The crowd included senior citizens in wheelchairs, people clad as polar bears, a dad from Indiana cradling his toddler daughter wrapped in blankets, women from a Unitarian church in Corvallis, Ore., and college students including Florida's Molly Kampmann, who was holding a picture of a pipeline that read "this is why I'm hot."
Others held placards saying, "Read my lips: no new carbons," and "We're in a climate hole: stop digging." Another, referring to a method for extracting natural gas, said: "Don't be frackin' crazy."
"We're right in the path of sea level rise," said Mark Geduldig-Yactrosky, explaining his concern about climate change. He took a bus with a group organized by the Sierra Club in Portsmouth, Va. "We're a low-lying area. We have rising oceans and subsiding lands. So that personalizes it for us."
"There's no time for half measures. ... We have to start leaving carbon in the ground," McKibben said in pre-rally comments. He said Canadian environmentalists have blocked alternate pipeline routes for transporting tar sands within their country so the Keystone route is developer TransCanada's last option.
McKibben, author of The End of Nature and other books, says dozens of environmental and civic groups are converging to create a public movement in favor of fighting climate change. He noted that activists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and civil rights leader Julian Bond, were arrested in Keystone XL protests last week outside the White House, as were 1,238 people in September 2011.
Obama has pledged repeatedly to tackle climate change. In his State of the Union Address, he gave Congress an ultimatum: if lawmakers don't act, he will. Protesters say they are holding him to his word. They want him to not only reject the pipeline but also set limits on carbon pollution from both new and existing power plants. Last year, the EPA proposed limits only on new plants.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/17/climate-change-rally-human-pipeline/1925719/
Others held placards saying, "Read my lips: no new carbons," and "We're in a climate hole: stop digging." Another, referring to a method for extracting natural gas, said: "Don't be frackin' crazy."
"We're right in the path of sea level rise," said Mark Geduldig-Yactrosky, explaining his concern about climate change. He took a bus with a group organized by the Sierra Club in Portsmouth, Va. "We're a low-lying area. We have rising oceans and subsiding lands. So that personalizes it for us."
"There's no time for half measures. ... We have to start leaving carbon in the ground," McKibben said in pre-rally comments. He said Canadian environmentalists have blocked alternate pipeline routes for transporting tar sands within their country so the Keystone route is developer TransCanada's last option.
McKibben, author of The End of Nature and other books, says dozens of environmental and civic groups are converging to create a public movement in favor of fighting climate change. He noted that activists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and civil rights leader Julian Bond, were arrested in Keystone XL protests last week outside the White House, as were 1,238 people in September 2011.
Obama has pledged repeatedly to tackle climate change. In his State of the Union Address, he gave Congress an ultimatum: if lawmakers don't act, he will. Protesters say they are holding him to his word. They want him to not only reject the pipeline but also set limits on carbon pollution from both new and existing power plants. Last year, the EPA proposed limits only on new plants.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/17/climate-change-rally-human-pipeline/1925719/
