Join frontline organizers, climate justice advocates, anti-war activists, and movement leaders during NYC Climate Week 2026 for a conversation about the environmental costs of U.S. imperialism and what it would look like to invest in people and the planet instead of endless war.

Featuring:

  • Austin Cole - Black Alliance for Peace

  • Alliyah Lusuegro - National Priorities Project

  • Keanu Arpels-Josiah - Fridays for Future

  • Adrien Salazar - Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

  • Piece Whang - Nodutdol

  • Erika Xananine Calvillo Ramirez - Climate Justice Squad

  • Feleecia Guillen - New Mexico No False Solutions

  • Aaron Kirshenbaum - CODEPINK

  • Alab Mirasol Ayroso - Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines & Siklab Philippines Indigenous Youth Network

Through movement-building conversations and interactive discussion, participants will have the opportunity to connect the dots between struggles at home and abroad, understand how militarism shapes the climate crisis, and identify concrete ways to take action.

The climate crisis cannot be separated from war, militarism, and imperial extraction.

The U.S. war machine has enormous impacts on people and the planet -- from toxic contamination and military pollution to the destruction of ecosystems, massive fossil fuel consumption, and extractive supply chains that stretch across the globe. Yet militarism remains largely absent from mainstream climate conversations.

At the same time, the United States is pouring unprecedented amounts of public money into the Pentagon. With the Trump administration pushing for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, we have to ask: What are we sacrificing to fund endless war?

While billions of dollars are directed toward militarization, communities continue to face toxic military sites, climate disasters, inadequate disaster preparedness, and a lack of investment in clean energy, public transportation, environmental remediation, and other solutions needed for a livable future. Poisonous AI data centers, rapidly expanding around the country, are a microcosm of militarism and extraction. They are the end result of wars, invasions, occupations, and destabilization for the sake of fossil fuels and minerals, while also increasingly being used as tools of war, with billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts and budget allocations being directed to data center development and AI companies.

This event will explore the connections between war, climate change, extraction, pollution, militarism, and the corporate interests that profit from them -- while creating space to imagine and organize for something different.

Because we cannot build a livable future while funding endless war. And we cannot have climate justice without confronting the systems of imperialism, militarism, extraction, and exploitation that are driving the destruction of our communities and our planet.

Join us to challenge the war economy, connect across movements, and imagine what becomes possible when we invest in life instead.

Sponsoring Organizations

National Priorities Project • CodePink • Fridays for Future USA • New Mexico No False Solutions • Grassroots Global Justice Alliance • Climate Justice Squad • Sunrise NYC

RSVP