#WhyIMarch: Naomi Klein on 'Sacred Duty' of Participating in #ClimateMarch

Author and activist Naomi Klein on Tuesday released a video explaining why she is taking part in the global Peoples Climate March on Saturday, calling the event "a sacred duty."

The march on April 29 comes as the Trump administration considers withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, despite record after record showing each new year hotter than the last. Meanwhile, a new analysis by the consultancy group Climate Advisers estimates that President Donald Trump's planned climate change policies could bring about an extra 500 million tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2025.

If the administration is successful in repealing former President Barack Obama's landmark Clean Power Plan (CPP) and other regulations, carbon emissions will begin to increase by 2020, the analysis found, while the CPP pledged to lower slash emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by that time.

Those dire possibilities were a clear driving force behind Saturday's march.

"I march because we can do so much better," Klein says in her video. "Climate change is a message. It's telling us we need to evolve."

"This is a moment," she says. "This a mission. It is a generational mission. It is a sacred duty. We have to march."

Similar messages abounded this week.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) also produced a video, stating, "This is the right time for a climate march. This is the right time for people to get out there and fight. Politicians see the light when they feel the heat."

Playwright and activist Eve Ensler wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian on Monday:

Humanity is struggling to determine whether we will accept living and dying in a world where 0.1 percent of the people reign over our Earth, our bodies, our rights in service of their own interests and profit or whether we collectively rise and fight to transform this predatory paradigm.

[...] Every struggle we have--women's liberation, racial justice, economic inequality, immigration rights, gender rights, disability rights--happens on the Earth, because of the Earth.

So that's why I am rising on April 29 with the climate march. Let our passion and fight for our mother be the energy and trajectory that fuels us and binds us to a larger struggle to end and transform this deadly and exploitative mindset.

And a Twitter feed under the hashtag #WhyIMarch displayed a vast range of voices expressing their reason for joining in the global event, from immigration to justice for frontline and communities of color.

"We have a responsibility that when fighting for black and brown liberation, it also includes access to clean air, to clean water, to green spaces, and diverse food options," said Layel Camargo of the artist collective CultureStrike.

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