Climate Change March Unites 40,000 People In London

Turning Up The Heat

People's Climate March  was organized in 150 countries, to demand urgent action on climate change. Some 40,000 people turned up in London and 400,000 in New York, all urging world leaders to commit to a global climate change treaty. On Tuesday, world leaders are convening in New York for a UN climate change summit. The last one was 5 years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark and was extremely disappointing, leading to no global climate change policies. Worryingly, annual carbon emissions have increased by 2.5% in the last year, suggesting that climate change should really be at the forefront of world leader's minds and should be taken as seriously as other threats.

In organizing these big events, the role of social media should not be underestimated. The Facebook event for the People's Climate March in London had almost ten thousand attendees, and the organizers urged people to share the event via Twitter and Facebook. With the amount of people that turned up around the world, this campaign was clearly a success, but the role of social media does not end here.

Celebrities such as Emma Thompson and Vivienne Westwood marched in the streets of London to show their support for the cause. Celebrities who have a massive following on social media platforms have an enormous advantage in promoting events like these. Throughout the day Cara Delevigne, the up and coming young model, shared pictures of the march on her Instagram, seen by over seven million followers. Russell Brand, who has a whopping 8.24 million followers on Twitter, was sharing selfies and continually spreading the message to more and more people.

Big media agencies, unfortunately, did not the cover the event as much as they should have, and on most major news outlets websites' the story has not even made to the front page, while people queuing for the iPhone 6 did. In response to this individuals and celebrities alike were sharing their stories and updates via social media. If you wanted to know what was happening during the Climate Change March, social media platforms was the only reliable way to do it.

With the huge amount of people that attended this marches, we would hope that enough world leaders such as Barack Obama and David Cameron, have received the message and that the UN summit will lead to some serious world-changing policies to decrease CO2 emissions and save the environment.

Laura Veit

Laura is a recent graduate from University of East Anglia in Film and Television Studies, currently interning as a content writer but hoping to one day live off her writing. Follow her @LauraAtSMF.

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