A moment of eerie silence fell over the avenue of the Americas at 57th street. Followed by blaring horns, shouts, cries, and whistles to set off a symbolic alarm for Climate Change in New York City on September 21, 2014.

There was an estimated 311,000 strong-willed marchers from all over the word to turn attention to the catastrophe that is climate change. It was the largest recorded march in history supporting this cause. Several environmental organizations attended carrying signs and statistics to create an even stronger uproar of attention. Another shocking sight were the survivors of Hurricane Sandy who wore cardboard life-rafts scripted with “Preserve our communities” and “Organize to Survive.”

Climate change is called to action as a result of the recent drastic global changes in the world. The excess CO2 in the atmosphere from our cars, agriculture, energy supply, and deforestation create an oven over the earth. Our oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, and it is causing the abnormal tide patterns and deaths in many of our marine wildlife. As well as adding to the world’s increasingly fatal hurricanes, monsoons, and tsunamis.

That is not the worst of it, pollutants in our atmosphere, oceans, and land are destroying the place we call home. In the atmosphere the CO2 and pollutants are wrapping the planet in a thick blanket causing the global warming. Pollutants such as fertilizers and other waste in rivers are being dumped into our major oceans causing a “dead zone” in almost the mouth of every river.

For example, in the Mississippi river, nitrogen fertilizers flow down from Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois to be poured into the Gulf of Mexico, and this causes the plankton to die. Once these plankton are dead they absorb oxygen leaving the fish to suffocate and die as well. Only as one of the major environmental issues in America, it is creating a destructive epidemic throughout the Gulf of Mexico. This is on top of the BP oil spill that still devastates the region to this day.

To cause a change, these Marchers made a statement and called attention to this issue that has not entirely been taken seriously or even believed in. Scientists, Activists, and supporters came out on September 21st to prove that this issue does exist and is getting worse. The international advocacy group Avaaz collected a sum of 2.1 million signatures on a petition to demonstrate that the problem is all too real and is highly supported.

As a result of the protesting, The United Nations enviornmental commission meeting taking place the following Tuesday on September 23, 2014 commended with a few promises and results. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to reduce greenhouse gases in New York City by 80 percent by the year 2050, and The United Nations finalized a plan to take environmental action with a whopping $200 Billion of funding. We can expect to see serious environmental changes within the next ten years to hopefully clean up some of the mess we’ve made.