Missourians take part in international climate change rally at Arch
By Andrew Guevara
For the Show-Me Institute
On Oct. 25, hundreds of people gathered underneath the Arch to urge President Barack Obama to take action against climate change in December at the United Nations Climate Control Conference in Denmark.
The event was organized by 350.org and other environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, 1 Sky, and Power Shift as part of an international day of simultaneous climate action rallies across the world to advocate that world leaders draft a strong climate treaty.
Many people brought signs printed with the word, “350,” a number that is significant to climate change activists.
According to Linsey Berger, the Master of Ceremonies for the eventand a student teacher at Missouri State University, 350 is the absolute safe maximum amount of carbon dioxide in parts per million that can be in the earth’s atmosphere. But unfortunately, she said, the planet is currently at 387 parts per million.
Mark Templeton, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay both spoke at the event, along with five others, including environmental experts and religious leaders.
“Our climate could become like that of South Texas or Northern Mexico,” said Templeton. “We need good economics in addition to science.”
Mayor Slay spoke briefly about his concern for climate change near the start of the rally.
“The problem is international, the fight is national and the solution is local,” he said. Slay was one of 60 U. S. mayors that signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement earlier this month in Seattle. The agreement is a pledge that has since been signed by more than 1,000 mayors across the country to take action to reduce carbon emissions in their respective cities.
“Here in Missouri, the voters voted last fall. We won every single county in the state with an overwhelming majority, two-thirds of the voters in the state of MO voted for clean energy,” said Kat Logan-Smith, executive director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
“They voted for clean energy because we don’t want to be left behind,” she said.
The clean energy initiative Logan-Smith referred to is Proposition C, passed in 2008, which requires investor-owned utilities to buy or purchase 15 percent of their energy from clean energy resources.
Although the state has taken initiatives to incorporate clean energy into the state’s power generation, the issue of Missouri’s coal-based economy has caused some to express concerns about what comprehensive climate legislation would do to the state’s economy, such as Sen. Claire McCaskill and state industry leaders.
“We’re [Missouri] going to have a different transition period,” said Berger, the student teacher and MC. “It’s not where we are, it’s where we need to be.”
Dan Cohn, a student at Washington University, and part of the campus-based group Green Action, also said he felt the long-term benefits would outweigh the short-term costs.
“Not passing legislation and allowing the production of coal will have much higher costs for Missouri and the world, economies everywhere,” Cohn said. “Instead of coal companies receiving subsidies, use those for clean energy to reduce the chance of catastrophic climate change and reinvigorate Missouri’s economy in a way coal won’t be able to.”