Hundreds Protest in Manhattan Over Slow Pace of Climate-Change Fixes
By Alex Nguyen and Erin X. Wong
As global leaders convened at the United Nations General Assembly to discuss climate change and COVID-19, hundreds of people rallied Friday in New York City, calling to “uproot the system” they say has contributed to both these crises.
Through speeches and signs, the young activists’ message was clear: “The climate crisis does not exist in a vacuum.” Instead of individual actions, they said world leaders need to enact policies that address the inequalities that they say were created by colonialism and capitalism.
Organized by the youth movement Fridays for Future (FFF), the climate march in Lower Manhattan was one of more than 1,800 such events planned around the world.
And in a year when the world has seen numerous deadly weather events and a landmark UN report finding that a hotter Earth is guaranteed, many welcomed the event’s return to a largely in-person presence.
“We just had Hurricane Ida. It was terrifying. It’s affecting us every single day, you can’t deny it,” said Christina Jean, an environmental-studies student at Pace University. “It’s really good to be surrounded by so many people who feel the same.”
Still, there was frustration among some attendees and organizers with the lack of significant progress on climate policy. The event also saw a relatively low turnout compared to the last major climate march in September 2019.
“Since [FFF] is based around striking, when COVID hit, we completely collapsed,” Anna Kathawala, one of the local organizers and a senior at Stuyvesant High School, told Labor New York. “The majority of people in FFF were seniors, so they all graduated and we were left behind with really nothing.”
Gathering in Battery Park under the beating sun, attendees heard from climate activists who criticized the inequality of climate change. From the push against a North Brooklyn natural gas pipeline to the fight over an oil pipeline in Minnesota, from the plight of climate refugees to the glacier melt in the Himalayas, activists said low-income people and communities of color are bearing the brunt of climate change.
“Black and Brown New Yorkers are disproportionately impacted by poisonous fossil fuel infrastructure being built in their backyard,” said Katherine Gioiosa of TREEage, a youth climate-justice coalition.
Jerome Foster II, the youngest member of the Biden Administration’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council, pointed to the shared burden as a reason for the diversity of today’s climate activists. “Civil rights are human rights, and human rights are environmental rights,” he said. “We are the modern day civil rights movement.”
They advocate slashing the Global North’s carbon emissions and providing financing for developing countries as “climate reparations.”
“We cannot use the same tools we use to pollute and destroy,” Foster added, “to now go and say, ‘We can just transfer those coal barons into solar barons.’”
Climate activists are also urging COVID-19 vaccine equity. This coincides with the call from a worldwide network of climate activists to delay COP26 — the UN climate change conference that will start in just over a month in Glasgow, Scotland — over fears that the pandemic and a global lag in access to COVID-19 vaccines would exclude nations most affected by the climate crisis.
In its early days, the Biden administration rejoined the Paris Agreement and killed the Keystone XL pipeline. But the proposed infrastructure bill, which would provide sweeping investments in renewable energy, electric-vehicle charging, and climate-resilient infrastructure, remains uncertain. It has been approved by the Senate and awaits a vote in the House.
Meanwhile, China — the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases — announced at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 21 that it will no longer finance new coal projects overseas. But this move does not include the country’s domestic energy production, which remains largely powered by coal.
Developed countries are still falling short of their pledge to provide $100 billion annually to developing countries for climate adaptation. President Biden promised at the UN General Assembly to double the this country’s annual commitment to $11 billion, but that plan requires approval from Congress.
Back at the rally, youth activists shared frustration, anxiety and grief over the pace of change.
“People talk about climate anxiety, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that,” said Jamie Margolin, co-founder of youth climate organization Zero Hour. “It’s grief. It’s climate depression. It’s that feeling in the pit of your chest when you realize that you’re coming of age at what looks like the end of the world.”
But hope remains. “I feel like I’m watching [the world] be destroyed right before my eyes and something needs to change,” said Jean. “It’s really scary, but I still have hope.”
