Three hundred thousand protestors flooded the streets of Manhattan this past Sunday -- some brandishing signs saying "There Is No Planet B," others decked out in feathered hats and Lorax costumes , but all in the name of climate change action. Many are heralding the march as the largest climate demonstration ever held . But is it the beginning of a mass movement?
Not quite, says Harvard historian Nancy Koehn . "I don't think it's the beginning," she says, borrowing a phrase from Winston Churchill . "It is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. It is perhaps the end of the beginning."
What we're seeing now, Koehn surmises, is the end of the first phase of climate change action -- that is, getting a people to care about it. The conventional wisdom that Americans are ambivalent about climate change, she says, is a false one.
"I don't think it's the case that Americans don't care about climate change," Koehn says. "If you survey Americans about where climate change sits relative to economic security, relative to the care they have for their children's future, I don't think it would end up below number ten. I think it would creep in at six, or five, or four."
For Koehn, then, the problem driving broader inaction on climate change isn't apathy: it's direction. That's what it will take to get the next phase up and running.
"What Americans need or want...is real leadership," Koehn says. "We're waiting for different people on the public stage to tell us how we can be called to action on this."
To hear more from Nancy Koehn on the future of climate change activism, tune in to the full interview on Boston Public Radio above.