In a 2014 speech labeled “crossroads moment,” Ban Ki-moon, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, said optimistically, “Around the world, climate change is an existential threat — but if we harness the opportunities inherent in climate change, we can reap enormous economic benefits.”
Last Saturday in Washington, D.C., the People’s Climate March may have been the moment in history when the American people rise up like a tidal wave and tell Republican leaders in control of Congress and the White House that climate change denial is unacceptable and the time is now to end our dependence on fossil fuels.
The People’s Climate March came less than two weeks after carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 410 parts per million (ppm) – approximately 45% higher than pre-industrial levels. That is 60 ppm beyond what most climate scientists believe is a safe level. Scientists say that this level of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has not been this high in millions of years.
Estimates place the number of marchers, who converged on the nation’s capital -- on the hottest day in Washington D.C. history (for this date) — at over 200,000. The march was supported by over 900 separate activist groups representing labor, health, youth, indigenous, faith-based and environmental organizations.
History may record that it was the election of Donald Trump that has galvanized this movement into an unstoppable force that will demand climate action from Congress. The Trump Administration has taken climate change denialism to unprecedented levels.
The current administration is working feverishly to dismantle the bold actions taken by the Obama Administration on behalf of clean energy and protecting the environment. The day before the march, they deleted nearly every reference to climate change from the EPA’s website.
The current EPA director, Scott Pruitt, sued the EPA more than a dozen times on behalf of fossil fuel interests, when he was the attorney general of Oklahoma. In addition, the Trump Administration is threatening to pull out of the international Paris Agreement, designed to hold rising global temperatures below a 2 degree increase (beyond pre-industrial levels).
Before the People’s Climate March took its first steps toward the White House, it was already influencing bold action by a group of Senators in Washington. On Friday, Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced a bill to transition our economy to 100% renewable energy by 2050.
At the march, a group of elected leaders spoke out against the Trump Administration’s agenda to dismantle the EPA, cater to the wishes of the fossil fuel industry, and put the brakes on the transition to a clean energy economy fast-tracked by President Obama.
Standing in front of the Congressional building, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a strong advocate for climate change action in Congress said, “It’s Citizens United that brought death to climate action in the Senate. Since Citizens United there hasn’t been a single bipartisan bill to regulate emissions. ”
Senator Jeff Merkley, one of the sponsors of the bill called “100 by 50” says, “Often you introduce legislation to prepare for the moment when you can get it through. Right now we have a Koch Brothers’ cartel of oil and coal and gas industries who are blocking environmental action. But it’s very helpful at the federal level to lay out the vision.”
Maura Healy, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, who is going after Exxon-Mobil for their decades-long disinformation campaign on climate change said, “This administration has engaged in an all-out assault on the environment, climate and science.”
Senator Whitehouse may have said it best about the ultimate goal of the People’s Climate March, “This lets the people in Washington know that the public is paying attention. They can’t just listen to the big special interests and the big dark money folks. It would make a big difference if the House of Representatives went Democrat in the 2018 elections and if Democratic chairmen held the gavels in the Senate and were able to shoot subpoenas and push legislation.”
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