By Karen Rubin, editor@news-photos-features.com, news-photos-features.com

Protesters took to New York City streets on Saturday, September 20, to call for climate, social, and economic justice, and specifically, making billionaires and polluters pay up.

The “Make Billionaires Pay” march united climate activists, migrant rights defenders and women’s rights advocates in their demands for climate and social justice. Climate movement researchers say the coalition reflects a growing shift toward intersectional, grassroots mobilization as climate action stalls at the federal level. It is led by 350.org, Climate Defenders, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Target Majority NYC and Women’s March. 

“I hope we can scare Trump and his billionaire allies,” said Renata Pumarol, deputy director of Climate Defenders, a multi-racial and multi-generational climate organizing hub. “We need to show them that we are organized, and that there are more of us than them.”

“The billionaire fascists are setting our world on fire,” Target Majority NYC stated. “They’re dismantling democracy, attacking immigrants, and fueling war. They profit off genocide and climate collapse. This moment demands mass mobilization. As world leaders gather in New York City for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week, it’s time to show them that we are revolting against Trump and the billionaire class. We’re calling on people across the US to join the nonviolent resistance by hosting a march in your community or joining the anchor march in NYC.”

“Everything feels out of control. ICE raids tearing families apart. Genocide streamed live on our screens,” Womens March declared.” Free speech and our freedoms under direct attack from the Trump regime. And billionaires are pouring gasoline on every fire while families can’t make rent. They want us scattered. Silent. Afraid. Today, we gather in power. As the United Nations meets and Climate Week begins, we take the streets of New York City- lound, undeniable, impossible to ignore.”

“Make Billionaires Pay”

They gathered during Climate Week, as the United Nations General Assembly gets underway.

They marched as the Trump administration is actively rescinding the historic climate actions of the Biden Administration to transition to a clean, renewable energy economy, cancelling regulations to protect the air and water from pollution, cancelling  tax credits for electric vehicles, actively shutting down the offshore windfarms that were already well under construction, his EPA Administrator, Long Islander Lee Zeldin who unsuccessfully ran for New York Governor, rescinding the Endangerment Finding that empowers the federal government to regulate carbon emissions contributing to climate change.

“As soon as the second Trump administration took office in January 2025, he unleashed an immediate and unprecedented attack on our environment and public health,” writes the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “This includes a rollback of crucial environmental safeguards, the repeal of bedrock environmental and health laws, the delay of critical protections for endangered species, and attacks on well-established science and scientists.” (https://www.nrdc.org/resources/white-house-watch-tracking-attacks-our-environment-health)

The actions are not only hurting public health, exposing communities to more severe and deadly climate disasters, but affordability, as well. Ending the development and transition to clean, renewable energy makes American households dependent on ever-rising prices for fossil fuels.

“Clean energy has lowered Americans’ bills, created hundreds of thousands of jobs, and helped fight climate change. But it’s bad for the fossil fuel industry’s bottom line, and Trump seems willing to stop at nothing to slow it down – including breaking the law his own party just passed,” the Climate Action Campaign (CAC) writes. “We need to build as much clean energy as we can to help avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Thanks to Trump and his fossil fuel cronies, Americans are getting more pollution, higher bills, and more deadly extreme weather instead of the healthy, safe, and prosperous future we deserve.” (https://www.actonclimate.com/post/cacs-alt-on-trumps-latest-attack-on-wind-and-solar/)

It’s hard to keep track of all the aggressively, in-your face anti-climate, anti-environment, anti-public health actions trump has unleashed – this list was compiled with the help of AI:

• Withdrew from the Paris Agreement again.
  • Prioritizes fossil fuel production while actively attacking clean renewable energy development: Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” prioritizes fossil fuel development, including oil, coal, and natural gas, aiming for energy dominance through deregulation.
  • Reviving oil pipeline projects that communities rejected. 
  •  Opened protected areas for drilling: Trump administration finalized decisions to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other federally protected lands and waters to drilling.
• Declared a “national energy emergency” during his 2025 inauguration to justify further expansion of fossil fuel extraction and streamline the permitting process for new oil and gas projects.
• Rolled back Clean Power Plan
•  Weakened vehicle emissions standards: 
• Targeted renewable energy: The second Trump administration has halted new offshore wind projects, even ones that were nearing completion, and limited tax credits for wind and solar projects as well as credits enabling homeowners to incorporate solar energy. 
• Reduced Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority and budget, undermining its ability to enforce environmental regulations, while declaring it would not bother to regulate polluters.
• Weakened the Clean Water Act: The administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule, narrowing the scope of federal protection for wetlands and small streams and leaving more waterways vulnerable to pollution.
• Scaled back national monuments: Trump dramatically reduced the size of several national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, to open up land for resource extraction. In 2020, he opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. In the second term, he has gone back to reverse Biden’s re-designations.
• Loosened methane regulations: The EPA weakened rules that limited methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public and tribal lands.
• Targeted toxics and pollution standards: The administration rolled back standards for mercury and air toxics from power plants and loosened rules regulating coal ash disposal, and delayed or rescinded standards keeping “forever chemicals” out of drinking water.
• Cut climate research funding  including those at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and The National Weather Service, stopped satellite monitoring showing impacts of climate change, and cancelled reports that measure climate change.
• Dismissed climate change: Trump and his administration frequently expressed skepticism about the scientific consensus on climate change and dismantled interagency groups designed to coordinate climate action and continues to call climate change a “hoax” and a “scam.”
• Limited the “social cost of carbon”: An executive order disbanded the interagency working group that calculated the “social cost of carbon”—a metric used to quantify the economic damages from greenhouse gas emissions—and directed agencies to consider eliminating the calculation. Companies are discouraged from calculating the risk of climate change in their investments and public reporting.
• Reduced public health protections: A 2018 analysis by Harvard researchers estimated that the environmental rollbacks could lead to thousands of extra deaths and millions of additional respiratory problems per decade due to increased pollution. 

Meanwhile, a new study led by a Stony Brook University researcher projects that, due to climate change factors, there will be more wildfires in the coming decades, and their smoke could lead to tens of thousands of deaths by 2050.

Climate disasters have become more severe and more frequent and more costly even as Trump moves to shut down FEMA. The US spends $150 billion annually on climate-related disaster relief (as much as what Trump has allocated to militarize mass deportations), with recent years seeing even higher costs due to increased frequency of major events. The US experienced 27 billion-dollar disasters in 2024, totaling $182.7 billion – well above the 5-year average. 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has proposed rolling back carbon pollution standards for existing coal and new gas-fired power plants and dismantling standards that limit dangerous Mercury and Air Toxics (MATS) pollution from coal plants. These rollbacks would worsen air quality, hurt public health, and exacerbate the climate crisis. 

“Climate pollution is worsening health and living conditions for so many of our families  nationwide, which is why people across party lines strongly oppose their repeal,” stated Climate Action Campaign Director Margie Alt. “The EPA was created to protect people, not polluters. Eliminating these vital air pollution and climate protections will make our families sick, poison the air, and make extreme weather triggered by the climate crisis more deadly and destructive. The EPA should honor its mission to protect our health and environment, not advance an agenda that puts polluters first.”

Thousands of Americans are now dying each year from heat stroke, with global warming setting new records for temperature year after year.

See a list of the environmental and climate change horrors of Trump Administration at the National Resources Defense Council: https://www.nrdc.org/resources/white-house-watch-tracking-attacks-our-environment-health

“Clean energy has lowered Americans’ bills, created hundreds of thousands of jobs, and helped fight climate change. But it’s bad for the fossil fuel industry’s bottom line, and Trump seems willing to stop at nothing to slow it down – including breaking the law his own party just passed. 

Even as his administration works aggressively to harm the environment, unleash climate change rather than mitigate against it resulting in public health emergencies ranging from epidemics, to heat stroke, to asthma, to heart disease, trump is working to dismantle public health altogether.

A kind of catch-all for protest in what has become a rolling series of protests, other issues being voiced included democracy, rule of law, immigrant rights, human rights, Palestinian rights, ending war and conflict.

Here are more photo highlights:

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