This September, world leaders will convene in the United Nations’ annual climate summit to address global climate change. If you’ve been paying attention (and even if you haven’t), you know that “real” reform hasn’t been enacted since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Yet time is running out before it’s too late for us to enact the carbon emissions regulations necessary to prevent climate change’s worst effects. As sea levels rise, extreme droughts and record-breaking temperatures afflict more and more people around the world, threatening their livelihoods, lives, and forcing the mass migration of millions, the number of environmental refugees will only increase in the coming years. Yet this issue is not a foreign problem relegated to the developing world; it affects US, right here, right now.
Everything that we do has, in manners large and small, an impact on our environment. We can take small steps—such as taking shorter showers, recycling paper and aluminum cans, using reusable water bottles, eating less meat—and we can also take big steps. We can switch to renewable sources of energy that don’t deplete our planet’s finite resources, that don’t pollute our air and water—basic necessities of life that people in our own nation find threatened, time and again, by big oil companies and the growing natural gas industry. We can divest from the fossil fuel industry and direct University funds towards sustainable energy sources, so that, for the first time, we put our money where our mouth is in reaching a greener future that protects both our public and environmental health.
The People’s Climate March will be the biggest step EVER in the history of the climate movement. But it needs you.
It needs people, people of all degrees, ages, backgrounds, colors, to tell world leaders that we demand serious, immediate action on climate change. The UN climate summit this September is the last time our leaders will meet before the deadline for setting new international standards regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
Join the SGA’s Student Sustainability Committee in New York City on Sunday, September 21, to make a difference, make new friends, and to tell the world that if our future is to be even brighter than our past, we need our leaders to act NOW in addressing global climate change. We hope to see you there!
Join ‘UMD Goes to People’s Climate March’ on Facebook and fill out THIS FORM to show your interest in joining the bus off 55 UMD students attending the march.
This article was written by SSC member, Maya Spaur. For more information about PCM contact Maya, the UMD Campus Lead for the People’s Climate March, at mspaur@terpmail.umd.edu.