Climate Change — in the Skies and in the Streets

The People have spoken and the demand is made, loudly and clearly: We want issues pertaining to global warming and planetary climate change put on the international political and economic agendas. And we want meaningful action taken on these issues — today, right now.

That was the one voice in which an estimated 400,000 people, nearly half a million strong, spoke in New York City on Sunday, 21 September, during the “People’s Climate March”. Tens of thousands more marched in solidarity in cities around the world.

Young people, old folks, First Nations peoples, religious devotees of various faiths, migrant workers, labor unionists, activists, scholars, students, everybody: There they were, a beautiful, bustling mass of humanity in living color, filling the wide avenues and transcending the social boundaries that usually confine them to their separate (and often unequal) stations in life — now joining together to stand up for Mother Earth and for their own shared future survival. If I could possibly have been there in New York City, I would have marched proudly with them.

It was The People’s turn to send a message to leaders, and the message was indeed signed, sealed and delivered in full: Climate change action now!

Will the global leaders of the world listen? Experience tells us probably not. But we are now far beyond the stage of discussion and debate, and by all accounts of scientific experts in the field, we are standing at the point of no return as far as dealing with global warming is concerned. The very real possibility of “runaway climate change” — of one environmental system breakdown leading uncontrollably to another and another — is now upon us.

From the Arctic north to tropical islands to inland areas of every continent in every region of the world, the overwhelming evidence of extreme weather patterns cannot be denied. And all along, our leaders have sat idly by twiddling their thumbs or stroking the multinational corporations representing the fossil fuel industry under the table while the Earth literally burns.

To wit, how does The Leader of the Free World respond to all this urgency? Concerned about his future “legacy” as United States president (as well he should be), President Barack Obama is now mumbling something about putting together a kind of “politically binding” climate change deal for next year.

But time is up. People won’t wait any longer for issues that should have and could have been addressed long ago. Screw a presidential legacy — a planetary legacy is what we’re all after: a true legacy that affects every human being and all life forms on Earth, and a legacy that is passed on to future generations several hundreds of years down the line.

After all, without a stable, sustainable natural environment under which we can all live and thrive, there will be no political parties, no economies, no cultures, no democracy, no anything. Things have become that crucial.

As I heard a First Nations woman elder aptly put it a few years ago in a public meeting in northern California: “We’re shitting in our own nest”. All this pollution and human destruction of nature’s ecosystems has come back around to face us square-on, she said, and if we don’t clean up our own shit in this nest, then we’ll surely die in it. And she was right on the mark.

When leaders don’t listen to the people and refuse to look out for their best interests, then People Power is the only way to deal with problems. We get massive numbers of people out in the streets, united behind a common cause and in a nonviolent manner, and effect change that way. History has shown us that large numbers of people in the streets often speak much louder than words, promises, legacies or elections.

Climate change is occurring daily in the warming of the ozone layer high above us in the skies, but things are also heating up right down here in the streets. May we see many more of these mass actions at this critical hour until we get what we want and need, for ourselves and for the Earth, our common mother.

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