People’s Climate March: It’s not over

Yesterday’s climate march was the biggest protest so far about the need to take action about climate change: 400,000 people participated in the People’s Climate March in New York City alone. Photo thanks to Mother Jones Magazine; read more from Mother Jones here.

But just because the march is over doesn’t mean we can stop protesting. Until we slow down the amount of carbon we are consuming we need to put pressure on to put on the brakes. With numbers like these mobilized, we have a better chance than ever, because

People’s Climate Marches happened in other cities, too, including mine, Ventura CA (see photos below).

#peoplesclimate #ClimateChange #Climate2014 #climatemarch #ventura join us now city hall pic.twitter.com/H8ZLBnhAjV

— Gwendolyn Alley, MA (@ArtPredator) September 21, 2014

Rachel Morris VCCOOL

VC Supervisor Steve Bennet

Marchers in front of Ventura City Hall

Hard to say how many people were involved around the world but I’d say easily a million people stood up for

something they believed in: that anthropogenic climate change is a reality and needs to be addressed immediately.

walking along the promenade: more than half of the marchers are ahead of the banner

Chumash leaders led us in prayer

Unfortunately in the US, while we may be in the majority, 25% of our friends and neighbors are skeptical about climate change. In fact, they feel that the problem of climate change and global warming has been exaggerated–that’s it’s not that big of a deal really.

Really?

When 97% of the Earth’s scientists say that CLIMATE CHANGE IS A BIG DEAL  how can 1 in 4 of Americans know so much more? Why are we still debating whether there is climate change instead of what to do about it?

Well for one, you can watch this video to see how PR has manipulated us.

What John Oliver points out in the top video that has gone viral with nearly 4.5 million views is the role of TV pundits and their penchant to “debate” global warming by pitting one scientist against another–one who denies climate change against someone who validates it.

Making it seem like it is one against one.
Instead of 97 against 3.

As a college teacher, I see how the textbooks on writing train students to “look at both sides” of an issue. In this case, is it really necessary when there is so much work to be done to solve the issue? Why do we keep wasting out time trying to convince people?

Yesterday, I moderated a discussion about the documentary film Disruption.

At the event, I encouraged the audience to get to know each other, to form a community, to find out what we know and what we want to know and to work together to name the problem in such a way that we are not overwhelmed by it or feel that it is “one more thing” we have to do but how working together we can make a change and while one person can’t solve all of the issues, we can each take on parts of it with our neighbors, our families and our friends to accomplish our goals–to save the planet from the runaway impact of our consumerist, fossil fuel demanding, wasteful lifestyle.

There is no silver bullet, there is no one thing you can do. It is a million small acts and a few HUGE ones. Do what you can. Don’t give up. Do something.