You might have heard it in the news, as this weekend no less than 400,000 people marched in New York City to demand adequate action on climate change. Similar marches were organized around the world.
As Time Magazine noted :
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Vice President Al Gore, and movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton all attended
(…) an estimated 400,000-strong crowd that flooded the streets of Manhattan to demand U.N. action on global warming — a showing that quadrupled expected attendance and made the march the largest climate protest in history and largest social demonstration of the past decade.
Timed to coincide with the U.N. summit on climate change, which meets this week to discuss an international carbon-emissions agreement, the demonstration was an international effort with 2,646 events in more than 150 countries, attended by hundreds of thousands more people.
On this matter, the BBC got some numbers, and they are quite important :
In London, the march attracted an estimated 40,000 people, including actress Emma Thompson who likened the threat from climate change to a Martian invasion
Some 30,000 people marched in Melbourne, Australia. Demonstrators urged Prime Minister Tony Abbott to take action, citing fears that climate change could lead to more bushfires and droughts
Organisers said more than 25,000 marched in Paris
About 15,000 people marched in Berlin. Organisers urged world leaders to recognise climate change as a pressing problem
In Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 marchers turned out. Environmental slogans and a green heart were projected onto the famed statue of Christ the Redeemer, overlooking the city
Smaller protests – attracting numbers in the hundreds or low thousands – were also seen in cities such as Bogota, Barcelona, Jakarta and Delhi
I guess this is quite a success. Let’s hope this will lead to another success : more actions on climate from the world’s leading emitters. Time is running out as we have seen time and again.
Image credits : 350.org facebook page
