Banging the drum for Climate Change action

, ,

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Fifteen-year-olds Annabel Skrocki and Annie Lively, both sophomores at Glen Lake School, stood in complete silence with more than 400,000 other climate activists—mourning, for the melting glaciers, the rising oceans, the dryer mid-continents, the stronger storms, the disappearing islands and the paralyzed politicians.

Then, 60 seconds later, Manhattan erupted into a roar. Screams and cheers, bugles and bongos, all rolling forward in a tidal wave of human emotion—a clarion call for action from elected leaders drew the largest climate change demonstration in human history to New York City on September 21. About 15 of the demonstrators came from Leelanau County on a chartered bus, which was organized by Annie’s older sister Jane as her high school senior project.

“There were so many people there, it was crazy,” said Skrocki, whose parents own the Sleeping Bear Surf & Kayak Shop in Empire. “This was too cool to miss. At one point we walked next to a woman who had just turned 90, and was being pushed in a wheelchair by her son.”

“When the cheers began, and we began to march, you could feel the amount of power that we have as people,” added Annie Lively, who made the trip with her family, and stood at West Central Park and 78th St. during the moment of silence. “It’s so important that we take action to stop climate change. We should treat each other and our world better. If we don’t, we won’t exist in 1,000 years.”

Jane Lively, who also used the trip to visit colleges out east, was struck by the diversity and pageantry of the People’s Climate March. She observed people of all ages and skin colors from across the country. There were puppets, huge signs, chanting and jazz bands as the parade marched south through Manhattan. “We wanted to show the world how many are aware of this issue,” she said. “World leaders need to know that something must be done. I think that over time, things will change.”

The Climate March was held two days before a key United Nations summit in New York where world leaders were pressured to put global warming on the forefront of their agenda as climatologists record 2014 as the hottest year on record. The complicated politics of climate change were never far from the mind of Forest Jarvis, another Leelanau County native who currently attends Middlebury College in Vermont and also organized a group of students to participate in the march.

“It was both sobering and extremely important to realize that the march was a success in that it drew a record number of people to the city and put national attention on the issue of climate change, but was really only a step in a long, difficult process,” he wrote afterwards. “Political change won’t come about just because of one march, and it’s the duty of everyone to stay involved in politics and the environment on a local and national level. … The climate movement needs to push for more research and investment into sustainable energy, a greater tax on carbon and divestment from fossil fuels.”

The People’s Climate March inspired solidarity events across the world, and drew headlines in the nation’s leading media outlets, such as the New York Times and National Public Radio, but Annie Lively lamented that it didn’t attract more attention from daily and weekly newspapers here in Northern Michigan. “I think the movement is gonna get bigger, and people are going to fight even harder,” she said after returning home.

Nevertheless, climate change awareness is gaining a foothold across Northern Michigan, where heavy August rains put a dent in the summer tourism season, and rising lake levels ate away at beaches. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that precipitation in August was 33 percent above average for the month.

Forecasters predict another long and extreme winter in 2014-15—unwelcome news following two previous winters of heavy snowfall. Meanwhile, local farmers worry that climate change and more extreme weather events could hurt their crops, as happened in spring 2012 when an unseasonably warm March prematurely lured cherry blossoms out of their buds before a late-spring frost destroyed them. (Read “Will climate change kill the Michigan cherry?” in our archives.)

Against this backdrop, U.S. Senate candidate Gary Peters (a Democrat who seeks to replace Michigan’s outgoing Sen. Carl Levin) has bucked conventional political strategy and has made climate change a central issue of his campaign. Meanwhile, local nonprofits held events this summer to draw attention to our energy landscape and how our fossil fuel industry damages the environment. During Traverse City’s Cherry Festival in July, the group Clean Water Action held a “Save the Cherry” campaign, and on Labor Day weekend during the annual Mackinac Bridge Walk, the Michigan Land Use Institute teamed with the Michigan Environmental Council, Flow for Love of Water and the Sierra Club to stage an “Oil and Water Don’t Mix” demonstration in Mackinac City to draw attention to Enbridge’s decades-old oil pipelines which span the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

And at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the National Park that attracts over 1 million visitors each year to Leelanau and Benzie Counties and was dubbed “most beautiful place in America” two years ago, rangers and staff are conscientiously educating visitors about climate change. The Lakeshore is also taking small, green steps to limit its contribution to climate change.

In late August, Sleeping Bear implemented a Clean Cities National Parks Initiative project. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and technical assistance from the Clean Energy Coalition, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, the National Lakeshore implemented a range of measures to reduce the environmental impact of its fleet. Specifically, the National Lakeshore was able to: replace aging fleet vehicles with three new plug-in electric vehicles and three propane pickup trucks; install electric vehicle charging stations and a tire inflation station; transition the vehicle fleet into a shared-resource motor pool structure, and provide “eco-driver” training to all employees. As a result of the initiative, the Lakeshore was able to reduce its fleet vehicle emissions by nearly 20 percent and promote the benefits of alternative fuels and fuel-efficient driving habits.

Read the related story, How Climate Change will affect Sleeping Bear Dunes.