Missourians are joining people from across the country in New York City Sunday for the People’s Climate March. Tens of thousands are expected to demonstrate in a call to halt global warming in advance of the United Nations Climate Summit, which begins Tuesday.
About 80 people from Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri traveled to New York together in transportation organized by the Missouri Sierra Club. Jim Turner is chair of the executive committee of the Missouri Sierra Club. He said the coalition of environmental groups organizing the People’s Climate March hope to double the number of people who attended the Forward on Climate Rally in Washington. D.C. in February 2013.
“I’m hoping it amounts to more than 100,000.” Turner said. “We keep looking for a decisive tipping point in the public realization that we have to change our energy policy.”
Polly Rutherford of Chesterfield is one of the St. Louisans taking part in the national march. She says she wants to get legislators attention in the hope that they will pass a law that limits the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
“There’s too much coal that we use in Missouri,” Rutherford said. “We have wind and we have solar power that we could be using more.”
Solidarity climate marches are also being held around the world. Here in St. Louis, the Sierra Club of Eastern Missouri has organized a demonstration Sunday afternoon at Kiener Plaza.
