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Earth Science

Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People's Climate March In New York City 200

Posted by samzenpus from the cooling-things-off dept.
mdsolar writes with an update on the People's Climate March. More than 400,000 people turned out for the People's Climate March in New York City on Sunday, just days before many of the world's leaders are expected to debate environmental action at the United Nations climate summit. Early reports from event organizers are hailing the turnout as the largest climate march in history, far bigger than the Forward on Climate rally held in Washington, D.C., last year. High-profile environmentalists including Bill McKibben, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva marched alongside policymakers such as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former Vice President Al Gore were also there, and more than 550 buses carried in people from around the country.
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Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People's Climate March In New York City More

Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People's Climate March In New York City

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  • I guess people couldn't afford to march during past droughts

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by durrr ( 1316311 )

      Mass hype was harder back then.

      Now you just create a facebook page, fill it will fact-stripped alarmist language with several "Last call! we're all going to burn in this life if nothing is done! Like and share" and get big enviro pick it up and you'll have it disseminated globally soon enough, with several hundreds or thousands of environmentally minded people jetting in form all over the place to participate in your political-religious activist parade.

      • Re:Largest Climate march in history (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @09:52AM (#47963903)

        Mass hype was harder back then.

        It's not just mass hype. People with completely unrelated causes march with their own banners. I didn't get a chance to walk through this protest, but I lived in New York City when all of those supposed "anti-war" protests were taking place. Sure, there were genuine anti-war protestors there - but you wouldn't believe how much of the mass was some random cause trying to get some sympathetic eyeballs. Animal rights, global warming, anti-corporation... you name it. Some of the pictures I've seen indicate the same thing happening here. I saw a group of people marching in white coats with a huge banner saying "HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT" and a teeny tiny sign being held by one member saying "Global Warming affects Healthcare". LOL, wha?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          People with completely unrelated causes march with their own banners.

          That is the "Professional Left" (a term used by former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs) in action. The ProLeft seeks out anyone at all who is angry or can be convinced to be angry about anything, no matter how fringe, unreasonable or wack-o. The ProLeft then effectively makes that person or group an offer that amounts to "Do what we tell you to do. Protest where and when we tell you to protest. Say what we tell you to say about everything, not just about your particular grievance, and you will be rew

          • You could change "Professional Left" to "Professional Right" and a few other words in your little pile of straw men and it would be just about as applicable.

      • Re:Largest Climate march in history (Score:4, Informative)

        by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @09:54AM (#47963919)

        They filled NY with garbage. [nypost.com] and I'm not talking about themselves. Note that a bunch of A-listers flew in on private jets too.

        I bet that only 1 in 4 knew why they were actually marching. The rest were there for the party.

      • Slashdot: Can we have a new downmod category, perhaps called "Burn The Witch!" It would indicate severe disagreement with the comment and would be a way of avoiding overuse of the Troll mod.

      • to be fair, depending on which source you look at it was either "millions" "a few hundred thousand" or "under 100k"

        I drove out that way, Id say realistically I saw somewhere in the neighborhood of a sold out yankees game.

  • What a Waste of Fossil Fuels (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xdor ( 1218206 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @08:47AM (#47963485)
    550 buses not including air-travel for speeches that could have been gotten over the internet. How ironic.

    • Re:What a Waste of Fossil Fuels (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bug_hunter ( 32923 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @08:56AM (#47963551)
      What a news story that would be. 400,000 people watched a You-Tube video. Everything we do has a level of pollution attached, it's not ironic.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xdor ( 1218206 )

        Oh, too true

        But data transmission energy is such a small consumption by comparison and since power plant energy production is lost if its not used: 400,000 people watching a youtube video might affect google's bottom-line (if they have one of those), but energy-wise the difference hardly registers at the utility level.

        Now if you had 400,000 people charging their Prius to go to an environmentalist convention, that might be a little different.

        • Most Priuses don't charge. Mine doesn't. I fill it with gasoline, and it goes as far on a gallon as Allen West's Hummer goes on three. Anyway, the cool kids have moved on to Leafs and Volts and Teslas, which *do* charge.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      Sometimes to get your point across you have to temporarily sacrifice your principles short term for a massive improvement in gain long term.

      An environmentalist burning 1 barrel of oil in fuel to do the necessary travelling to raise awareness of and put a stop to thousands of barrels of oil in spillage in a part of the Niger Delta isn't ironic, it's a net gain in their cause to the tune of thousands of barrels of oil no longer being spilt and the rational thing to do.

      I'd like to think it's just that you're n

  • With scientists like Leonardo DiCaprio behind it (Score:5, Funny)

    by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @08:47AM (#47963491)

    How could I *NOT* accept it as established science?

  • I wonder how many on that 400.000 group, if offered a choice between ten thousand bucks or eliminating their entire personal carbon foot print, would chose the former.

    I wonder how many would know how much it would cost to eliminate their entire personal carbon footprint.

  • Joel Hodgson from MST3K was there too! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How dare you list all of that b-list trash, when the creator and original star of Mystery Science Theater was there!?! THAT'S a celebrity!

  • business as usual (Score:3, Insightful)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @09:07AM (#47963603) Homepage

    March all ya want, business will go on, fuels burned, industry will churn. Only thing you can vote with here is your wallet. Marching does nothing, protesting does nothing, STOP BUYING THINGS YOU DON'T NEED IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE CLIMATE.

    Start by not buying the bus ticket next time to a complete waste of time, effort and energy.

    kthxbye

  • I went (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gerafin ( 1408009 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @09:20AM (#47963675)
    Something about this march has inspired a lot of ire across the internet, so before the negativity rolls in let me share my experience. I was hesitant to attend the march on Sunday, because I feel like protests like these are accomplishing less and less as time moves on. I was worried that people would feel they had 'done their duty' by showing up, and gone back to their day-to-day without changing anything. I've also constantly been cynical about the global warming movement, believing that we've done too much harm to reverse, that nothing we can do can slow the inexorable and extinction-level rise of global temperatures. After arguing about it with my girlfriend, I came to a few important conclusions. First, cynicism is laziness in disguise. The problem was too big, too scary, too complex, for me to tackle, but at this point is impossible to deny. How can I acknowledge the problem without allowing any responsibility to fall to myself? Cynicism and negativity (which I've seen comment board after comment board filled with regarding this subject). Another conclusion I came to was that our generation is going to be held accountable for any damage that climate change caused. We knew the danger, yet we allowed it to happen. I want to be able to tell the next generation, 'I tried.' I want to be able to show them pictures of the march and say, 'We were not filled with apathy, we fought, we tried.' Plenty of people who recognize the issue of climate change have been deriding the march based on the presence of socialists, 'dirty hippies,' punks, gays, etc. Yeah, there were some whackos there. I saw some people with signs about chem trails, 9/11 truthers, religious nuts. When you have 400,000 people in one place, you're not going to agree with all of them. But I also talked to doctors, scientists, politicians, students, teachers. And I work at a bank. Did we accomplish anything? Perhaps very little. But I could see the people there were galvanized by the event, their batteries were recharged, and they were full of hope. It generated discussion today. There are a lot of corporations throwing a lot of money around to prevent legislation regarding climate change. We can't challenge them on the money front, so numbers is one of the only tools we have left. If we can get enough people on our side, perhaps we can change the political climate (harr harr) through elections. I'd rather try, than sit at home and do nothing, and have to answer to future generations about my apathy.
    • Sorry, haven't finished my coffee yet. We CAN challenge them on the money part by choosing where we spend our money wisely. Always good advice, but that's also something that needs to be organized to have a real impact. One of the nice things about the march was that hundreds of organizations worked together to organize it, forming bridges between groups that will hopefully hold and assist further actions like boycotts.
    • Sure, lots of people want to 'do something'. But when it comes down to which solution paths to take it all breaks down. Huge sums of money being spent thus far by many countries, but there has pretty much been a zero total sum impact. There are no models that have improved at all. What are people really willing to pay or sacrifice? What risks are they willing to accept? How stuck are they on the 'may be possible' vs the 'proven'? Unfortunately, 99% don't really understand all the elements that real solutio
    • Nice post, and brave too considering the hostility and derision in the comments above. Good on you for standing up and being counted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )

      Thank you for caring. Seriously.

      I've made my peace with future generations about my apathy. In part that's because I have no children, and don't want them; in fact, a (tiny) part of the reason I have none is that I don't want the burden of the fact that I don't believe I can contribute to a fix to this problem.

      I am sorry, future generations, but the enemy was too big to move. Most of the world understood, but crucial people in crucial positions were happy to leave you a worse world, and let you deal with it

  • Yikes! We ran into that by accident yesterday... The terminal point of the march was right by the north-most exit from the High Line park at 34th Street that just opened yesterday, too, which I wanted to check out.

    It was insane! And we had to walk a few blocks opposite the direction of the march to get home... I thought we'd get trampled before we found a cross street (41st Street) that wasn't so jam packed we could get off the main route.

    Being short, I didn't get many good photos from it as most of th

  • 400,000? (Score:3)

    by neilo_1701D ( 2765337 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @09:34AM (#47963767)

    AM New York is reporting tens of thousands.

  • When the people who say it's a crisis.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dfenstrate ( 202098 ) <dfenstrate&gmail,com> on Monday September 22, 2014 @10:31AM (#47964217)
    When the people who say it's a crisis act like it's a crisis, then maybe I'll look into the matter. Until then, I have a hard time taking a finger-wagging jet setter seriously. You know the type, they want to make everything more expensive so only the rich can enjoy the benefits of modern life.

    "F*ck the poor people who want to stay warm, or get to a job. They should die off anyway, the earth is overpopulated!"

  • The same day, people were also marching at 2808 other official events in 166 countries. (http://peoplesclimate.org/)
    So there is quite a lot more than ~400'000 people.

    In our march in Stockholm, Sweden we endured pouring rain, hail and thunder ...

  • It's not like, since 2010, that China, India, and the US are responsible for creating all the increased climate change gasses for Global Warming.

    Oh.

    Wait.

    It is.

    Just end the fossil fuels subsidies and tax exemptions and cheap land and sea leases and the entire system will fix itself. This is why Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism (and a Scot), warned against the anti-capitalist Mercantalists.

  • Yep, the 1% sees their assets at risk. So it gets news coverage. Try protesting against Citizen's United or the banking abuses, and it would take far more people than 400,000 to get any kind of coverage. As far as I am concerned, SCREW THEM. Let their mansions get washed out to sea. If they can't address the complete corruption of money in politics, I don't give a damn about climate change. Bring it on.
  • Apparently it's not the current [nypost.com] environment they are worried about?
  • How many of the people marching in this protest have also marched in "No Nukes Shut 'Em Down" marches? How many agree with the anti-nukes? To power an industrial-technological civilization, the alternatives we have are (1) nuclear and (2) coal. There is no (3), no matter how much the arithmetic denialists claim that we can power our civilization on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy.

  • I marched. I took the subway to get there, not a private jet. I know exactly what I was protesting. I didn't see any celebrities, just a lot of people.

    I also left early, and had the eerie experience of walking two blocks to Broadway, where life was going on as normal. There was no indication that less than half a mile away there were hundreds of thousands of protestors. It was amazing.

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