It has been two years since my spouse and I participated in the Walk for Our Grandchildren in Washington DC. This Wednesday, we are joining the People’s Climate March in Miami. If you live there and are paying attention, it won’t be news that rising seas combined with geology are already playing havoc with the city’s drainage system, regardless of storm activity. How Miami would come through a major hurricane no one seems willing to address, at least, not officially. It would hurt the booming economy, is the political mantra of the denial crowd.
Grandparents tend to have more at stake in the future than other people, so I find it strange that these marches are not bringing hundreds if not thousands of us into the streets in nonviolent demonstrations. The 2013 Washington Grandparent march drew about 300 people, a small number given the credentials of the speaker, longtime activist and author, Bill McKibben. A handful of marchers were arrested. It made the news. OK, that action and others like it may have succeeded in killing the KXL Pipeline, but that is clearly more symbolic than a real shift in direction. The reality is, trains carrying oil roll through suburban towns like mine every single day. Organizers of the Miami march project between 500-8,000 people, a far cry from the 40,000 that assembled in New York last fall even at the high point. Not close to the 250,000 Germans who protested the TPP this week.
Meanwhile, despite clear danger and plenty of implementable plans in the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Action Plan that could at least put some brakes on the inevitable, coastal cities are bristling with construction cranes. Realtors are talking recovery. New celebrity restaurants and name boutiques are opening in areas vulnerable to flooding. And Dr. Oz recently dropped a reported $18 million on a Palm Beach mansion. Go figure.
All of this sharpens my concern for our five grandchildren, especially the two 17-year-old grandsons in their final year of high school, looking ahead to college next year. Graduates are finding work in the shadow economy or grabbing jobs well below their qualifications now. It’s hard to see how this will improve in 4-5 years. The larger question that troubles my sleep is, what kind of education can prepare our grandchildren for a world completely unlike the one they grew up on, sans cheap energy? If the COP21 Summit in Paris this November falls short of its carbon reduction targets as it appears it will, their generation could be facing climate events of an unprecedented scale and velocity; resource wars; and massive population displacements. Our military is certainly preparing for these outcomes* even as our politicians continue to fiddle, tweak data, or flat out deny the evidence.
I’m told this march will be more like a festival, with music and dancing, plus colorful banners and puppets. We will walk about a mile between the Miami government center and the Torch of Friendship where there will be another rally. It’s made up of a coalition of the like-minded, from the League of Women Voters to the Sierra Club. We’re also voters who will choose our presidential candidate through the lens of climate change. Thomas Friedman’s recent Op-Ed: Stuff Happens to the Environment, Like Climate Change doesn’t mince words “… if you vote for a climate skeptic for president, you’d better talk to your kids first, because you will have to answer to them later.” We answering to them now, before they ask. With our hearts, and our feet.
he emotional testimony of the Philippines representative at a recent climate conference, left us both shaken.
Woman Aloud 