Protestors march in downtown Houston to oppose CERAWeek on first day of

Kyle McClenagan/HPM

A giant bird puppet flew to the sound of jazz music above a crowd of protestors early Monday afternoon as the group of demonstrators marched through downtown Houston in opposition to the worldwide energy conference that started at the George R. Brown Conference Center.

CERAWeek by S&P Global is an annual gathering of energy executives and government representatives in Houston. The event includes partners such as Google, Amazon Web Services and several oil and gas companies, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell.

The demonstration on Monday, consisting of more than 100 people, was organized by the Texas Campaign for the Environment — a climate advocacy nonprofit founded in the early 1990s. The protesters marched from Houston City Hall to the convention center. According to organizers, the protest was meant to criticize the effects that fossil fuels have on the climate and human health.

Kyle McClenagan/HPM

“Community leaders are marching to ensure the fossil fuel executives and government officials attending CERAWeek see the opposition to their plans to recklessly expand fossil fuels, which poison the air and water, worsen the climate crisis, devastate Gulf Coast fishing economies, and drive conflicts from Venezuela to Iran,” protest organizers said in a statement.

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Alex Brown, from Pearland, said that as a resident of the area, he has seen firsthand the impacts fossil fuels have had on the environment.

“A lot of people live dangerously close to landfills, oil refineries, petrochemical plants — everything that can poison people,” Brown said. “I’d love to see some zoning laws. I’d love to see, ideally, shutdowns of plants and things like that, but I mean, that’s an ideal.”

Brown said he has participated in other protests in the past. This was his first time demonstrating against CERAWeek.

“I doubt that the people that are in the convention center are going to hear or care, but it would be nice to at least get some people in the streets thinking,” he said.

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Jovanmy Hernandez was another participant in the demonstration. He said he traveled from New Mexico to participate in the protest.

“I’m from the Permian Basin on the New Mexico side, and the amount of oil that is produced there is actually sent all the way over here to Houston to be processed in y’all’s refineries, not too far from here,” he said….