Delaware Sends Three Busloads To Climate March
The First State sent three busloads of concerned citizens to the September 21 massive and largely media-ignored Climate March in New York City. Reports claimed 400,000 marchers and I believe them, given the shoulder to shoulder shuffle we joyfully experienced on Sunday at Central Park Avenue.
Organized by Delaware’s Sierra Club and participated in also by The Audubon Society, Earth First and other environmental/social justice groups, the execution was flawless. Great leadership and even more fabulous herding of cats prevailed assuring no one got lost or left behind. Food on the bus and much solidarity was experienced by both the elders and the fantastic delegation of students and young people.
I’ve done a zillion protests and marches and organized a few as well. This was the best and most organized I’ve seen. The creativity of the costumes and demonstrations rivaled some of the best art shows I’ve attended. And the signs, many if not most home made were poignant and on message. There are a lot of gifted headline and copywriters out there among us great unwashed.
Too bad the copywriters in the lame media establishment were occupied by other priorities. CNN’s mobile web site called the massive gathering “several thousand” in their indifference to the most crucial issue humanity faces, including extinction. The network Sunday a.m. shows babbled on about comparatively lesser crises.
Locally, given that all pollution and warming is local, the larger issue is whether Delaware’s DNREC will step forward and provide the leadership necessary to deal with our very real issues of flooding and future inundation from the rising sea. It is gratifying that the Delaware has a citizen commission working on this issue for now about three years.
It is not so gratifying that the Delaware City Refinery is refining oil from tar sands crude. The Sierra Club is promoting citizen attendance at a hearing planned for Tuesday, Sept. 23, 6 pm. by the DNREC on Shoreline Stabilization. The hearing is taking place at the Kathleen H. Wilbur Elementary School multipurpose room, 4050 Wrangle Hill Rd., in Bear 19701. The Sierra Club needs support for the presentation there. No doubt they’ll point out the contradiction that the Refinery wants input on shoreline/sea rising issues caused by CO2 while they begin increasing CO2 production with their refining of the dirtiest crude known to humankind, tar sands crude.
The U.N. is paying attention with the deliberations on Climate there beginning this week. I’m sure they got our message from the streets of NYC and over 150 other countries. Will our largely deaf and dumb Congress get the message? Their in box should be pretty full by now.
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So, y’all used a diesel powered bus to take people to, and from, a protest over people using hydrocarbon fuels. 🙂
And even though you’re an anti-intellectual, you used words. So?
Dana: since conservatives like you have prevented America from developing local/regional public transit systems ( say “rail” or “trains”) like most of the rest of the free world and much of the unfree world, we resort to the next best option from a fuel efficiency/carbon perspective……buses carrying 180 people rather than 180 Range Rovers or Cadillac SUV’s as your people drive.
I saw lots of great pictures of this on Facebook. So glad they had a massive turnout!
Mr Merriman, conservatives haven’t “prevented” the United States from developing local or regional public transit systems, given that they exist in all of our major cities. I have no problem with them existing; I just want the passengers to support those systems, and not have them being subsidized by taxpayers who have no access to them.
We are not Europe: our population densities are very different, and in some places public transit is simply impractical. You live in the northeast corridor, where population densities make some of this practical, but even in the northeast, Amtrak has to be subsidized. Head out to Missouri or South Dakota, and public transit systems simply don’t make sense, because there aren’t enough people who could use them to make the investments reasonable, at least not beyond intracity bus services.
I’m all for green, but the recent North American oil and gas boom may well be the only thing keeping the US economy from tanking, this time forever. We need to invest the windfall into massive sustainable energy technologies, or we will be screwed when the oil runs out, leaving us with nothing but poisoned groundwater.
Dana, congressional republicans have been blocking and delaying fed. transit funding, led by Cong. John Culberson, Houston for years; they want roads and cars and do not want local rail and bus expansion let alone regional high speed rail between cities with demand studies proving they can be supported with adequate volume; no one is talking about North Dakota; we’re talking about moving people between urban centers cost and energy efficiently. Amtrak is slow and too expense here in the northeast; that is not high speed technology as they have for example in Japan, France, Germany. Get a clue, please.
The difference between the European and American rail systems is why we’ll never have hyper speed rapid transit for many decades to come. In Europe, passenger rail transit runs on dedicated rails that do NOT carry heavy freight, and these were designed primarily as passenger rail with a different gauge (width) and lighter rails that support passenger transit only (in all but a few instances). Whereas in the US, rail systems and designs were a product of our massive landscape and the need to move freight across the vast country, while also moving people. Thus, the rail system here in the US uses predominantly the same gauge to handle both freight and passenger trains. Whenever you have heavy (freight) rail traffic sharing the same rails as passenger trains, the passenger trains cannot travel at the higher speeds as in European and Asian systems, which were designed from scratch for high speed passenger rail transit. Freight trains literally beat the rails and beds and hasten their demise and need for repair/replacement and due to their diminished condition, unable to allow for high speed rail traffic.
We are a product of our history and the early war years, which lead to the standardization of rail gauge across the County. My stepfather was a Rail Engineer his entire working life and told of how back in the coal fired steam days of railroads, (the golden era), how he would run those behemoth steam engines at speeds well over 100 mph across the plains as a matter of course. The rails were in better condition and better maintained, once Diesel-Electric engines came into widespread use, (more efficient, less maintenance required, higher horsepower/tonnage, etc.) the car and truck were impacting rail freight transportation moved from the rails to the roads.
With limited available corridors thru the large eastern cities, it also becomes an issue of land taking for building new surface rail systems. It’s not as easy to undo a century of established railway methodology and certainly not a cheap fix either.
The only way for a cost effective and truly high speed passenger rail system to work in the US is for segregated freight and passenger rails, either that or a massively expensive upgrade and maintenance program to bring the existing rails up to high speed standards, again, not a cheap fix. Maybe Star Trek (particle) transporter technology will usurp the need for physical rail systems, but I’m not holding my breath to see that happen in my lifetime or anytime in the next 100 years.
Congressional conservatives are on the wrong side of history on every issue
and here http://gothamist.com/2014/09/22/climate_march_trash.php
is an example of these hippies doing it wrong.
Leave No Trace. It’s shit like this that helps the Republicans win by making a very good cause seem illegitimate.
There are simply no excuses for this as there was access to trash and some recycling cans all along the route and plenty of us had backpacks in which to stash trash. The march should be charged for this and the city reimbursed as well. I’ll chip in if asked.
When asked, Robert Kennedy jr said he was not planning on giving up or down sizing his personal car, and that would not help with climate change if he did
And your point about a great patriot leading the charge on mountain top removal, besides just being snarky, rusty?