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.

The Economist: On Pollution, China is Better and Worse Than We Think

I'm reading Jared Diamond's excellent book Collapse (you know it's important when it has its own Wikipedia page!), which devotes a whole section to the real sociopolitical dangers modern China faces as a result of environmental fragility and degradation. I rather serendipitously happened upon this article in The Economist, which discusses developments therein (both good and bad) since Collapse was published in 2005:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

I subsequently ended up thinking a lot about the subject, so I thought I'd muse about it in prose. (Sometimes -- very occasionally -- I miss writing essays for college history classes...) This post is rather long, so I've put it below the cut:

NYTimes: Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Cites Climate Change and Sandy

This. Climate change has been given such short shrift this campaign even though, as this recent disaster has shown, it is of utmost importance. Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for reaching out to Democrats to point this out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/bloomberg-endorses-obama-saying-hurricane-sandy-affected-decision.html?smid=tw-nytmetro

This is not just an environmental issue. Climate change is a national security issue, an economic issue, a health issue. There's been a War on Terrorism, a War on Poverty -- how about a War on Global Warming?

We need a leader with longterm vision, who understands that his policies affect more than just the here and now, that his children and his children's children -- future generations and the whole planet -- are at stake. It's hard, sometimes, for system of a four-year election cycles to deliver such a leader. We might have one in a second-term Obama; we know we don't in Romney.

Seeing is believing. Let's hope there are more believers now.

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria: Alternate Uses for Lemonade

A different -- Victorian -- take on alternative fuels:

http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/2010/07/27

Better than corn, eh?

BBC: Sperm Whale Faeces Help Oceans Absorb CO2

Kind of gross, but very interesting nonetheless:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10323987.stm

Nature is such complex balance; who knew that the bathroom habits of whales had such a specific and important function in the marine ecosystem?

Makes me want to run those Japanese whalers into a sandbar, it does.

BBC: Britain's Chief Scientist Knighted

The British are doing it right [sic] (correctly, I know):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10293940.stm

This is what we should be doing for scientists who are reaching out to the public, and educating people, and raising awareness about global warming and other environmental issues. The U.S. does not have honours of this nature, to be sure; a fairly new democracy such as ours is not quite conducive to ancient orders of knighthood or other such accolades. Regardless, there are many other ways to recognize the work of similar individuals in the States, which is what we should be doing, instead of pandering to the conservative Christians and vilifying science. This is why (among other reasons) education in the U.S. has been going down the tubes.

We have a nerdy(ish) President. I suppose that's a start.

Open Letter: Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

This is the most concise, logical piece I've read about global warming in a long time. It's written by scientists, of course.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689

We need people like this in charge, advising the politicians, working on solutions. We need everyone else, especially those die-hard global warming deniers, to listen to them, instead of vilifying them as egg-heads and fear-mongers. We need the average American to pull his head out of the sand and recognize that his happy little bubble of ignorance is not the center of the universe, and think of the children, dammit!

I didn't realize I was so bitter at stupidity. Hmm.

Al Jazeera: US Senators Introduce Climate Bill

Kerry and Lieberman (not your average superheroes, I'll grant), trying to save the world:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/201051313748478889.html

Actual serious climate legislation: it's been too long in coming.

It's mostly cap-and-trade; I wish they'd left in some of the subsidies for alternative energy -- but it's still a big step. I hope it passes, this time. Kyoto was really a stain on our record.

This sort of thing is what I meant in the last post, when I spoke of "using" the moment. Capitalize on it. It's a tragedy, but make something good of it.