It’s a start. At least New York City is already doing something. Time for Georgia to stop burning more fossil fuels and uranium and get on with solar power.

By Lisa W. Foderaro, NY Times, 21 September 2014, At climate change march in New York, a clarion call for action,

Participants from across the country began arriving early on Sunday morning at the staging area near the American Museum of Natural History. Rosemary Snow, 75, stretched her legs after a nearly 14-hour bus ride from Georgia.

“I thought we’d have a lot of younger people on the bus,” said Snow, who made the trip with her grandson. “There’s a really great mix of people.”

Snow had traveled with dozens of others who came from different parts of the state, including Valdosta, Savannah and Atlanta.

A professor at the University of Georgia, Chris Cuomo of Decatur, Georgia, said the group was organized by the Georgia Climate Change Coalition.

She said she hoped the coalition’s presence at the rally would “let the rest of the world know that people from small-town America, urban America, rural America care about climate change.”…

“Our biggest problem is the financial power of the fossil fuel industry,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of “The End of Nature.”

“We can’t match that money,” he said. “So we have to work in the currency of movements — passion, spirit, creativity and bodies — and it will all be on display on Sunday.”

Estimates range from “tens of thousands” by the New York Times to this by Will Bredderman, New York Observer, 21 September 2014, Hundreds of Thousands March as de Blasio Reveals Greenhouse Gas Plan

More than 310,000 people paraded through the streets of Manhattan to force world leaders to pay more attention to climate change, two days ahead of a United Nations summit—and among the marchers were Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who just hours earlier unveiled a plan to slash New York City’s greenhouse gas output by 80 percent by 2050….

He said he believed that Hurricane Sandy’s devastation of many of the city’s waterfront communities had impressed the urgency of action upon the city’s citizenry….

“I think for New Yorkers Sandy made it personal, made it immediate,” the mayor said….

He argued that the protest had the potential to push the U.N. to create an international treaty for weaning the planet from fossil fuels—and that New York City could be the torchbearer for a cleaner-burning era.

And in best use of a drone I’ve seen lately, Aerial Drone Video Footage from People’s Climate March in New York City:

Erin Durkin, Stephen Rex Brown, New York Daily News, 21 September 2014, Mayor de Blasio unveils $1B plan to cut greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050,

The plan will use a wide variety of measures to make public and private buildings more environmentally friendly. Roughly 3,000 city-owned buildings, including schools and firehouses, will be retrofitted to be more energy-efficient by 2025, de Blasio said.

Nearly three-quarters of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy used to heat, cool and power buildings, de Blasio said….

Low-income families tend to live in older, less efficient buildings, meaning they fork out more cash each month on energy bills. “The average citizen understands a lot … about the threat to the Earth,” he said.

“I think the average citizen is ready to do their share.”

And these New York City measures mean low-income families will pay less in energy bills. Just like we need in the sunny southeast, where weatherization and rural solar power also bring jobs.

-jsq

Short Link: