Hope Rising

By Brook Lenker, Executive Director, FracTracker Alliance

We came to make a stand. People of every age from every corner of the country amassed in New York City on September 21, 2014 – 400,000 people transported by hope. It may have been the autumnal equinox, but the event was a solstice of human expression and determination.

Down Central Park West, across 59th Street, south on Avenue of the Americas, onward to Times Square. Like the circuitous path of the people’s climate march, lawmakers and society at large have meandered around our fossil fuel dependency for too long but take notice: the era of wasting time and wasting away the planet is over.

You could see it in the eyes of college students, parents, grandparents, and children, and I could see it in my daughter, an unfrackable resolve, stronger than any geology. A man remarked that he hadn’t seen so many young people mobilized since the Vietnam War. It will take the involvement of many, many more to move institutions and the public beyond the status quo – to adopt better technologies, modify lifestyles, and accept wholesale conservation.

Images from the Peoples Climate March, September 2014. Photo by Savanna Lenker Images from the Peoples Climate March, September 2014. Photo by Savanna Lenker Images from the Peoples Climate March, September 2014. Photo by Savanna Lenker
Images from the March. Photos by Savanna Lenker

I believe we’ve reached a tipping point with the atmosphere and mankind. The former may be hemorrhaging, getting worse before any sign of recuperation – and that’s downright frightening (from rampaging weather to rising seas, life on earth is in for a helluva ride). But the latter has found a partial cure: intergenerational power lifting and embracing renewable energy and lighter ways for civilization.

Change starts with humility and introspection and gains with peer support. In the one-day, peaceful occupation of midtown Manhattan, warm hearts of spectators and a world in solidarity pushed us ahead. Feel the inertia. Join the ride. Because going forward, nothing will be the same.

Images from the Peoples Climate March, September 2014. Photo by Savanna Lenker

Images from the March. Photo by Savanna Lenker