Images of the Massive PEOPLES CLIMATE MARCH in NY City

LARGEST Climate March in History! 

400,000 march in NY City - Events held in over 150 countries

“We said it would take everyone to change everything — 

and Everyone showed up!”

Eddie Bautista, Exec. Director of the NY City Environmental Justice Alliance.

President Obama gives a nod to the climate marchers in his speech at the UN Climate Summit on Sept. 23 (see below).

NY City - Sept. 21, 2014

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VIDEO: Aerial View of the Massive Climate March 

 

The March was held two days before the 

UN Climate Summit in NY City - Sept. 23, 2014

President Obama's quote (above) in the context of his UN speech:

"So the climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it.  The alarm bells keep ringing.  Our citizens keep marching.  We cannot pretend we do not hear them.  We have to answer the call.  We know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm.  We have to cut carbon pollution in our own countries to prevent the worst effects of climate change.  We have to adapt to the impacts that, unfortunately, we can no longer avoid.  And we have to work together as a global community to tackle this global threat before it is too late. 

We cannot condemn our children, and their children, to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair.  Not when we have the means -- the technological innovation and the scientific imagination -- to begin the work of repairing it right now.

 As one of America’s governors has said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”  So today, I’m here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second largest emitter, to say that we have begun to do something about it."

France was one of the 150 Countries that participated in the Peoples Climate March:

Buffalo Activists at PEOPLES CLIMATE MARCH in NYC

Video: 'Flash Mob' in Buffalo promoting the Climate March

Courtesy of Nate Schneekloth

Boarding the Buses for the overnight trip to NY City!
168 People filled 3 Buses chartered by Sierra Club Niagara Group

[Click image to enlarge]          Courtesy of Rick Steinberg

Part of the Buffalo Herd in New York City

Buffalo Activists say it's Time to Lead!

UB Students back the Planet at the NYC March

UB Students March for the Climate

Buffalo Climate Action!              Youth 'Walkin' the Walk'!

Buffalo State NYPIRG 

Van Jones (CNN) and Buffalo-born Jason Kowalski (350.org DC) 
meetup after the NYC March

 

RALLY: Save Times Beach Nature Preserve - Saturday, 12:30pm

The Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve have an urgent Rally scheduled for this Saturday, 12:30pm, at Times Beach Nature Preserve [Map].
  
The WNY Environmental Alliance (WNYEA) has adopted a set of principles focused on Outer Harbor development that can be found at the GrowWNY Website: Click "Covering the Outer Harbor".

The Final Plan for the Outer Harbor will probably be released early next week without further public comment. We have been informed that the final plan will be as presented at the ECHDC (Erie County Harbor Development Corporation) open house two weeks ago. It shows the development of a new "neighborhood" surrounding Times Beach Nature Preserve, including Wilkeson Pointe, the popular wind-sculpture Park built with Public Funding last year. 

The Final Plan will turn the Nature Preserve into 

a Condominium compound. 

Final Plan [Click image to enlarge]

We want a Nature Preserve, NOT a Condo compound.   We want Public Parks, NOT Private Residences.
We need your help and support to demonstrate public opposition and support of the WNYEA principles. Please consider attending the Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve's Rally on this Saturday at Times Beach starting at 12:30 [Map]. 

Bring signs, your voices, and come to learn about, talk about, and participate in what options we have left.
 
For more information and links, Click Here.
 
To see a Photo Album of last weeks wonderful Times Beach Nature Preserve Dedication Ceremony, Click Here.

Please share this with friends and ask them to Bring Signs!

Questions: Email Jay Burney at lscampaign@aol.com

Thank you to GrowWNY, WNYEA and all Supporters.

 
Visit:  Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve

Cornell Scientist to speak on Climate Change and Food Security

"Climate Change and the Future of Food" is the title of a presentation by Dr. David Walter Wolfe, a prominent climate scientist from Cornell University. The talk will be delivered on October 10th, 2014 at the University at Buffalo, South Campus. 

Dr. Wolfe, is a Professor of Plant and Soil Ecology in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University. He has worked and published extensively in the area of agriculture and climate change.

Dr. Wolfe's presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, and a casual reception soon after. The presentation will take place in 114 Wende Hall, South Campus from 2:00-3:30 pm and it is Open to the Public.

Dr Wolfe's visit is being sponsored and organized by the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities lab, in the School of Architecture and Planning.

We are hoping you will be able to join us and add to the discussions that follow. Please send any questions you may have for Dr Wolfe to subhashn@buffalo.edu by October 7th. These questions will be used during the Q & A session.

To view a flyer for the event, click here. We would appreciate you sharing the flyer and the information about the presentation with your network.

Buffalo Climate Activists Takin’ it to the NYC Streets

Advocates for action on climate change will take it to the streets in New York City

By Lynda Schneekloth
Chairwoman, Sierra Club Niagara Group

 It’s not as if no one has tried to get the attention of the government of the United States and other world leaders since the early 1990s.

It’s not as if we haven’t known that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas for well over 100 years. But the world is full of distractions, disinformation and people getting very wealthy by not addressing climate change and staying the course with fossil fuels. One has to admit that the climate scientists had it wrong 20 years ago. They thought that we had until 2050 to substantially limit greenhouse gas emissions to avoid serious catastrophe.

The Kyoto Protocol, now 17 years old, outlined actions we might take, but didn’t. The United States in particular seems to be sleepwalking into the future regarding climate change. Now we know that scientists seriously underestimated how quickly things were changing.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us of the irreversible climate impacts occurring right now, and outlines disastrous impacts into the future. Leaders in the climate movement tell us this is Decade Zero. We take action now or it will be too late.

The question is: How do we get the attention of people? How do we connect with world leaders, our president and Congress, governors and local officials? How do we get the attention of everybody, since climate disruption is not simply an environmental problem, it is a planetary crisis? Pope Francis says, “I think a question that we’re not asking ourselves is: ‘Isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?’ ” Suicide or perhaps genocide?

Now is the time to take to the streets, to shift this movement out of a segment of our society and to bring all of the people together to be more effective. It is time to take to the streets to address climate change, to invest in a new energy economy that has green jobs, to stop the monopoly of the fossil fuel giants and build shared energy production and distribution – in other words, to fight for a just transition to a new, more sustainable world.

And we are taking to the streets on Sunday in New York City at the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, who will meet to discuss world action on climate change.

More than 100,000 people are expected to march – an alliance of environmental, climate and labor movements, indigenous communities and other social, economic and democratic justice movements, all calling for ecological sanity.

We are building a big, loud movement together, for it appears that taking to the streets is the only way to protect global ecosystems from collapse and ensure a future for our children.

The text of the above article was originally published as an 'Another Voice' op-ed at The Buffalo News online on September 16, 2014. 

~  ~  ~

For Bus Tickets to the NY City Climate March,  Click Here

"Students on hundreds of campuses, and thousands of youth vote leaders across the country are bringing their power and voices to the People's Climate March to say enough is enough," said Maura Cowley, director of Energy Action Coalition.

Daemen Summit to include Solar Power Prospects

WHAT: Summit - “A Decade of Progress: Sustainability Comes of Age in WNY” 

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WHEN: Saturday, September 27, 2014, 8:30am-12:00pm

WHERE: Wick Student Center, Daemen College  

COST: Free - Open to the Public

Keynote Address: Ian Diamond, a senior manager of commercial product development at SolarCity. SolarCity is building one of the world’s largest solar panel factories in the proposed RiverBend clean energy complex in South Buffalo. Mr. Diamond's talk is titled "The Was, Is, and Will Be of Solar Power."

Summit Address: Robert Knoer, a local environmental attorney and the former chairman of the Western New York Environmental Alliance.

 

Roundtable Discussion: Local progress in improving the environment, social justice, community sustainability, and future regional priorities.

Panel Participants: Justin Booth from Green Options Buffalo; Katy Duggan-Haas from Modern Recycling; Dennis Elsenbeck from National Grid; Melissa Fratello from Grassroots Gardens; Erin Heaney from the Clean Air Coalition; Brendan Mahaffey from the City of Buffalo Office of Planning; Ryan McPherson from the Western New York Environmental Alliance; Mary Rossi from the Western New York Stormwater Coalition; and Art Wheaton, from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Western New York Apollo Alliance.

Exhibitors please note that table setup begins at 8:00am.

For more information, visit: http://www.daemen.edu/summit

Urban Revival in the Rust Belt

SolarCity, a clean energy provider.

By Susan Milligan  | U.S. News

The old Republic Steel site in Buffalo, New York, long stood abandoned, a painful reminder to the region's residents of how enduringly damaging the decline of the steel industry had been. Now, the site is being developed by the solar panel company SolarCity, bringing potentially thousands of jobs to this snowbelt city. At Canalside, a still-developing project to take the city's historic old canal and make it a hot spot for live musical performances, dining and skating in the winter, locals blend with construction workers who are taking a lunch break while working to build HarborCenter, a mixed-use hockey-themed complex that will include a Marriott hotel, restaurants, downtown parking and two ice rinks.

Long-suffering Buffalo, along with other Rust Belt cities hit with the double whammy of the New Economy and the Great Recession, is coming back. And local politicians and urban experts say these cities are in a historic renaissance that belies the late-20th-century presumption that industrial America was finished. Urban expert Alan Mallach calls them "Legacy Cities" – cities whose workers helped build this country that are now struggling their way back decades after the New Economy took hold.

"This is the American heartland. This is where 'what made our country great' all began," says Mallach, senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "You look at these cities today, and they are struggling, but at the same time they have incredible assets and have incredible resources for this country."

Experts say affordable housing, a slew of new investments in growing fields and stable workforces have put places like Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh back on the map for both new college grads and Rust Belt natives who left to find work but feel a tug back to the homefront.

"What has happened in the last seven years in Buffalo is that it has regained the confidence it lost after many decades of economic decline," says Rep. Brian Higgins, a South Buffalo Democrat who for many years has fought to develop the city's waterfront from an industrial dumping site into a festive and bustling gathering place.

When things are looking gloomy, "people retreat unto themselves, they become very territorial and don't embrace the larger vision," making it harder to accept fundamental changes in the economy, adds Higgins, who also taught a course on the western New York economy at SUNY Buffalo State.

"What's changed is that people are seeing tangible proof" that things are on the upswing, he says.

Read More about how Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland are moving back on track at U.S. News.

FLASH MOB for People's Climate March - Friday at 6:30pm

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Join us on Friday, Sept. 12 at 6:30PM on Elmwood Ave. & West Ferry St. in Buffalo for a FLASH MOB to invite the public to Get on the Bus for the People's Climate March in NYC!

The choreography is easy and civil. Participants holding orange buffalo cutouts (see image - we have 100 of them) will walk across the street at the intersection when permitted by the lights for just 10 minutes. And then we’ll stop.   

While we cross the street, we’ll be handing out postcard ads for the People's Climate March to be help in New York City on September 21st.

Please come and invite your friends! It will be fun and effective!

Did you know that 1000+ Organizations are Partnering with the People's Climate March? Click Here to see the list.

Update - Sept. 12:  Peoples Climate March & Flash Mob  
Interview: Lynda Schneekloth, Chair, Sierra Club Niagara Group. Read the interview at Buffalo Rising

'DISRUPTION' - Powerful Film about Climate Change

When it comes to Climate Change, 

why do we do so little when we know so much?

Disruption lays bare the science, the shattered political process, the industry special interests and the civic paralysis that have brought us to this social, moral and ecological crossroads.

This is the story of our unique moment in history. We are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate disruption, and scientists say that we are the last generation that can do something about it. 

The film also takes us behind-the-scenes of the efforts to organize the People's Climate March, which promises to be the largest climate rally in the history of the planet.

Watch Disruption online [ watchdisruption.com ] and share it with your friends.
  Stay tuned for local showings of Disruption at venues in the Buffalo area.

Take Action on Climate Change: Get on the Buffalo Bus to NY City for the People's Climate March! Sierra Club Niagara Group has chartered buses and tickets are available here.

Can't go to the Climate March? Take Action by making a Donation to Sponsor Riders who can go in your place.

Over 1000 Organizations are Partnering on the Climate March! Businesses, unions, religious groups, environmental groups, schools, social justice groups, and more. To see the list, Click Here.

UPDATE - Sept. 9: THURSDAY, September 11, SCREENING of ‘DISRUPTION' - Viewing and discussion of film and the Sept. 21 People’s Climate March. 6:00pm-8:00pm, University at Buffalo, North Campus, Capen 107, Amherst. Free & open to public