Protests as P.M. lands in New York

“Today I am marching for my children. I am marching so they can live in a world without worrying about the next big storm destroying their community”

Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi’s arrival in New York for Tupua Ban Ki-Moon’s Climate Change Summit was greeted by the biggest rally against climate change in history yesterday.

More than 100,000 people marched through the streets of New York City while thousands more did the same in separate marches around the world during the weekend.

Dubbed the "People's Climate March," the United Nations Secretary-General Tupua Ban Ki-Moon, New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio and United States senators were part of the march, held ahead of tomorrow’s United Nations Climate

Change Summit. The meeting, to be attended by 125 countries, is the first time in five years world leaders have gathered to discuss climate change.

The Summit aims to get world leaders to pledge emission cuts that could become part of a global agreement to be approved at United Nations' climate talks next year in Paris.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa is heading the Samoan delegation in New York. They left Samoa, via New Zealand, during the weekend.

Speaking in Apia about the Summit, Prime Minister Tuilaepa said leaders should take the lead, to support an ambitious climate change treaty in 2015.

“We should announce bold commitments of what we can do, not what others should do,” Tuilaepa said.

The Prime Minister said the outcome of the New York summit should send a clear signal to the Lima conference “to negotiate in earnest and in good faith so that Paris becomes the conference of hope for S.I.D.S in 2015.”

Tuilaepa reminded that 20 years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio, the Alliance of Small Islands States insisted on placing climate change on the international agenda. This has remained a priority item since then.

“Our message is the same today as it was in Rio in 1992 and that is climate change is a global problem and yet international action to address it remains grossly inadequate,” he said.

“Small island states contribute the least to the causes of climate change yet suffer the most from its effects.”

Tuilaepa said “sympathy and pity will not provide solace nor halt the disastrous impact of climate change.” This is why countries like Samoa are calling on “our global partners to step forward and commit to address once and for all the root causes of climate change.

“And in the implementation of your national commitments, S.I.D.S’s vulnerability should not be advanced or used as the reason for doing so. What individual countries do is first and foremost for the benefit of your people and their own economies by necessity and survival.”

As for S.I.D.S, Tuilaepa said they have no choice but to mitigate and adapt to the changing environment no matter what.

“It is the future of our people that is at stake, hence why we have to act now, not tomorrow, with or without the support of others.”

Tuilaepa also urged the United Nations to take concrete steps to stem rising sea levels, noting that critical problems do not recognise borders and hold no respect for sovereignty.

“The big problems of our small islands will sooner rather than later impact every country irrespective of level of development of prosperity,” he said.

“There are always great opportunities to deliver moralistic statements and declarations of intent. But grandstanding won't achieve our cause.”

According to USA Today, protesters yesterday chanted, "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!" They carried signs with messages such as: "Go Solar,""You Control Climate Change" and "There Is No Planet B."

Heather Snow, 57, said that the most pressing environmental issue facing the nation today is war.

"The whole Congress, everyone has gone insane, and it's time to end the insanity," she said. "I don't know how, I don't know when, but it's got to happen soon. We're running out of time."

Snow, a massage therapist from Wilmington, N.C., said she was at the march to "bring more consciousness to the issue."

Her sign asked simply, "Got Sanity?"

Organizers said some 550 busloads had arrived for the rally, which followed similar events in 166 countries including Britain, France, Afghanistan and Bulgaria.

“Today I am marching for my children. I am marching so they can live in a world without worrying about the next big storm destroying their community,” said Bill Aristovolus, the superintendent of an apartment building in New York City's working-class Bronx borough.

US Secretary of State, John Kerry will deliver keynote remarks at the summit's opening event. He will showcase climate action that the USA is taking at home and present his vision for advancing a global low carbon economy, his office said.

The People's Climate March and the summit are part of Climate Week NYC, an annual event "to get people together to make the business case for climate action," said Sylvain Biville of the Climate Group, which organizes the week.

The Climate Group's goal is "a prosperous, low-carbon future," which the group says will be achieved by "a rapid scale-up of low carbon energy and technology."

This year's Climate Week events follow a series of scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that conclude global warming is "unequivocal" and that it is extremely likely that human activity has been the dominant cause since the mid-20th century.

According to the I.P.C.C, the world is on a path to exceed a 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit rise in temperature, the limit that countries have set to ensure that the world would not suffer the worst effects of climate change.

On the streets of New York yesterday, the marchers, many of whom wore vivid colours, were led by indigenous groups from around the world. Organizers says many of these indigenous people are often the first victims of climate change.

At 12:58 p.m., there was a moment of silence to honor them. Demonstrators marked the moment by linking their hands above their heads.

Ezra Silk, 25, of Portland, Maine, said the USA has to take action on climate change if it wants to protect the nation's democracy. He pointed to Syria as an example of how climate change can contribute to a country's collapse.

"There was the worst drought in its modern history," said Silk, co-founder of The Climate Mobilization, which advocates a World War II-scale intervention on climate change.

"It caused a major upheaval when all the farmers came into the cities. There was a tyrant, who then oppressed his people, a civil war broke out, destabilizing the entire region, and a group like ISIS has come to the forefront. I mean that's the embodiment of what America is not about, and that's what collapse of civilization would look like."

Robyn Moore, 39, was at the march with her husband, Martin Moore, 40, their daughter, Charlotte, 4, and son, Henry, 15 months. Charlotte wore a simple sign of the earth around her neck, her hair adorned with leaves.

"We're here as a family for the future of our kids," she said.

- Additional reporting from USA Today and agencies

“Manu’s just the same. He stays with some old friends and they go outside playing touch rugby together. We were playing touch rugby together in our village at home”