New York – Americans worried about climate change gathered Saturday on ski slopes and in cities for a nationwide day of demonstrations aimed at drawing attention to global warming.
More than 1,300 events were organized under the banner Step It Up 2007 to push Congress to require an 80 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Every state had some event.
“When it comes to global warming, I don’t exactly think President Bush is doing such a hot job,” said 12-year-old New Yorker Tiffany Cordero. “A lot of people are thinking just of now. But we won’t have a ‘now’ if we don’t focus on the future.”
Tiffany delivered a speech at a rally in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park, overlooking New York Harbor, where people dressed in blue – some equipped with scuba gear and beach balls – gathered to form a Sea of People human line to symbolically mark New York’s future coastline.
Scientists say melting polar ice caps and glaciers will cause ocean levels to rise, although estimates vary. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected ocean levels will rise 7 to 23 inches this century, but other scientists warn the sea level could rise 10 feet or more, enough to flood Lower Manhattan and other low-lying coastal areas.
The threatened rise in the ocean also was dramatized by a New Coast Parade in Portland, Maine, one of more than 30 observances in that state.
“The most important things that we have a responsibility to do in government are to prepare our children for a bright future and to preserve and protect our natural resources,” Maine Gov. John Baldacci told a gathering in Portland.
The nationwide events were spearheaded by a group of recent graduates from Vermont’s Middlebury College who organized a campaign of blogs, e-mail messages and word- of-mouth communications.
In one of the day’s first demonstrations, skiers unfurled a protest banner in April snow on Whiteface Mountain near Wilmington, N.Y. The skiers fear long-term temperature increases promise trouble for native plants, wildlife and people in the Adirondack Mountains.
