Report from the People’s Climate March

GUESTWORK | Roy Wehrle

The People’s Climate March in New York City on Sept. 21 was designed to be the largest mass rally in history to awaken a sleepwalking world to the dangers ahead. Even by the time you reached the subway station at Rockefeller Center one sensed the electricity in the air as people were scurrying to get to the start of the march.

It is exhilarating to take a four-hour walk through New York City with people who care fervently about our environment and future. First there was waiting, crowded together along Central Park West, waiting to move. Then more waiting and more people crowding in. Ahead of us slowly inflating was a glorious globe of the world, perhaps 20 feet high, carried by 10 strong men. The Pacific Ocean shone brightly in the sunlight.

Then came the shuffling start, and people as far ahead as you could see and also forever behind us. Moving now, south past the ugly Trump Tower, around Columbus Circle and along the south boundary of Central Park over to turn south on the Avenue of the Americas through the canyon of gleaming glass skyscrapers.

Young people everywhere, enthusiastic and dedicated. Happiness walking – meeting people, talking amid the abundance of signs, slogans and costumes. Banners everywhere: Save the Bees, Anti-fracking, Carbon Tax Now, Monsanto the Evil Menace, Fossil Fuels Poison our Planet, No to Tar Sands Gunk in America, and on and on. Behind us a broad blue banner carried by church members proclaiming “Our Choice, Their Future” …. with pictures of many children.

Constumes of all sorts, including a lumbering polar bear. And suddenly, next to us a large wooden ark following Abraham, the patriarch. Al Gore was walking not far behind us and there was Bill McKibben, a climate science pioneer standing on the curb. Soon Times Square was passing by and the Broadway theaters along 42 nd Street. And always looming over the heads of the marchers ahead of us was the bright blue of the Pacific Ocean, our planet moving steadfastly ahead of us. Some said the parade stretched over three miles. And we were just one march among others in 156 countries.

Many Americans yawn or give you a paternalistic look when climate change is mentioned. So it was exciting to be surrounded by enthusiastic, true believers – camaraderie extraordinaire. I met a bicycle repair shop owner from Petersburg, Alaska.

He traveled days by boat to reach Canada, and then more than a week by train to march in the rally. Said he had to be there, as did an off-the-grid sheep rancher from the mountains of northern California.

Our throng filled the street from one curb to the other. Like a dream, tall buildings seemed to pass us by going the other direction. Hours to walk, talk and wonder what this all might mean. Why, for instance, has a scientific question about climate change and its potential consequences become a political issue? Wasn’t this a scientific question? Thinking back to when I was young and the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, I recalled the entire country shifting overnight from an isolationist position to a “we must fight” position. United we stood.

Back in the late ’80s and ’90s I thought, naively, that as the existential threat of climate change became clear all Americans would unite to do whatever it takes to minimize harm to life and fauna. We are Americans, who face reality head-on. Now it is 2014 and there is no “united” in sight. How wrong I was.

Will 300,000 or 400,000 folks strolling the streets of New York create the “united?” I don’t know, but I think the Lorax was right: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Roy Wehrle of Springfield is former Scoutmaster of Troop 14 and a longtime student of nature.