We Need to Rally People!

This weekend I went to the Climate Change Rally on the National Mall.
First: AMAZING=Passion Pit, The Roots, Joss Stone, John Legend, and Sting!! (..If you were there and saw some random girl dancing up a storm and having the time of her life.. that was me! hah!) But, on the other hand, despite the gloriousness of the music and the dancing, I was actually a pretty disappointed walking away from the crowd.

In between all of the music performances, there were speakers from across the country talking about the importance of Climate Change awareness and what we can do as citizens to combat that. While some were better than others, everyone had something important to say and they all said something along the same lines: This is a huge problem and we need to do something about it NOW. Not only that, but they called upon the young generation--the crowd at the Rally, to make a change and make a difference.

And what did the crowd do? That's right--Nothing. Everyone stood there, didn't pay attention to the speakers or to what they were saying, they just yelled for the Roots to come on. Seriously! I mean, the Roots are awesome. And I was pumped to see them to. But the REASON for the concert, for the Rally, was to raise awareness about Climate Change and the contributing causing factors that we are doing to contribute to it. So pay attention to that too, please!!!

On my way home, I talked it out with my friend and tried to make sense of it. Why DON'T people care?? I reasoned that maybe it is something too huge to comprehend and therefore I can't expect people to spend much time trying to figure out what to do about it, if they can't even understand it on a fundamental level. I also thought maybe it is because this movement is asking for change that doesn't necessarily fit in to the Culture of Convenience that we are all used to, instead it is asking people to go out of their way a bit and make lifestyle changes. Or maybe it is simply true that less people actually BELIEVE it is happening. It is not something you see on the street or on a day-to-day basis. From an individuals perspective, life is pretty much business as usual, so there is not desperate reason to worry about it.

Whatever the reason, and I can list off more, we need to figure out a way to create the necessary mass support movement to change our day-to-day lives, to push policy change, and to first of all CARE about something as frightening and destructive as Climate Change!