More than 500 people from the region joined thousands of protesters in
Washington Sunday, calling for strong action on climate change and a stop to
the Keystone XL pipeline.
The pipeline would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Opponents
say it would worsen climate change by encouraging further development of the
Tar Sands oil resource.
They spent several hours in the bitter cold and a strong wind cheering,
waving signs, listening to speakers and marching around the White House,
although President Obama was in Florida for a golf game.
Many -- from experienced hands who have been at this for years, to middle
school students excited to be at their first big rally -- consider climate
change the defining issue of their time.
"Twenty-five years from now, nobody is going to look back at our era and
say, 'Boy, I wonder how that fiscal cliff thing came out,'" said Bill
McKibben, founder of 350.org, an environmental group fighting climate change
and one of the sponsors of the rally.
"Everyone is going to look back and say, 'Well, the Arctic melted, and
then what did you do?' "
The rally came after a week of climate change developments.
In his State of the Union Address Tuesday, Obama said that "for the sake
of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change." He
added that "if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will."
On Wednesday, as a precursor to Sunday's rally, nearly 50 activists,
including Philadelphian Eileen Flanagan, were arrested in an act of civil
disobedience outside the White House.
The next day, the Government Accountability Office added the financial
liability of climate change to its list of "high risk" areas for the U.S.
government, and two senators introduced climate change legislation that would
impose a fee on carbon emissions.
The Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Earth Quaker Action Team, Citizens
for Pennsylvania's Future and other groups organized bus transportation from
this region.
After adding yet another bus on Saturday -- Sierra Club organizer William
Kramer said he was getting phone calls and e-mails up to the end -- 11 buses
with more than 500 people on board headed out from King of Prussia,
Quakertown, Devon, West Chester and Philadelphia. Several more left from
central New Jersey.
For Jean Mollack, 58, a laid-off worker from Doylestown, it was one more
in a series of Washington rallies that began with a Vietnam War protest in
1971. "I think we're ruining the world with our dependence on fossil fuels,"
she said.
If Mollack was an old hand, Grace DiGiovanni, 12, who goes to Green
Street Friends School in Philadelphia, was one of the newbies. She said
attending the rally was all about her future. "This is for my generation of
kids."
Groups from schools and houses of worship joined the buses. Organizers
estimated the crowd at 35,000.
Joy Bergey, 57, a policy director for the environmental group Citizens
United for Pennsylvania's Future, brought eight youths from Chestnut Hill
United Church, where she's a longtime member.
They included Sarah Noonan-Ngwane, 16, who said environmental issues
"should be at the core of what happens over the next four years."
And Monica Guess, 17, who said that if the Keystone pipeline gets built,
"it changes our whole future."
For Bergey herself, the rally was the continuation of a battle she began
in 1979, when she had her first argument with someone who said climate change
wasn't happening.
"I will not stop fighting," she said. "I want there to be a livable
planet for all God's creatures."
Nancy Grossman, 53, a pharmacist who lives in Jackson, N.J., was worried
about climate change even before she saw the destruction that Superstorm Sandy
left along the coast.
"It's one disaster after another," she said. "I don't know what other
proof people are looking for."
Albert Accoe, 62, a security consultant from West Philadelphia, said he
was attending "for my children and grandchildren."
Liz Robinson, 63, who heads the Energy Coordinating Agency in
Philadelphia and attended with her entire family, said, "Everybody should be
here . . . it's very profitable to burn oil. Unless all of us stand against
climate change, it'll be too late."
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
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Distributed by MCT Information Services
