In the interest of resource conservation, I decided to reuse a home-made sign from Occupy for the big Climate March in New York last month. I punched two holes in the top of the 12" by 14" cardboard, inserted a length of string and wore the sign around my neck, to avoid having to spend five hours with my hands held up above my head. My sign had, on one side, a short quote from a massive document known as the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and on the other, a lengthier quote from Naomi Klein in The Nation magazine.

I was among the seven busloads of area locals and students departing from a New Paltz campus parking lot shortly after 8:00 a.m. We were among the approximately 400,000 people from all over the country who converged along a thirty block stretch of Central Park West above 59th street or joined the march en route. Our purpose was to dramatize the urgency of slowing and reversing the race to worldwide climate catastrophe.

Similar marches occurred in cities virtually around the globe. The New York event was joined by such luminaries as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio and, of course, environmental leader Bill McKibben, one of the prime march organizers. I had heard him speak at New Paltz several days earlier.

Since a majority of our group were students, we were all headed for the youth staging area between 66th and 72nd streets. Other areas were designated for environmental non-profits, indigenous peoples, labor unions, religious communities and other categories, but I decided it would be more fun to stick with the New Paltz group. We walked south on Columbus Avenue to 72nd Street before heading a block east to Central Park West.

Columbus Avenue in this region hosts a weekend green market. I stopped near a produce stand to loosen the shoelace on one of my hiking shoes, when I heard someone call my name. I looked up and recognized a kid I'd known casually from New Paltz several years ago, whom I'd often seen skateboarding down lower Main Street on a Friday or Saturday night. He was living and working in the City now. Small world.

That short diversion separated me from familiar faces in the New Paltz contingent, but no matter, I continued on to the staging area and ended up mingling with students from Brown U. (RI), Guilford College (NC) and one other out-of-state college that I don't now recall. I had a thought that proved correct: that the lengthier quote on one side of my sign, though requiring an investment of 20 seconds or so for someone to read, might serve as a conversation starter. So I reversed the sign so that the Naomi Klein quote was facing out. A number of times I would catch someone squinting to read the words from 15 or 20 feet away. I'd play with the sign a little to get their attention, and after smiles, we'd get talking.

My opening line after the person finished reading and looked up was often, "Gee, it's nice to meet a young person these days who doesn't have Attention Deficit Disorder." This would always get a laugh, including from a girl who answered, "I have A.D.D., but I took my medicine this morning!" A boy of about 18 or 20 a few yards off to my side was obviously trying to read my message. I turned to make the sign more easily visible and took a step closer. He finished reading it, smiled and gave me a hug. A woman with two small children was standing along the side of the street with a poster that read, "No More Market Solutions." I turned my sign over to show the other side, that read, "Climate Change is the Greatest Example of Market Failure." Tried to get her attention, but she was too busy with her kids to look up. Flipped my sign back again.

We had arrived on Central Park West before 10:30. The march was supposed to begin at 11:30, but, like cars lined up in front of a traffic light that has just turned green, only the front of the line moves at first. By 12:30, those of us who had staged around 70th Street had progressed only two blocks.

An hour later, we were finally down at 59th Street, the bottom of the Park, where we turned east. And now, we were marching at close to a normal walking speed. I got on the left-hand edge and hurriedly moved up a couple of hundred yards, then made a quick exit onto a pathway leading into the Park, where I sat down on a bench and ate the sandwich I'd brought for lunch. Then I rejoined the march.

We turned south onto 6th Avenue, west on 42nd Street, south on 11th Avenue. Here the march ended. It was about 3:30. There was no rally planned, nor speakers, and people were encouraged to disperse to their buses or wherever they might be going. There was a bit of an impromptu street party in the 30s, where someone recognized me from Rainbow gatherings, though he wasn't familiar to me. The New Paltz buses were waiting on 10th Avenue in the mid 20s.

The most exhilarating part of the day was of course the time spent on the streets of the City. But the most instructive was the bus ride home. A 91-minute DVD was played, titled, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, a documentary that explores the role of animal agriculture in climate change and other environmental crises. Some of what was in this documentary I was already aware of, but the movie brought it all into sharp focus. Some unsettling facts: free-running wild animals account for only 2% of the land animal biomass of the planet. Humans and their livestock account for 98%. Most of this biomass is in the form of cattle. Cattle produce vast quantities of methane gas, which is a greenhouse gas vastly more potent than CO². As a matter of fact, livestock account for more than half of all greenhouse gasses, in terms of their climate impact.

We can — and must — transform the carbon economy to one that uses clean, renewable energy; but that will not be enough. Unless we wean ourselves from beef, dairy and, to a lesser extent, other animal products, we are ultimately doomed.

Some other tidbits: a single quarter-pound hamburger requires over 600 gallons of water to produce. Cattle raising is the leading cause of rainforest and habitat destruction, species extinction, water scarcity and food scarcity in the world (it takes some seven pounds of feed to add one pound to a cow's body weight).

The major environmental organizations are silent about all this. It would be strategic suicide to shift the focus away from the big fossil fuel companies at this time and "blame" mom and pop and the kids as they sit down to meatloaf at the family dinner table. But once the energy economy is transformed, the focus must inevitably shift to the next stage. Fortunately, unlike CO², methane reduction in the atmosphere occurs relatively quickly, once its production is radically reduced. But whether the various political, economic and societal correctives will happen in time to stave off runaway, catastrophic global warming, is very far from certain.

Individuals, of course, don't have to wait to act. I stopped buying meat 37 years ago, except for bacon one morning a week (replaced by venison sausage two years ago). I eat a single, 6-ounce meat meal per week, virtually all wild game except for the occasional kick-down, dinner invitation or thrice yearly restaurant meal. It can be done. I would give up even this much animal flesh in a heartbeat as part of a society-wide effort promising real results.

Surviving climate change will ultimately require transforming from a hyper-capitalist, growth-driven society to one that is less materialistic, more egalitarian, less competitive, more cooperative and, yes, vegetarian.

Which brings me back to the Naomi Klein quotation on my sign:

"It is more comforting to deny reality than to accept the shattering of one's belief system: it is not disagreement with the facts of Climate Change that drives right-wing denialists, but rather, opposition to the political implications of those facts."