Ronald Bailey: New York's Mixed Up, Anti-Capitalist People's Climate March
The People's Climate March ambled genially down 6th Avenue in New York City on a Sunday afternoon in September. The slogan was "To Change Everything, We Need Everyone." Not everyone showed up, but the march did attract between 300,000 and 400,000 participants, making it by far the largest climate change mobilization in history. Prominent marchers included former Vice President Al Gore, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with such leading environmentalists as Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The marchers were hoping to pressure the United Nations Climate Summit into promising to adopt stringent measures to prevent catastrophic man-made global warming.
"System change, not climate change," was the ubiquitous slogan, and the system that they think needs changing is markets and private property. I overhead one marcher explaining to another, "We must have a better capitalism, better than the malignant corporate system we have now."
Among the chief capitalist villains: Monsanto.