The organizers of the “People’s March for the Climate” have succeeded in making this event the largest rally against climate change in history. More than 300,000 people, three times more than announced, invaded the streets of New York, Sunday, September 21 in the morning, for a peaceful parade carried by a simple message “Gentlemen heads of state, act! “.
At the invitation of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, who hopes in this way to give political impetus to the international negotiations carried out within the framework of the climate convention, they are due to meet on Tuesday, September 23, for an extraordinary summit.
“The solutions are there, the impacts of global warming are multiplying and governments are not doing enough”, according to Winnie Byanyima, director of Oxfam international.
In the procession, the musicians of a New York choir parade in black, mocking “The stupidity of climate skeptics”. Farther on, castaways, orange buoys around their necks to survive the rising waters, joke about President Barack Obama’s slogan, chanting: ” Yes we can. But we don’t! “ Climate refugees brandish makeshift tents that have become their new home. Over two hundred artists have worked in the Brooklyn Art Center in recent days to give the event these colorful expressions.
“DON’T BREAK OUR LIVES! “
Pounding the pavement along Central Park where others jog on Sunday, they have come from all over America and feel comforted to see so many of them. Climate change is not a distant reality that the world’s leading power could ignore. Hurricane Sandy victims are here to testify: “We don’t want false solutions”, launches to applause Elisabeth Yeampierre, the director of Uprose, one of the associations that came to the aid of the victims. Those of Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, are also present: “The water rises along the coasts and on us too” mimic a group of young people from New Orleans.
In the flood of anonymous citizens stand signs hostile to the exploitation of shale gas: “Don’t fracture our lives” is it written on one. “We must leave fossil fuels underground if we are to avoid the worst impacts of global warming”, repeats Sandra Steingraber, at the head of the Anti-fracking movement which succeeded in convincing the New York authorities to adopt a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing.
On Broadway avenue where the procession is engulfed, fatality is not in order. “Americans can take control of their energy system and change. It is possible to supply all households with renewable energy ”, Says actor Mark Ruffalo, member of the Solutions project movement: “We are no longer at the point of wondering what to do and that gives a lot of hope. “
This is certainly one of the big differences with the atmosphere that reigned before the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009. If the American activists demand from Barack Obama to act more against the change climate change and to sign an international treaty, in the meantime they seem above all to have confidence in their ability to organize locally: “We don’t have to wait any longer. The population must put pressure on local elected representatives to engage in the energy transition ”, defends Michael Leon Guerrero, the national coordinator of the Climate Justice Alliance.
BAN KI-MOON IN T-SHIRT AND CAP
Alongside the Americans are other citizens of the world. Witnesses to the small islands of the Pacific threatened by rising sea levels. Amazonian Indians driven from their lands by advanced deforestation or oil exploitation. Poles too, who as if lost in this human tide, hang on a sign demanding “Clean energy for Poland”.
All occupied in making their voices heard, the demonstrators hardly know that the Secretary General of the United Nations is at their head. In a t-shirt and sneakers, cap on his head, Ban Ki-moon also took to the streets to say to the heads of state “ that there is no more time. There is no planet B ”.
The Peruvian Minister of the Environment, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, and the French ministers ?? Laurent Fabius, Ségolène Royal, Annick Girardin – who will have to carry out international negotiations successfully until the Paris Conference, in December 2015, where the 195 countries of the climate convention have met to sign the world’s first legally binding agreement, ?? accompany it.
The presidents of Nauru and Palau, two small islands in the Pacific are there too. “Our place is here, because we will be the first to disappear if nothing is done to contain climate change. Pressure from civil society is the only thing that can force states to act ”, deplores Tommy Remengesau, President of Palau.
It is almost one o’clock. The demonstrators are about to sound trumpets, bells and drums to sound “the alarm for action”. Ban Ki-moon is about to eclipse. Just before, he slips: “After walking with his men and women, I now feel like the general secretary of the people. “
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