Climate Protesters Arrested After Marching Outside NY Fed Building

A gaggle of protesters descended on Wall Street to march against fossil fuels on Monday, leading to several arrests outside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York building. Police threatened to take more into custody if they didn't leave, ABC 7 reports.

According to the protesters, they want Wall Street to stop financing fossil fuels.

"Despite scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of global warming, the world's 60 biggest banks poured over $5.5 trillion into the fossil fuel industry since the signing of the Paris Agreement, driving climate chaos and causing deadly local community impacts," said New York Communities for Change in a press release.

(Reasonable minds beg to differ...)

According to the activists, getting arrested is a risk they're willing to take.

"Civil disobedience means potentially risking arrest to call attention to the morality of funding the fossil fuel industry, contributing to climate change, which is already killing tens of thousands of people and will potentially kill millions more," said Jonathan Westin of Climate Organizing Hub.

On Sunday, yelling that the future and their lives depend on ending fossil fuels, tens of thousands of protesters on kicked off a week where leaders will try once again to curb climate change primarily caused by coal, oil and natural gas.

But protesters say it's not going to be enough. And they aimed their wrath directly at U.S. President Joe Biden, urging him to stop approving new oil and gas projects, phase out current ones and declare a climate emergency with larger executive powers.

The March to End Fossil Fuels featured such politicians as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and actors Susan Sarandon, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Kyra Sedgewick and Kevin Bacon. But the real action on Broadway was where protesters crowded the street, pleading for a better but not-so-hot future. It was the opening salvo to New York's Climate Week, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts gather to try to save the planet, highlighted by a new special United Nations summit Wednesday. -ABC News

"We have people all across the world in the streets, showing up, demanding a cessation of what is killing us," AOC told protesters. "We have to send a message that some of us are going to be living on, on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now. And we will not take no for an answer."

Interesting how all this climate stuff is suddenly cropping up now.