NYC Climate March and Rally: 9/17/23

Reflecting on the recent NYC climate march and rally, I note:

• That upwards of 75,000 U.S. citizens representing hundreds of organizations travelled and devoted their energy and time to tell President Biden, our Congress, and the fossil-fuel industry that if we continue business as usual we will destroy our planet’s balance, killing plants, animals, and eventually ourselves. While joining marchers in solidarity and commitment to combatting world-wide fossil-fuel pollution and environmental destruction, members of NY and NJ Jewish Voice for Peace rallied to support liberation of the Palestinian people by shining light on Israel’s role in U.S. control of Middle East oil (link to PDF file) that enables and protects its expropriation, control and degradation of Palestinian water, land, and resources.
• That meteorologists and climate scientists whose lifework is monitoring and measuring our atmosphere, oceans, and Earth have together, in light of accumulating observational data and verifiable evidence, repeatedly warned that we have a small, less-than-10-year window, to avoid the long-term damage and impending catastrophic effect of increasing global temperature rise, and that we can do this only by reducing and finally eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels.
• That, in response to mounting evidence, our government does some things to achieve that end such as implementing the “Build Back Better” and “Inflation Reduction” Acts to encourage U.S.Americans, through tax credits and other incentives, to shift from reliance on fossil fuels and to increased use of renewable energy, but it then undercuts the good it does by continuing to subsidize the fossil-fuel industry and approving the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska as well as the West Virginia Mountain Valley Pipeline that together will release and ensure decades long emissions of CO2, pollution, and environmental destruction.
• For its part, the Supreme Court also undermines progress by ruling, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, that the EPA cannot use the Clean Air Act to require states to cap industrial smokestack emissions. The bottom line: our elected and unelected officials’ both-sides-of-their-mouths lip service only exacerbates and hastens final catastrophe.
• That even though they knew a massive march was to take place on 9/17, our taxpayer-subsidized cable and broadcast TV and radio, including C-SPAN, chose not to stream or broadcast live coverage of the event, but devoted valuable air time to drone on about Biden, and Trump, to re-broadcast hearings, or to air NASCAR races, football, baseball et al.: their true profit-driven priorities. Only YouTube and Act TV, a small independent streaming service, provided live coverage.
• That our only hope lies with those who marched, put their bodies and minds in the street and stood with each other and all of us, committed to protecting and preserving the fragile balance of temperature and climate that gave rise to and sustains the life of all plants, animals, and us.
• All anyone needs do is to feel the wind, rain, and heat; to breathe the air and look around to know how the world’s warming climate is endangering all life; we ignore the evidence of our senses at our peril.