Good morning fellow marchers!
I am marching here today in Park City instead of Washington, D.C. because … eleven years after its world premier… we released here at Sundance the sequel to An Inconvenient Truth aptly titled An Inconvenient Sequel…and believe me, on this auspicious occasion the irony has not been lost on Vice President Al Gore or any of us … that yesterday, we inaugurated as president of the United States the ONLY leader in the free world who denies the science of climate change.
How strange really because climate change isn’t a belief or a philosophy up for debate or even denial.
It’s science. Based on research started in 1958 (coincidently, the year I was born).
Within months of launching that first weather balloon to count co2, the results where already clear to those prescient scientists. By 1959, the concern started mounting. THAT WAS 58 YEARS AGO. (Oops, I realize I just revealed my age, but damn it was worth it!)
Looking back on An Inconvenient Truth today, I must acknowledge that there was one thing we did get wrong in the film and that was we vastly underestimated how extraordinarily fast the impacts of global warming would be upon us.
It has happened quicker and with more ferocity than anyone could have imagined. When I first started talking about this issue the warning was about what would the world would be like for your grandchildren and their kids. Today its what will it be like for YOU!
The climate crisis is showing itself every day in record temperatures and the droughts, super storms, tornadoes, and flooding that goes with it. Just announced: 2016 is officially the hottest year on record, and the third straight record breaking year in a row.
In other words, action is URGENT and finally, after a gazillion conferences, protocols and decades of hard work the world came together in Paris and said YES, we have a moral obligation to fight climate change … together.
IT TOOK US SIX DECADES TO GET HERE.
So it is an outrage that we have an administration forming right now that is bought and paid for by the dirty, dying fossil fuel industry.
We have a nominee for Secretary of State who has spent the last thirty years purposely funding lies about the climate crises to the American people. Rex Tillerson as CEO of Exxon Mobile is a climate criminal who has obstructed progress on fighting global warming his entire career.
We have a nominee for the Environmental PROTECTION Agency that has spent his time as Attorney General of Oklahoma suing that very agency a record 14 times! Suing a government agency whose job it is to protect all of us from polluters.
The president has bragged that he plans on “undoing” Obama’s environmental legacy, but lets be very clear.
Its not Obama’s legacy. It’s OUR legacy.
Its not an assault on Obama’s record its an assault on us!
Our land, our air, our snowy winters. Our right to four normal seasons as nature intended―summer, fall, winter, spring, where trees aren’t confused on when they should bud and species aren’t dying because their living habitats can no longer support them.
We cannot go backwards and we will not go backwards because there is no second home. There is no plan B earth.
So I urge you, let today be just the beginning of your vigilance, your participation, your activation.
Organize, donate, join an environmental group that is battling it out every day on our behalf.
Support journalists who cover the story and the outlets that print them.
Communicate loudly and often with your local and national representatives.
Surprise this dangerous administration and yourself with your passion, your perseverance and your power!
Woman’s rights are human rights and there is no more important woman than Ms. Mother Earth herself!
WE marched today to protect her and all her inhabitants.
Thank you.
