This Sunday, thousands of people will take to the streets of New York City to march in protest against climate change.
“We’re going to sound the burglar alarm on people who are stealing the future,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of the group 350.org, one of the organizations helping plan the People’s Climate March.
The largest climate protest in US history, the People’s Climate March (PCM) will begin at 11:30 am (EST); attendees will march about 50 blocks from 86th Street to 34th Street.
Organizers of the PCM picked Sunday for the march because world leaders will be starting to arrive in the city ahead of the United Nations’ emergency Climate Summit, beginning on Tuesday.
“UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming,” information for the event says. “September 21, the Sierra Club, Avaaz, 350 and more than 700 organizations will take to the streets to call on world leaders meeting at the UN Climate Summit to commit to a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.
Investing in clean energy will generate three times more jobs compared to fossil fuel sectors, and there has been an 8.3 percent more growth in the clean energy sector than the overall US economy, according to PCM. The median wage for workers in green energy jobs is 13 percent higher, and 70 percent of Americans favor the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.
As of September 11, more than 1,500 similar events in 130 countries had also been organized.
“This is going to be huge, powerful, and beautiful,” wrote Will Bates, the Global Campaigns Director at 350, on PCM’s blog. “And it’s not just the scale that makes this moment special. Perhaps even more interesting is all that is emerging in the process of organizing and coordinating this moment.”
Event details, for the march in New York and events being held in other cities and countries, are available on PCM’s Join an Event page.
Watch a video about the People’s Climate March.
