lagilman | "Walk the Walk, Mister President."

So there was a "Forward on Climate Change" march in Washington. You may or may not have seen coverage on the news (my folks caught some on ABC last night).

It was a march to call on President Obama to walk the walk, now that he's talked the talk, and DO something about the damage we're doing to our world, starting with an executive order to refuse the Keystone pipeline access to the US.

"We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it's too late." - President Barack Obama, 2013 State of the Union Address

They had hoped for 20,000 people to show up, in sub-freezing temperatures. The conservative estimate on-site was 35,000 (with upward swings to 45,000). That's 4x the number of people who showed up for the first rally. I saw young kids with their parents, I saw people in wheelchairs, I saw folk well into their 70's and 80's. I saw, slightly paraphrasing the words of one of the First Nation speakers, "red cousins and black cousins, yellow cousins and white cousins, here today as one family."

We heard from local and national activists, we heard from politicians and Wall Street investors who see no money in the "old way" of doing things but are urging investment in alternative energies as the smart money, and we heard incredibly moving speeches from those representatives of the First Nations in Canada, talking about the damage already done, both environmentally and legally. We marched on the White House, sometimes chanting, sometimes singing (why can no-one ever remember the last verse of "This Land is Our Land?"), sometimes talking amongst ourselves, sharing stories and plans, hopes and fears.

And polar bears.

There wasn't much media coverage - we weren't radicals, or dangerous, or particularly media-worthy, I guess. Just a portion of the population who've looked around and thought "no. this can't go on. This cannot continue." Because it's not about what we'll leave to our grandchildren any more, some thing in the distant near future. It's today. It's yesterday.

Once we've strip-mined and polluted the earth, killed off half the eco-system and turned the rest toxic...what then, humanity? Because for all that we explore space, hoping to find new life - and new homes - out there, there's nobody saying "oh sure, you shat in your own house, come live in ours now!"

I mean - would you?