MIDDLEBURY — Drivers heading along Halpin Road, a dirt road in Central Addison County, early Friday afternoon encountered an unusual site. Over 100 people of all ages were walking north roughly five abreast, carrying brightly colored banners and backpacks in sharp contrast to the brown April fields next to them.
The group, which was embarking on a five-day climate solutions march, Next Steps for Climate Justice, from Middlebury to Montpelier, was well-organized, with individuals clad in yellow vests shouting “car” as needed and a VW van (powered by biodiesel) stacked with food.
Beekeeper Ross Conrad almost didn’t join the climate march, in part because he was in the midst of his annual spring fast. And he generally prefers action — like serving on the Middlebury Energy Committee and living in an off-the-grid yurt — over activism.
“But I was thinking about it and it seemed really symbolic that we all are going to have to start doing things that are going to be difficult and tough and we’re not sure we’re going to be able to do them,” said Conrad. “And that’s kind of why I’m here. I haven’t eaten for four days, but I think I can walk from Middlebury to Bristol.”
Sage Lalor, a senior at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester who is organizing an Earth Day Summit at her high school, has been interested in environmentalism since a young age. Lalor said she hopes to meet more climate activists closer to her age at the march.
“One problem I keep running into is, since I live in a very small place, I try to join environmental groups, but most of the people who join those groups are older people,” she laughed.
The aim of the 65 mile march is to build community among environmental activists from around the state and to push lawmakers to pass more aggressive climate change legislation, said Zac Rudge, communications manager for 350Vermont, the nonprofit that organized the march.
Maeve McBride, director of 350Vermont, said the march began at Middlebury’s Town Green to symbolize the “terminus” of Vermont Gas’ controversial 41-mile Addison County pipeline.
“We’re saying, ‘here and no further’ to fossil fuel infrastructure,” she said when the group broke for lunch in a front yard sprinkled with apple trees.
When the group arrives in Montpelier next Tuesday, they will call on lawmakers to support two bills this session that would ban new fossil fuel infrastructure in Vermont, she said. Over 270 people have signed up to participate in at least some leg of the march.
Gail Schwartz, a writer who splits her time between St. Albans and Southern Quebec, said she was walking with her 9-year-old son to build on “personal solutions” her family has been starting, like going zero waste by 2020.
Schwartz said her family decided to forgo a vacation this year due to pollution associated with flying, which many of her friends thought was crazy. But Schwartz said hearing about weather events like a recent storm in Mozambique that killed hundreds of people reinforced her feeling that “privileged people” need to start making sacrifices.
“I feel like ‘business as usual’ should stop and people should be in the streets 24/7,” she said.
Bill McKibben, Ripton resident and founder of global climate justice movement 350.org, has issued that cry for some time now. McKibben reminisced while walking about a climate march he had helped organize over Labor Day weekend in 2006 from Robert Frost’s cabin in Ripton to Burlington. Around 1,000 people ended up joining in, he said, noting that it was “a lot warmer” during that march.
Almost 13 years later, McKibben said he was disappointed that climate change had not made a list of top five priorities for the House Democrats this session.
“It feels crazy that so little has changed politically, even in places like Vermont,” he said.
The switch to lower emissions energy technologies — such as solar power and electric vehicles — is already happening, but not fast enough, McKibben said. A report released last fall from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that capping global warming at a 1.5 degrees C increase would require global carbon dioxide emissions to decline by 45% in the next 12 years.
“If you take 50 years to do it, you’re going to break the planet in the meantime,” he said.
On Saturday, marchers will stop in Geprags Park in Hinesburg at 10 a.m. for a “climate grieving” ceremony. Geprags Park was the site of heated protests when Vermont Gas constructed a stretch of the Addison County pipeline through the park.
The march will end with a rally at the Statehouse next Tuesday afternoon.
