On Sunday, Sept. 21, Columbia citizens gathered around Courthouse Plaza for the Walk for the Climate rally and 5K. The event was sponsored by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, a local non-profit organization working toward sustainability and social justice.
The protest was held to demand climate action and corresponded with Sun Day, a national day of action meant to advocate for clean energy sources.
As people trickled into the event, guests could visit booths from Sierra Club, Peace Nook, St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, the WE Project, Missourians for Justice in Palestine and more.
“We’re raising awareness on the urgent need for climate action,” Mark Haim, director of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, said. “We are living in a time that is perilous. Climate change is real. It’s happening, and it’s only getting worse, and we see an urgent need to take this seriously as an emergency, urgently needing to be addressed at all levels of public policy, from the federal, state and local on down.”
The rally started with a variety of speakers. One speaker was Carolyn Amparan, the chair of the Mid-Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club. She advocated for government climate action by referring to a survey by the Environmental Voter Project.
“Unfortunately, when they asked people about climate change, their top solutions that came to mind were reducing and recycling, education awareness and lifestyle changes,” Amparan said in her speech. “Now I am all in favor of living as sustainably as we can on this earth. And those are all good things, and I do them myself. But the truth is, lifestyle choice changes by individuals are not going to solve the climate crisis fast enough. It doesn’t reduce the energy emissions fast enough. So we must use public policies to accelerate our improvement.”
Next was a speech from Rasha Abousalem, an activist, humanitarian aid worker and member of Missourians for Justice in Palestine. She discussed the impact that the Palestine-Israel conflict is having on the environment.
“Gaza suffers not just from genocide, not just from scholasticide, not just from domicide, but just as destructive, Gaza is suffering from ecocide, the intentional destruction of the natural environment by human action, courtesy of the unrelenting violence unleashed by the Israeli military and funded by our very own U.S. tax dollars,” Abousalem said in her speech.
Jay Hasheider has experience with energy work, including with the city of Columbia and the Peace Corps. He spoke next about alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and provided information to attendees about how they can switch to these renewable power sources.
Following Hasheider’s speech was Josh Parshall, chief development officer for Local Motion. He spoke about the effects your choices in transportation have on the environment. He encouraged people to walk or ride bikes instead of driving, as it releases fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve spent decades, nearly a century, building cities for car drivers, building cities for cars, building houses for cars, and we have to stop doing that if we want to change the amount of pollution we’re creating just by getting around for our day to day,” Parshall said during his speech.
Following the speeches was the 5K Walk for the Climate. Starting at the courthouse, the route headed deeper into downtown and near campus, where chants of “Climate change is not a lie, don’t let our planet die,” and “No more coal, no more oil, keep that carbon in the soil,” could be heard. The chants were led by Abousalem.
Many people showed up with signs, while others took pre-made ones that were handed out. The signs said things like “Planet over profit,” and “Honk for climate action.” One participant, Chris, explained his sign that mentioned that we have to take care of Planet A because there is no Planet B.
“There’s no planet B,” Chris said. “The reason I care about climate change is because I live here. So do all of us. Millionaires think that maybe they can escape to Mars or outer space, but basically, all of us are going to be here on the planet, we have an obligation to take care of it.”
