There were about 100 Rochester area residents marching in the People's Climate March in New York Sunday. The event drew more than 300,000 people.
One of the participants, Peter Debes, chair of the Rochester chapter of the Sierra Club, said it's difficult to measure the potential impact of something like this.
"All we can do, I think, is look back at history and say marches in the past, like the one that Martin Luther King organized that did coalesce a large group of people in a way that got the nation's attention raised a sense of urgency,” Debes said. “I think that's what our hope is about this one."
Debes is discouraged by what he called the slow rate of progress so far in addressing climate change globally. He said many don’t seem to grasp the sense of urgency for finding solutions.
"One of the first scientists who did research on this likened it to the idea of what it would be like to see a large asteroid approaching earth. If it did, everyone would be mobilizing to see what we could do to avoid it."
Debes said young people were well-represented at the march. About half of the Rochester contingent were students from the University of Rochester and RIT.