The Largest Climate March in History Matters More Than You Think

In the distant future, if humanity is looking back on the 21st century from the comfort of a climate that is merely seriously disfigured and not catastrophically fucked, then teachers, parents, and historians may point to images of the People's Climate March that flooded the streets of New York City when they explain the story of how the worst was averted.

That was the moment, after all, when close to 400,000 people from around the world peacefully overwhelmed the heart of Manhattan, in late September of 2014, making their voices heard after two decades of pitiful inaction from politicians and world leaders.

This piece of history will be vividly illustrated: Clips from aerial footage of the event, embedded in future students' heat-and-water-resistant digitextbooks, will definitively illuminate the sheer number of people that left home to spend their Sunday in the streets, protesting a sweltering future ushered in by corporate profits.

The accompanying collage of photographs, Instagrams, and tweeted pics will make it easy to empathize with the members of the vast throng that followed the same route as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice President Al Gore, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

The march may not have been the single moment that changes everything, as its chief organizers—350.org, which, now, in 2014, isn't quite the household name it is in the far future—described it. But it was the best cultural, social, and visual demonstration that on climate, everything is changing. And that's crucially important.

For years, opinion surveys have clearly shown that people care about climate change. Poll after poll after poll indicated that a majority of Americans would support laws that reduce carbon emissions. The climate change-related fracking and Keystone XL movements have drawn fierce support, and produced some memorable demonstrations. Occupy had a contingent that focused heavily on climate change.

But there's been no single, major action that united protesters expressly around climate change itself, not nearly on this scale. The Cophenhagen climate march drew 80,000 people, and the Forward on Climate March in Washington DC drew over 35,000. The People's Climate March was ten times that.

Now, it seems crazy (and a little disheartening) that it's taken this long to see a movement emerge in full force like this, given how long nonprofits, clean energy companies, activists, artists, and certain public leaders have labored to bring attention to the issue.

The day the climate movement came of age. It took 25 years, but better late than never

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 21, 2014

Crazy that in all the years that climate has been a pressing issue, there's been nothing like this—not a single resounding climate protest moment. That there's never been a particular event that politicians and pundits could point to as the embodiment of public discontent with climate change. A pure distillation of the concern and anger—and fear—that climate change inspires in the populace.

That's what the People's Climate March gives us. A clear-as-crystal referent for anyone who's wondering whether ordinary people consider climate change a pressing issue.

400,000 people: That's the widely accepted attendance estimate as it currently stands. Some reports noted that NYPD police scanners put the estimates as high as 600,000. That's enough to make it not just the largest-ever climate march, which it definitely was, but maybe even the largest protest march of the last decade, period.

The images convey that scale: a packed crowd stretching for miles down Manhattan's 8th and 6th Avenues. It goes as far as the eye can see. Occupy never drew a crowd like this; the Tea Party's never even come close.

All of those images of the packed streets form a definitive tapestry, a visual record that can now be deployed as irrefutable proof that the climate issue animates bodies. And, importantly, that in an increasing range of cases, it's clearly a political winner to back.

Again, we've known this stuff for a while; the data has shown that people support fighting climate change and funding clean energy and so forth. But politicians see poll numbers roll by all the time—the great lesson of the Obama-Romney election was that politicians ignore the data at their own peril. But Romney ignored the data anyway, lost, and, in the process, illustrated a second lesson of that election—even though it's enormously stupid to do so, ignoring the numbers is still common practice.

Politicos ignore hordes of peaceful, determined, and hopeful people, too, but it's a bit harder. It's beyond informed speculation and phone polls, and part of the cultural fabric now. Now, every time a politician argues 'we can't afford to act' or 'the science isn't settled', this march will stand as an omnipresent counterpoint—400,000 people feel pretty strongly otherwise. That just didn't exist before.

Everyone I spoke to at the march—representatives from Bangladesh, which is threatened by rising seas, members of the 1199 SEIU union, environmental educators, even the police officers regulating the event—were thrilled to be there, and spoke with urgency about the need to address global warming.

Still, humanity has much work left to do if it hopes to avoid the worst impacts of global warming; to avoid a future where a handful of elites tell the story of that beautiful but futile climate march as they eke out their days in fortified domes in northern Canada. The latest climate science brings ever-worse news, after all. New Scientist describes the newest emissions study as follows: "World on track for worst case warming scenario."

And politicians still remain at a grave impasse, especially in the US, the last bastion for climate change deniers who want to be taken seriously. Thanks to them, legislative action to reduce carbon emissions in the richest and most culpable nation on Earth remains a lofty dream, even in the face of such massive people power. And now that the gates have been opened to the climate movement, we can assume that this is only the beginning; a new era of protest has begun.

But all it takes is a tipping point. Al Gore, who marched on Sunday, recently told me that he was amazed to see how quickly politicians embraced restrictive tobacco laws, one after another, even in tobacco-heavy states—after a certain point, after years of drawn-out battles. The same is true with gay marriage laws, which are changing faster than anyone could have imagined a decade ago.

Now, in the People's Climate March—a momentous cultural artifact that captures the spirit of hundreds of thousands of worried global citizens—we may have seen our flashpoint on climate action, an historic, lightning-filled bauble that could lend its electricity to propelling our politics towards a point when everything does finally change.

At the very least, it will prove an invaluable reference point and source of encouragement for future actions. At the most, it could help fuel a pivot between two possible futures—one in which humanity continues to thrive, and one in which we're taking our history lessons in underground bunkers, waiting out the hot-as-hell days.