Citizens’ Climate International supports call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

For well over a year now we have been proud supporters of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the past month, Vanuatu, Timor Leste, the European Parliament and the World Health Organization have called for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Science has confirmed beyond all doubt that human activity is driving global heating and destabilizing the climate system. That dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate is disrupting other vital natural systems, putting food systems and water security at risk, and generating unmanageable threats to economies, nation states, and the biosphere.

Research shows more than 8 million deaths per year (1 in 5 deaths globally) are attributable to fossil fuel pollution. Courts are now affirming that climate protection is a human right. Further expansion of fossil fuel production and consumption is an unconscionable, unaffordable, yet preventable threat.

A livable future, in which the rights and dignity of all people are secure and defensible, requires we make clean energy the universal standard and limit global heating to 1.5ºC or less. To stop accumulating future climate damage, we need the community of nations to:

• stop financing new exploration and production of fossil fuels;
• phase out existing production;
• invest in a transformational future, in which no nation remains dependent on global heating pollution for revenues or development, with universal access to affordable clean energy driven by fair and efficient policies like climate income.

This is why we support the call for a new Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, to accelerate action toward that better future.

Joseph Robertson, Executive Director
Citizens’ Climate International

Update October 31, 2022