Witnessing the Climate March

If you weren't able to make it to the Climate March, or only got to see the portion of it you were a part of, here's a showing and telling of the whole progression, all four hours worth, as it passed down 42nd Street. Included are its many themes, a compilation of the most memorable slogans and chants, and serendipitous visual interactions between the march banners and the commercial billboard mega-images that served as a visual frame for the marchers. Having long ago realized that human-caused destabilization of the planet was the overarching issue of our times, I was deeply moved by its spirit, its sounds, diversity, and sheer scale.

I tell my friends, excitedly, that I went to the Climate March and got to see the whole thing,

from start

to finish.

"You watched?", they ask, disappointed. "Why weren't you in it?" Well, I was, or at least I felt like I was a part of it. Standing next to the stream of humanity passing by, I could look into people's faces, read the banners, hear the chants, feel the exhilarating rhythm of the occasional band, absorb a full sense of the march's size and variety. Early on, some people in the march were calling urgently to us on the sidelines to join in. "Don't watch. Join!", a banner read. Here I've been writing about climate change for years, squeezing carbon energy out of our lives, and at the biggest climate rally ever, they thought I was one of those standing "on the sidelines."

But others in the march were happy to have someone standing there to connect with. What, after all, were all the banners for if there were no one to read them?

Who would have witnessed the infinite variety of expression, from the joy of unified purpose to the bedrock seriousness of the cause?

The march did not lack for participants. The turnout was so massive that when time ran out they still had many blocks worth of people waiting at the beginning of the route.

And to be walking in the march would have, in some ways, been more like being in the stands at a football game, looking at the backs of everyone's heads.


There was, though, one magnificent moment that our late arrival caused us to miss.

Earlier, as we had stood beside the still empty street midway in the route, waiting for the marchers to arrive, the march had seemed stuck in the distance. I later heard that the marchers, before they reached us, had stopped at 12:58 for two minutes of silence, hands linked above their heads in tribute to those already victimized by the transformations wrought by climate change. After the silence, a great roar rose from the streets, beginning at the front of the march and traveling back up 6th Avenue and across on 59th, like a wave, a warning sounded, a primal scream for the world we take for granted, the magnificent spaceship we call home. By my wife's telling, that moment was like no other she had ever experienced.

When the march again began moving forward, it came by us led by one of those big, black SUVs with tinted windows.

But from there on, it was all walking humanity, stripped of the star-crossed machines that serve our present needs while invisibly altering the planet upon which life ultimately depends.

By chance, we were situated on a block of 42nd Street lined with immense images advertising everything from beauty products to McDonald's hamburgers. Serving as backdrop for our photos, relevantly enough, was an advertisement for Destiny, a sci-fi computer game set 700 years into the future, in a shattered world "littered with the remains of humanity's golden age."

That's one of the greatest challenges of conveying the urgency of climate destabilization. Rather than making a mature acknowledgement that we are all part of the problem and all need to be part of the solution, rather than using today's magnificent animation capabilities to help people see where we're headed and motivate us to change our ways, American movie and video culture is instead churning out epic battles between good and evil, reveling in the drama of future ruin.

Thirty years into the climate crisis, we still haven't gone much beyond black balloons to aid visualization of CO2. "Keep it in the ground", her sign says. It's okay, as far as it goes, but why, in this image-bathed culture, are the Masters of Imagery not doing more to help this woman help us visualize the invisible?

Sometimes, as the evening news programs lead with whatever bleeds, or the BBC News sounds like an endless re-answering of the question "What did people do with guns today?", I wonder if sustainability, if it were attained, would deprive the news media of the dramatic storylines it needs to attract an audience. Sustainability would be highly satisfying in terms of happiness and well-being, but for a consumerist culture hooked on a diet of death and destruction, any step towards solving problems and living in peace actually poses a threat. Health and happiness make a lousy script, devoid of the sort of dramatic tension and violence needed to catch people's attention and compete in the news media marketplace. At least for four hours on a Sunday afternoon, food justice eclipsed the dominance of DESTINY.

Next to the "Destiny" billboard was an even larger and equally relevant sign boldly stating "The curve changes everything."

Though I'm sure Samsung's curved thin screen TV is exciting, the curve that changes everything is the curve on this blackboard, where atmospheric CO2 levels took a radical turn upwards as the industrial revolution took hold, there, above the head of the woman with the blue shirt.

As the marchers passed by (this banner and sunflowers marked the leading edge of the march), we started to make a collection of the more memorable slogan and chants.

Some of the banners were huge. This one stretched a whole city block. I have no idea what it said, but it was really impressive.

Other signs were small. Do you see it, the little blue one the girl with the red ribbon is holding, quoting Bob Dylon? "How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see?" That's really the central question, isn't it? How, in the information age, can people remain so stubbornly uninformed?

I also see someone I know poking her head out in the upper right corner. Hi, Liz! What are the chances of unknowingly photographing a familiar face among tens of thousands of marchers?

One sign, contrasting the Frontlines of Crisis with the Forefront of Change, depicted a Diego Rivera-like struggle against rising seas, while the real men holding the center pole struggled to keep the sign aloft.

Here, for me, is what makes climate the central issue of our times. "There's no planet B", said one placard. "Earth's first. There is no second.", said another. We mess this one up, we're looking at a very harsh universe out there. One sign, captured the urgency in one word: "CO2NSEQUENCE". The vaunted founders of our nation were thinking longterm, as far beyond their lifetimes as they could imagine. Why aren't we?

A lot of slogans centered around the failure to act.

"Stop fueling around."
"Men argue, Nature acts."
"Everyone's planet, everyone's problem."
"Oh shoot, we left the oven on."
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the pollution."
"Care now, you might be coming back."

Or, stated simply, stripped of rhyme and wit: "It's time to cut carbon"

My favorite chant, heard several times during the march, was "HEY! oBAma! WE DON'T WANT no CLImate DRAma!"

Why aren't we acting? For some, the answer is clear. The blame should firmly be put on those among the economically powerful who have been funding doubt.

Others pointed to a massive failure of the market, which doesn't seem free to place a price on the future cost of using carbon-based fuels.

This guy had one of the more creative signs, linking the way we view our inner nature to the way we treat outer nature.

Inner healing will lead us to connect in healing ways to the world. I like it, especially if it leads to a tax on carbon

There was a small kid carrying a big sign, calling for unified action. There were kids "marching for Mom's Clean Air Force". A young woman held a sign saying, "Climate--I was just getting to know it". 

On the other end of life's story, there was a gang of "Elders off their rockers."

Along with that intergenerational unity, this sign, "100% for the 100%", spoke to the potential unifying effect of all people realizing that climate change is a common enemy that we all can contribute to fighting.

Even the alleged conflict between economy and environment is questioned. "The economy can't swim.""Save the earth, and capitalism".

And here: "Preservation is not liberal or conservative; it is common sense." and "No economy on a dead planet."

These speak to all the climatological and ecological services that form the foundation for a healthy economy.

"Live on nature's income, not its capital.", was getting at something similar.

Others were less sanguine about the chances of making capitalism earth-friendly:
"Green capitalism can't save us.", said one placard. More emphatic was the chant: "The PROBlem is the PROFit, and WE are GOING to STOP it!"

Fracking was not winning any popularity contest. There were endless plays on the word "frack".

There was some rudimentary mathematics (Fracking = Death) and some playing on words ("Buck fig oil").

A few anti-war riffs:

"No more fake wars."
"Climate change leads to war, war leads to climate change."

and, in an update of swords to plowshares,
"Windmills, not weapons"

The march grew denser as the hours passed by. Marchers spilled into the sidewalk. If I hadn't exactly joined the march, the march had joined me. Even the marquee across the street was impressed.

(Earlier in the march the marquee had offered a more paradoxical comment, suggesting that climate change was all part of humanity's deathwish.)

Here's an angle I honestly hadn't considered. I had always thought that our alien overlords, who had already destroyed their own planet, were taking sadistic pleasure in watching our self-destructive behavior, and had actually manipulated our political and mental processes so they could sit back and watch us blow it bigtime on this little piece of paradise.

This was a rare shift into the doomier and gloomier.

Made more believable by the surging numbers of marchers, some placards spoke to the unstoppable power of a social movement. The chants often emphasized this ascribed power: "The PEOple...uNITed...will NEVer BE deFEATed!"

Or, "We're going to BEAT...BACK...CLImate CHANGE, we're going to BEAT BEAT BACK BACK CLImate CHANGE!"

Or "What do we want? CLIMATE JUSTICE. When do we want it? NOW!"

College students linked the social movement to collective economic influence, through divestment in carbon-based energy companies.

This was about as straightforwards as you could get.

NYU added some words, while other universities got some power from rhyme:
Fossil free MIT
Fossil free NYC

Or alliteration. Which slogan is going to spur the most rapid divestment, the ones with rhyme or the one powered by alliteration? Those Duke students look pretty confident.

This man offered a pillow talk version of the Divest theme.

By the way, there's a letter to the editor that makes a post-Climate March call to look at our portfolios with divestment in mind. It links to sustainableinvesting4all.com, which looks promising.

Throughout the march, peeking through the crowd from across the street, a model for Sephora offered her own quiet suggestion. It's time for a makeover.

Some signs spoke specifically to the predicament of NY City. There was considerable dismay directed at Fresh Direct, whose delivery trucks have been fouling the air in some neighborhoods.

FRESH DirECT has GOT to GO, hey HO.

And something more general: "Rising tides, rising rents, rising people."

I'm thinking these must be folks from low-lying areas of the city.

An acrobatic bicyclist carried an I Love NY sign showing water flooding the letters "NY". His bike looks well adapted for pedaling in flooded streets.

In other examples of climate-inspired balancing acts, there were elevated people,

and graceful elevated birds, their flight symbolically dependent on their human stewards below.

Native Americans had a presence.

Indigenous people's rights were placed in opposition to incursions into their lands by oil companies.

Yasuni National Park in Equador is threatened by oil exploration and extraction.

An internet search suggests that REDD+ stands for Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation.

There were calls to respect the four elements.

This contingent, Mayan I believe, had fewer placards,

and more dancing.

I'm thinking this is Mother Earth, who showed up in various forms and languages.

In this chance photo, a nurturing embrace of earth and its fertility, suggesting love, devotion, and gratitude, competes bravely with the looming Destiny of rapacious humanity standing bold and proud upon the barren ruins. Think Wall*E.

In another chance photo, a kid's placard commented on the climate implications of all those McDonalds hamburgers.

I was glad to see some emphasis on the important role in climate maintenance that fossil fuels play when they are left in the ground. Energy companies see underground reserves as trillions of dollars of potential profits. But leaving them underground would likely mean trillions of dollars in reduced damage from destabilized seas, climate and economies.

"Coal, gas, and oil. Leave it in the soil." managed to turn this into a rhyme.

Some signs were elaborate and thoughtful, but a challenge to read.

During one lull in the march, early on, an attractive woman, playing the cheerleader, held a sign high while she jumped up and down, looking expectantly at all of us lining the street. She wanted us to cheer, but her sign was very complex and impossible to read with all the bouncing. We were ready to cheer, but didn't know quite for what.

I asked this man to pose to allow a proper reading.

This woman sought a new definition of masculinity, in which a smaller carbon footprint is sexier than that oversized pickup truck. Another woman held a banner saying, "I'm hot, but the planet shouldn't be." And then there were "Mermaids against offshore drilling."

Mixed in was a lot of can-do about alternative energy. The question "Why?", placed over a coal plant's smokestacks, had its complement in "Why not?" combined with an image of a solar panel.

"Turn up the hope, not the heat."
"Renewable, doable"
"Think outside the barrel."
 and the endearing "It's not too oily to go solar."

In the Do It Yourself category:
"You control climate change"
"Cook organic, not the planet."
and the simple assertion: "Lawns are dumb."

When I saw "Support hemp for a clean planet.", I called out HEMP!, with raised fist. The signholder returned the cheer in kind. You'd cheer for industrial hemp, too, if you'd seen the documentary "Bringing It Home."

Just to spread the love, I also shouted out "PUPPIES!" when a woman walked by with an "I'm marching for puppies" sign.

Later in the march, a science theme came through, stating emphatically that the debate is over.

By then, the march was one solid mass of humanity filling the urban canyon wall to wall.

Then, at 5pm, exactly four hours after the march had started at our spot along the route, the march ended.

I tried to make some calculations, roughly having counted 300 people passing by per minute. Times 240 minutes, that doesn't exactly equal the 310,000 figure being used, but with the roughness of my count, all of those who didn't make it to 42nd Street, all those told to disperse when time ran out, and all those on the sidewalks, it could add up.

The BusForProgress came by, then four policeman on motorcycles.

Then it was over, and the streets were reclaimed by cars that our alien overlords make us drive to satisfy their jones for dystopia. Can't they just get a Netflix account and leave us alone?

I've heard there were some complaints about the mess marchers left behind, but where I was there was almost no trash, except for this abandoned sign run over by a delivery truck.

If you've made it this far, you've experienced something of the sprawling immensity and diversity of the march. I leave you with two parting posters:

Sustainable Investing

A letter in the Town Topics last week by Theodore Casparian offers an interesting perspective on why we should scrutinize where our money is invested, to see what sort of corporations we're providing capital to. He mentioned an online source that could help bring one's investments more into line with one's environmental/sustainability goals, but I didn't see the actual url published. Here it is: http://sustainableinvesting4all.com/. Looks promising.

Local Energy Spurned

Princeton imports energy from distant locales, largely unaware of the environmental fallout both at the source of that energy and at the destination of the resulting greenhouse gases. It would be far more sustainable, and responsible, to source energy from local above-ground sources rather than the underground sources we import, and that means harvesting solar energy either directly or from trees.

In that light, so to speak, there's something less than beautiful about the Westminster Choir College's new building. It's that bare roof. I've heard they intentionally gave the roof an auspicious southern orientation, but decided to hold off on solar panels for budgetary reasons.

I'd like to see what numbers were used to support that logic. As shown by a neighbor of mine in an earlier post, it's possible to lease solar panels for no money down, then pay for the resultant energy at a lower rate than if it were coming from a power plant. The persistent belief that solar panels are expensive reminds me of circular conversations I've had about native landscaping: "I can't afford the maintenance." "But natives require less maintenance than you're doing now." "But I can't afford the maintenance." "But natives require less maintenance than you're doing now." Ad nauseum. Current realities don't penetrate through long held assumptions.

Another spurning of local energy is the chipping up of all wood. This is understandable for softwoods and pesky branches, but chippers are now so strong that they can swallow whole trees, trunk and all. I've heard there are clean-burning incinerators that could turn the chips into energy, but none nearby, so the chips are hauled away to be composted--a nice-sounding but machine-intensive process that requires turning of the windrows by big machines, and then more hauling to get the product to a new location. Nice mulch, but the end result is consumption of imported energy, rather than production of local energy.

Princeton borough used to leave cut street trees at the curb for a few days for residents to scavenge good firewood, and wood stoves are an efficient, deeply satisfying, and surprisingly clean source of heat. But the new town policy is to haul wood away to distant locales, which increases energy consumption, staff time spent, plus whatever fee the composting facility charges.

At last night's town council meeting, Princeton resident Daniel Harris called for an accounting of all the town's energy usage, including vehicle use, to determine how to cut back. It won't come close to matching the phenomenal amount of energy used to, for instance, incinerate the town's sludge, far from the public eye down on River Road, but it's a useful exercise that could shift thinking and consumption habits. We also need to be looking at all the sources of potential local energy that are currently being spurned, and ask why we continue to ignore local energy harvest in favor of distant sources like fracked gas.

A Summer of Leaky Water Fountains

We have a wonderful park behind our house. It's Potts Park, the pocket park that's become popular even though it's hidden away on a back street. If we were to, in true Princetonian fashion, ignore its many fine features and instead zero in on an annoying fault, it would be the water fountain that on and off all summer refused to turn off, despite attempts to fix it. Other parks, too, like Harrison Street Park, succumbed to water fountain dysfunction. Perhaps all the sand kids keep putting in there gets lodged in the mechanism. Or maybe town parks departments, seeking the most foolproof fountain to buy, assuming they have a budget, need the sort of online equipment reviews we use to make purchase decisions.

Free Dinky Parking Weekends and After Hours

Those climbing on the Dinky to head to the Climate March this weekend can park for free in the University Lot 7 parking structure (back left in the photo) located midway between the old Dinky station and the current temporary station. Access it from the traffic circle on Faculty Road. Drive up Elm Drive, take the next traffic circle left.

The ongoing University policy, and I assume it remains unchanged from when I checked some months ago, is that the parking structure is open to the public without charge on weekends and after hours on weekdays.

Join the Climate March in NY This Sunday

This Sunday, Sept. 21, beginning at 11:30, people from all across the country will gather at Columbus Circle in New York for what's being billed as "the largest climate march in history." I've never taken part in a march, but I'll go to this one, and I encourage everyone else to head to the Dinky that morning with plenty of time to spare.

The most troubling thing about climate destabilization is that so little is being done to slow it down. The worst sorts of problems, whether at the level of the individual or global, are those that languish and deepen for lack of action. Once a problem is acknowledged and the first few significant steps are taken to solve it, there is an immediate sense of relief.

For instance, there was no lack of scary pronouncements on the world’s prospects at a meeting of Princeton's chapter of the Citizens' Climate Lobby this past weekend. Yet, there's comfort in participating in a national organization working patiently for positive, bipartisan action.

At this month’s meeting, we gathered in a Princeton living room to hear via speaker phone from retired Rear Admiral Len Hering. It felt reminiscent of President Roosevelt's fireside chats during WWII. During his career in the Navy, Hering led a successful effort to reduce the Navy's energy consumption by 40%. I felt some kinship, having reduced our home energy consumption by a similar amount without sacrificing comfort.

Hering sees a clear and present risk to the world his three grandchildren will inherit, and says "we're not having the adult conversation needed." He described how a 12 year drought in Syria and the resulting social and political instability had opened the door for radical elements like ISIS. Dramatic sea level rise this century, combined with storm surges, will create millions of refugees, further destabilizing governments around the world.

These grim prognoses will be far less depressing the moment we take action and shift course. Staying with the status quo may feel safe, yet it is creating huge risks. Climate destabilization, collectively created, is a shared enemy. Action to slow it will be a unifying force, and that action must come at all levels, from the global down to the individual.

The march is timed to precede the U.N. Climate Summit later in the month. Details on how to participate in the march (e.g. no wooden sticks for banners!) can be found at PeoplesClimate.org. 

Note: There are many events this weekend related to the march, info for which should be on the website.

A Dream That McCaffery's Supermarket Was Moving

Recently, I had a dream in which the McCaffery's supermarket at the Princeton Shopping Center was moving. I was in the store and noticed most of the shelves were bare. Were they remodeling? I asked a manager, and was told that they were moving to some distant intersection I didn't recognize but assumed was out on a strip development outside of town. I was understanding. No doubt they'd get more customers out on some busy road.

This is not a recurring dream, and it was unusual in being very matter of fact, lacking the improbable leaps in plot and logic that dreams usually display. One of the more instructive things dreams often leave behind is a feeling, and the feeling in this dream was of a stripping away of power. I rarely drive to McCaffery's. It's so close I can ride the bike, and bring a considerable amount of food home, stacked carefully in a large paper grocery bag in the kidseat. A backpack accommodates any overflow, and the occasional bag of dogfood fits well between the seat and the kidseat. At the cash register, I ask for one paper bag if I haven't brought one along, and put most of the food back in the cart loose, explaining that it all has to be repacked on the bicycle. Outside at the bicycle hitching post, memories of westerns in which the cowboy is carefully stowing provisions in those leather satchels on his horse come to mind.

The payoff, as I put canned food and flour in the bottom of the bag on the kidseat, saving lighter and more fragile items for the top, is a feeling of freedom and independence. Cars are wonderful tools, but they are deeply flawed, which when I need to use one makes me feel not guilt but a sense of mourning. They are so beautifully engineered, so smooth and quiet, that it's easy to forget the backstory, that the fuel cars use becomes steadily more difficult and risky to extract, and the consequences of their exhaust, though stripped of odor and smoke, are fraught with longterm peril.

But beyond that, the sense of empowerment a car can provide is also a form of dependence. The world most people wake up to every morning is scaled not to us and our capabilities, but to a machine's. Businesses, schools and friends are scattered and unreachable without contributing to a vast atmospheric experiment fraught with risk.

The layout of suburbs strips any kid under 16 of the power to reach school or friend without adult assistance, which in turn tethers adults to the steering wheel, shuttling kids hither and yon. This is not freedom but freedom lost. It means walking out the door knowing that you are helpless, your legs insufficient to the task of getting anywhere meaningful without the assistance of a machine. That's the bad dream that, living in a town like Princeton, with businesses, schools and many friends close by, we might dream but need not live.

Recharging Non-Rechargeable Batteries, and Axeless Woodchopping

When Joe Budelis came to my "open garden" event last month, he mentioned he had found some nifty answers to a couple of life's persistent questions. One of these recurrent questions is what to do with spent alkaline batteries. Currently (subtle pun there) they aren't accepted for recycling locally.

And of course they aren't rechargeable, or so I assumed, until I saw Joe's Rosewill recharger for alkaline batteries. Yes, we live in a magical world where non-rechargeable batteries can in fact be recharged. There are a few tricks to using it, but Joe says it has served him well, and he used to have a model that charged the larger sized alkaline batteries as well.

Unfortunately, an internet search shows this fine item to be unavailable. Dare we suspect that liability has once again reared its fearsome head? Or perhaps Rosewill has decided to focus instead on perfecting its reversible aging chamber. That would be a bed with electrodes at either end for head and feet that send a gentle electrical current through your body while you sleep, causing you to wake up in the morning feeling five years younger.

Speaking of batteries, in the form of energy that's stored in firewood, Joe also showed me a way to split wood without an axe. It's a wedge with a telescoping handle. A good name for it is elusive. One vender calls it a Manual Slide Log Splitter. On ebay, it's called a "Hand sliding slide hammer type wedge log splitting tool". It doesn't apply as much splitting pressure as a axe or maul, but Joe says it works well enough to supply wood for his fireplace. For anyone who'd rather not wield an axe, this is a good alternative.

Thanks to Joe for recharging our sense of the possible.

In the process of seeking out the log splitter on the web, I found a variation of an axe that looks like it has potential. The blade is flared at the top to shift the center of gravity to one side, so the blade enters the wood, then acts like a pry bar, all in one downward stroke. A bit pricey, but worth exploring, here and here. The videos also demonstrate the "old tire" approach to log splitting, which keeps the wood upright while you split it.