IOWA VIEW

We must act, as caretakers of God's creation

By Joan Fumetti
Special to the Register

It has been said that we are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

Whatever our level of understanding of climate science, no matter how busy we are with our everyday lives, whether or not we have children and grandchildren of our own, that assertion ought to give us pause.

Even if one believes there is only a small chance that such a statement is true, with a risk so overarching and devastating, as people of conscience that statement ought to give us pause.

It did me, and that is why I headed to New York City in late September to be part of the People's Climate March.

Organizers eagerly anticipated that our gathering could be the largest climate action in history. Until that morning, it was hoped that 100,000 people might come out. As our interfaith contingent waited an hour and a half beyond our scheduled start time it became clear that our numbers must be greater than anyone had imagined possible.

We were right — 400,000 people came from far and near to walk together. We were babes in arms, elders with canes and every sort of person in between. Our signs bore witness to our myriad perspectives, yet it felt like a family reunion where we understand that we are joined in ways deeper than our knowing. We were part of a rising wave. Over 2,600 additional events took place in 162 countries. It is believed that 675,000 of us around the world took to the streets to awaken our leaders with a call to sanity.

Those already experiencing the greatest impacts of climate disruption led the march — indigenous peoples, survivors of Hurricane Sandy and young people, fully aware that the livability of the planet they inherit depends on choices we make today. One young woman raised a picture of the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character who speaks for the trees and tells a young friend, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Upwards of 400,000 people march through midtown Manhattan on Sept. 21 as part of the People’s Climate March. The march was a worldwide mobilization calling on world leaders meeting at the United Nations to commit to urgent action on climate change and 100 percent clean energy.
From left, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, primatologist Jane Goodall, former Vice President Al Gore, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon participate in the climate march.

Calls for clean, renewable energy were everywhere, along with the plain-as-day, common sense demand that a price be put on carbon pollution.

Mennonite families, their children holding bright yellow daisies, found their place next to Lutherans holding signs calling for climate justice, a recognition that those who have done the least to cause global warming are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Those of us from the United Church of Christ were nearby. A pastor held a sign asking "What would Jesus divest from?" reminding us that it is wrong to profit from wrecking the world. The Methodists wore T-shirts declaring themselves caretakers of God's creation.

We were surrounded by Unitarians, Quakers, Ethical Humanists and Buddhists. I took a photo of a woman dressed as the Ganges River, sorrowing over something holy being made toxic, while Hare Krishna folks in saffron robes walked along the sidewalk, chanting and waving to the crowd like long-lost friends.

It was glorious, and we were giddy with a spirit that had drawn us together and was generating among us the most renewable energy of all, inspiration.

Then I noticed an older man standing by himself holding a small sign made from construction paper that said simply "Protect our Planet." I asked if I could take his picture and asked too where he was from. He pointed up the street. He was from the neighborhood and had been looking out his window when he decided this was something he wanted to be part of.

"What about you?" he asked. "I'm from Iowa."

"Iowa? You're from Iowa?! You came all this way?" and he hugged me and kissed my cheek and found in my pilgrimage the inexplicable hope that we were all finding in one another and in being together what none of us could be alone.

The march awakened in me a sense of the tremendous power held by "we the people" and an awareness that we are living in a new time when real leadership is emerging from the grassroots, not from elected officials.

It is up to us to create the political will for a livable world, a will so strongly felt and widely shared that it emboldens elected leaders to act with wisdom and courage for the common good. It is up to us to step out from behind political affiliations and ideologies and then, guided by moral compass and deep compassion, live into the truth that we are all in this together.

It is up to us to take back issues that have been politicized and say, "As people of conscience we will look with clear vision at the defining moral issue of our time. We challenge the 'business as usual' unraveling of creation and cast the vision of the world in which we want to live, the world we want to pass on to future generations."

Leonardo DiCaprio marched with us, and as a newly appointed United Nations Messenger of Peace, he spoke two days later at the U.N. Climate Summit around which the march had been organized.

"I am not a scientist, but I don't need to be," he said. "Because the world's scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis: If we do not act together, we will surely perish. Now is our moment for action."

So let's roll.

JOAN WOOTERS FUMETTI of Windsor Heights is a minister and climate activist. Contact: fumetti.j@gmail.com.