Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a member of the Neets’aii Gwich’in, hasn’t been able to fish at her family’s traditional camp on the Yukon River in Alaska for years. Salmon have dwindled with rising temperatures, a consequence of burning fossil fuels. That’s one reason why Johnson was one of thousands of people who took to the streets in New York over the past 24 hours to demand an end to oil, coal, and gas.

The aim is to put pressure on President Joe Biden and other world leaders gathering in the city this week for the United Nations General Assembly. Notably, Biden isn’t expected to attend the UN Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. To participate, governments need to come with “credible, serious and new climate action,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.

Every country needs to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 to meet global climate goals and save millions of lives and homes that could be lost to worsening climate disasters. That can only happen if clean energy replaces fossil fuels. And a lot depends on whether the US, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, can clean up its act.