropical Belém, Brazil, where the UN climate talks are entering the final stretch. 

And so, I am thinking of the many US Climate Action Network (USCAN) members who are still at the talks – staying up late at night to comb through the latest draft negotiation texts, organizing protests to keep the pressure on government, and speaking with journalists to share their takes on the final outcomes of the talks. 

We do this all to ensure that the outcomes of COP30 bend the arc of our world closer to climate justice. This year, USCAN and its members' presence at COP30 has felt strange - and for obvious reasons. As you’ve probably heard, the United States has skipped the climate talks for the first time in three decades as the Trump administration has unleashed an all out assault on climate policy and the organizations and movements responsible for securing important progress during the last administration. 

Despite this noticeable gap, USCAN and its members have shown up to deliver a message of defiance, solidarity, and hope to our siblings in the climate justice movement globally. We are calling out the blatant authoritarianism that is characterizing the second Trump administration; sharing stories of how progress in the state continues across the country; and we are holding accountable US governors and other elected officials who are coming to COP claiming to be climate champions while not necessarily walking the talk back home.

It is precisely this connection–bridging the work of our members in the US with global struggles for climate justice–that makes USCAN’s international work so critical. We are not only the largest U.S. network of climate and environmental justice organizations, but we are part of the largest global climate civil society network (Climate Action Network International [CAN I]). We are not only accountable to our members, many of whom are on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and now rampant expansion of data centers in the U.S., but are in relationship with thousands of organizations globally fighting to ensure justice for people in the face of the climate crisis. 

Having been an organizer for almost two decades, I can attest that the process it takes to bring justice into this world is hardly easy, nor does it feel linear. But this work is only possible because networks like USCAN, and members of CAN I show up year after year to demand in one unified voice, that justice and people's lives are centered in the transition off fossil fuels that is taking place before our very eyes. 

This struggle for climate justice is and has always been a fight between organized people and organized money. For decades the fossil fuel industry has known that its products – when used as directed – would devastate the global climate and cause untold harm. And it is for this very reason that they have inundated the UN climate talks with their lobbyists and representatives. Why for three decades it has been nigh impossible to mention the very term fossil fuels in the final decisions texts of the COP negotiations. And it is just for this reason that we are joining our sister nodes and members at Climate Action Network - International to demand that countries not leave Brazil without an implementing mechanism (the Belém Action Mechanism) to guide an equitable, fair and just transition that puts people, not profits, at the core.

It can feel difficult in these dark times, when everything we have worked and dedicated our lives to for decades feels like it is coming undone in the span of a few months. Yet, having connected with our siblings in the struggle from around the world who we met in Belém – we return knowing that we are not defeated so long as we continue the fight on the ground and in our communities.

- Sriram Madhusoodanan, USCAN Director of Climate Policy and Advocacy