Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Climate Movement march set for April 29

WNY Peace Center Executive Director Victoria Ross

By Dan Almasi, Nick Fass and Andrew Kuczkowski
Bengal News West Reporters 
             In the wake of potential national environmental budget cuts, local environmental advocacy groups are ramping up efforts to bring such issues to light.
“We are directly lobbying our federal reps for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative,” said Chris Murawski, director of community engagement at Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper. “We have been keeping with our supporters through social media and our email list. We basically want people to speak out to their local elected officials. It’s a bipartisan issue; everybody needs clean water.”
The Trump administration’s approach to the environment is felt on a national level, but ripples through Buffalo, which is hosting this year’s People’s Solidarity Climate Movement march at 1:30 p.m., April 29. It will begin at Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo and will head to Lower Terrace then to Canalside and back to Niagara Square.
The WNY Peace Center heads the People’s Solidarity Climate Movement to combat these government actions.
“We really want to activate people, which I know a lot of people are concerned locally and, really, everywhere,” said Vicki Ross, executive director  of the WNY Peace Center. “Because there are such really draconian measures suggested that are quite the opposite of what we need.”
Trump once tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
That translated to the administration’s budget proposal in which the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget was cut 24 percent, while its staffing was cut by 20 percent. This impacts local funding of organizations like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.