Climate Change

The iconic skyline was shrouded in fog as we struggled to exit the subway on Sunday morning in New York. Standing at the head of the stairs a blue shirt called for our cooperation, his plaintive tone infused with the sort of accent that movies lead us to expect from NYPD beat cops.

“I need your help here, folks. They’ve closed all the stations up to here, so everyone is going to be coming out this exit. I need you all to help me out and keep moving.”

Climate Convergence Plenary Address, Friday, 19 September 2014

Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project, Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees

Good evening everyone and thank you to Jill, Margaret and the other convergence organizers for the opportunity to speak to you tonight.

Since each of us gets only a few minutes for our contributions on such a large subject as climate change, I have chosen to put forward ten brief points for a trade union strategy against climate change. Firstly, I will establish some of the important factual basis on which we have to build our strategies and policies.

Over 300,000 people march through the streets of New York, 21 September 2014.

1. Climate change is not a threat of the future, it is already happening here and now, it is man-made, and the consequences can be catastrophic.

We have undergone a transformation during the last few decades—what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état in slow motion. We are no longer a capitalist democracy endowed with a functioning liberal class that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible.

The most hopeful, diverse, photogenic, energizing and often hilarious march I've joined in 52 years of activism—and one of the biggest, at 310,000 strong—has delivered a simple messag​e: we can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, we will do it at the grassroots, it will be demanding and difficult to say the least, but it will have its moments of great fun.

With our lives and planet on the line, our species has responded.

Ostensibly, this march was in part meant to influence policy makers. That just goes with the territory.

An estimated 400,000 people flooded the streets of New York City on Sunday for the historic People's Climate March, billed as the largest demonstration of its kind in history, organized by more than 1,500 organizations including indigenous, faith, labor, environmental justice, social justice, youth, and climate activism groups.

The march was at least four times the size of pre-march estimates, which stood at 100,000.

Just hours after roughly 400,000 packed the streets of New York City for the People's Climate March, a flood of people marched to the city's financial district to target what they say is the root of the climate crisis: capitalism itself.

Demonstrators sporting blue aimed to stage a mass sit-in Monday morning "at the heart of capital"—Wall Street—to call out and demand transformation of "an economic system based on exploiting frontline communities, workers and natural resources."

More than 1,000 Vancouverites filled the CBC Plaza on Sunday, joining hundreds of thousands more around the world as 125 world leaders prepare to converge on New York City Tuesday in an historic UN summit on climate change.

Tens of thousands filled the streets of New York City in what organizers say may be one of the largest climate change rallies ever held in the U.S. (Michael Poland/Twitter)

Rallies are underway or have happened in New York City, London, Berlin, Paris, Rio, Toronto and Seattle. More than 2,000 events were registered in more than 130 countries.

Last year, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern that the world's commitment to mitigate climate change was insufficient. Indeed, in today's Lancet, a Comment by Andy Haines and others provides a stark reminder of the likely adverse effects on human health should fossil fuel consumption and high population growth continue at their present levels. They call for the health community to take a longer term view, where actions that target climate change and health today will reduce the global burden of ill-health in the future.

Carbon dioxide emissions, the main contributor to global warming, are set to rise again in 2014 - reaching a record high of 40 billion tonnes.

The 2.5 per cent projected rise in burning fossil fuels is revealed by the Global Carbon Project, which is co-led in the UK by researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia and the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter.