With little hope of federal action, a series of marches and events in 70 countries will focus on climate change’s effects now and the low-income and minority groups bearing the brunt

Climate change activism has always had the stubbornly tough task of mobilizing the public to confront a slow-moving, largely invisible problem while being stymied by a fantastically wealthy fossil fuel industry and an array of sceptics in politics and the media.

Climate campaigners would, therefore, be forgiven a few moments of despair in the era of Donald Trump. Trump's election elicited two large public howls from those concerned about climate change – the People's Climate March and the Science March, held within days of each other in April last year – but any hopes of persuasion have now given way to attritional confrontation and attempts to bypass the administration altogether.

Now a series of marches and other events across 70 countries on Saturday called Rise for Climate Action, is framed as a grassroots movement aimed squarely at spurring local mayors, businesses and state leaders to slash emissions regardless of Trump, with the hope a future president will find the momentum impossible to ignore.

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“I'd hesitate to say we are giving up on the federal government at the moment but we have to be realistic,” said May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org, a climate change campaign group that is a lead organizer for Saturday. “Quite a lot can be done at the city level and we have an opportunity to highlight that. We are up against huge obstacles and Donald Trump is a massive one. This is about being clear what we are asking for when the opportunity presents itself.”

The message being honed for the Rise for Climate Action is one of a swift transition to 100% renewable energy, with the image of fossil fuel companies painted as being little different from their tobacco counterparts.

Many of those taking part in the various marches and other events in the US will be highlighting the aspects of society worsened by climate change, such as inequality and racial prejudice.

Miya Yoshitani, of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, will be taking part in the main climate march, which expects to attract tens of thousands of people in San Francisco, to decry the air pollution suffered largely by black and Asian American communities in the Bay Area.

“There are refineries and freeways so air quality is a big issue for everyone, but race is a bigger factor than income as to how bad you get it,” she said. “The Bay Area is known to be a very progressive place, with its technology and innovation, but it's also a place of extreme inequality. There is massive gentrification and displacement of people and climate change is a huge threat multiplier for those things.

“Here, climate change is things like sea level rise, wildfires and drought but it's also housing affordability and energy costs. The effects are going to be borne by low-income communities that already miss out on school and work days because of air pollution. It's not a distant threat, it's here right now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Delta Fire burns in the Shasta-Trinity national forest, California, on Thursday. The increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in the state has been linked to climate change. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

“I grew up in Chicago but moved here in the 1990s and have seen these huge changes with the growth of the dotcom companies. We feel [California governor] Jerry Brown has failed some of these communities and we have to let him know we will hold him accountable.”

The San Francisco march, timed as an unofficial curtain raiser for the Global Climate Action Summit that starts in the city next week, will demand that Brown end fossil fuel extraction and begin the complete shift to renewable energy recently backed by California lawmakers. Activists fear that even states purportedly progressive on climate change, such as California, are leaving behind certain communities.

“California is on fire at the moment and we have flooding and heatwaves caused by a fossil fuel industry that is being allowed to continue when everything needed for a just transition is available,” said Pennie Opal Plant, an environmental campaigner of Yaqui, Mexican, Choctaw, Cherokee and European descent.

“Native people are going to be at the very front of the march because we are on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and processing. In the Bakken oil fields [an area in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota] there are high rates of cancer, in the tar fields of Canada they've destroyed and poisoned huge areas of boreal forests where people hunt and find medicines.

“My family has lived in the Bay Area since the 1930s and Chevron and the other refineries have just got bigger and bigger. It's been a constant struggle and the rates of cancer and asthma are very high. In our tribal traditions we understand we are responsible for the wellbeing for the coming seven generations. As a grandmother I'm concerned we are not handing a healthy environment on to my grandson and his generation.”

Opal Plant said it was “devastating” to see the Trump administration throw open large tracts of land for oil drilling and coalmining, including areas in the Arctic and Utah considered crucially important both spiritually and for hunting.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The main plant facility at the Navajo generating station north-east of Grand Canyon national park. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP

“It's an horrendous nightmare to think they'd drill in the Grand Canyon or Bears Ears [national monument in Utah],” she said. “We've got to rise up because that's how slavery was abolished, that's how women got the vote and how civil rights came about. There's nothing more important right now than to rise up to ensure a livable environment for the future.”

Protesters in Puerto Rico will demand that the US territory rebuild its electricity grid, which was shattered by Hurricane Maria last year, with renewable sources such as solar and wind, while people will gather in Miami to call for greater urgency to confront the threat of sea level rise.

Others will target specific projects, such as a planned electricity substation in Boston, located in a flood-prone area of a diverse neighbourhood, and a new oil pipeline near New Orleans that acts as an extension of the controversial Dakota Access endeavour.

“This pipeline starts on indigenous land and it ends in St James, an African American area that is already surrounded by a dozen petrol-chemical facilities,” said Anne Rolfes, who grew up near the heart of the oil industry in Lafayette, Louisiana. “We will be demanding that people in St James get an evacuation route for when one of these plants explodes, because there isn't one at the moment. It's a pretty pathetic request really, to be frank.

“Stopping the pipeline is an urgent issue too but we need a damn evacuation route. If you're rolling over the top of these communities you've at least got to let them have a way out.

“Elected officials pretend to care about flooding but they've never met a petrol-chemical project they didn't like. These areas in Louisiana are going underwater but it's just one big anti-climate science parade.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I’d hesitate to say we are giving up on the federal government at the moment but we have to be realistic,’ said one campaigner. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

“It's not as if we have any level of government that is responsive at the moment but acting now is better than if we just did nothing. To some degree you need blind faith in some sort of miracle down here. I think we will have around 200 people for the protest, which is quite good for Louisiana.”

Some of those taking part dismiss any focus on Trump as merely a distraction from decades of decisions in the US that have placed minority communities directly in harm's way from power plants, landfills and other sources of insidious pollution.

“I'm tired of doing marches in Minnesota. People do them and go home and say 'I've done my bit now,' which isn't how it works. We need a strong, lasting movement,” said Sophia Benrud, a chef who is helping set up an event explaining the dangers of climate change in a district of east Minneapolis historically blighted by industrial pollution.

“The Trump administration isn't what is motivating me. I hate politics. This is about my life, my family. We have had white people setting our agenda for a long time. Look at Flint and the problems there. Would you ever see that in a wealthy white neighbourhood? Obviously not.

“I've always cared about the planet. I'm the woodland creature out of all of my friends; I would happily never live in the city again. Climate change is a symptom of people not being taken care of. If we don't take care of people and of inequality, we will never solve this problem.”

