The People's Climate March, a Recap

Over the weekend, I went to the People's Climate March. I went alone, one of more than 300,000 people who attended the New York City event (similar marches were staged in cities around the world), and was warmly welcomed by perfect strangers, from climate scientists to concerned parents pushing baby strollers. There was universally an acknowledgement of solidarity, of common and overarching cause. There was a determination that the United Nations should hear us, on the weekend of the Climate Summit.

The March spanned more than fifty blocks on Manhattan's West Side, from 86th Street down to 34th Street. I joined about halfway through, having rushed across the river from the Brooklyn Book Festival, which was unfortunately on the same day. I tried to document what I could; my batteries gave out partway through...

I took this photo from just outside the barricade; it gives a good sense of the density of marchers along the route.

Marchers flocked to New York from colleges and universities throughout the Northeast, bringing handmade signs, slick printed banners, and matching t-shirts. (You know it's a real campus group when it has special t-shirts!)

There were also members of a diverse array of disproportionately-impacted communities, from indigenous populations to farmers to anyone who happened to live in a low-lying coastal region, included most Hurricane Sandy victims in the tri-state area (an unsurprisingly well-represented group).

Activists of all ages carried signs and slogans, and looked pretty happy to be here. It wasn't just young, idealistic college students!

These marchers, though, look like young, idealistic college students... The "fill-in-the-blank" signs were handed out to marchers at the beginning of the day. There was a wonderful diversity of answers, from the indisputably factual to the unflinchingly personal.

There were some interesting pieces of green technology along for the ride. I was especially taken with this tiny solar-powered vehicle, which reminded me of a cross between a VW Beetle and a golf cart. (It was moving at slow enough speeds that children could clamber on.)

I fell in with a group of scientists, some of whom had come all the way from the U.K. to participate in the march. They had an incredible prop: an enormous rolling blackboard covered in real data. The evidence was clear, from more than ten feet away!

And of course, the scientists came prepared with clever exoplanet jokes.

This photo was taken towards the end of the march, as the afternoon was just giving way to early evening. As the lighting is lacking, the signs read "Tuvalu," "Save the Arctic," and "Stop the tar sands at the source." This was indeed the delegation representing the tiny Pacific archipelago of Tuvalu, which is in danger of being submerged by rising sea levels. Some of them probably came a very long way to be heard in front of the United Nations.

As for the media round-up, my favorite pieces about the March:

• The New Yorker ran an excellent article about the event, as well as a interview with the environmentalist and scholar Bill McKibben, one of the primary organizers of the March.
• The New York Times also covered the March, including audiovisual material that gives a great sense of the numbers and diversity of the marchers. A follow-up article provided deeper analysis of the economics behind climate change mitigation.

The U.N. appears to have gotten the message -- but it remains to be seen in the months and years ahead how seriously its member states take their new vows on climate action. It will require intricate policy and sustained initiative to see them through the vagaries of politics, of course. But no country can claim that its citizens do not care or will not be affected by climate change.

I Am Very Real: Kurt Vonnegut's letter on censorship

This week is Banned Books Week, which I am celebrating by reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's a book that has frequently been censored and banned for its critical treatment of religion (true), and, more laughably, for its misogyny and its depiction of polygamy and violence (these are all elements that the book portrays negatively). There are many writers who communicate eloquently on the subject of censorship, Atwood included, but I am particularly struck by the following letter, written in 1973 by Kurt Vonnegut to the man who burned his books:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html

We live, as Vonnegut points out, in a country that prizes and was indeed founded upon the ideal of freedom. Freedom of speech and of knowledge is enshrined in the very documents that form the fabric of our government. But true freedom only exists with unfettered access to information. It's horrible that teachers -- those who are responsible for the youngest, most impressionable members of our society -- would seek to restrict any child's learning.

Vonnegut rightly takes censorship as an insult -- to the writer, to the reader, and to the children who should be presumed intelligent and independent enough to read a work and think critically about it. A reader should be free to read -- and disagree with -- whatever she chooses. A reader who is never challenged by concepts that are difficult, disturbing, or opposed to her own perspective will never gain the rich education that reading offers, and will never learn to think for herself. No child should be denied that education on the whim of the adult at the front of the classroom.

And this is why Banned Books Week is important. It reminds us every year that this is an ongoing battle, that censorship still happens in this country, and that ignorance and bigotry must be fought at every juncture.