The biggest cause of climate change is overpopulation. One of the best ways to fight climate change is to guarantee the right to safe, legal, affordable abortions. That's one of the demands of the Women's March, according to www.WomensMarch.com. The Women's March in Northampton was set to start on October 17, 2020 at noon at the corner of Main and Pleasant streets.

The Amherst Women's March was set to start on October 17, 2020 at 1 p.m. outside 4 Boltwood Avenue.

The Brattleboro Women's March was set to start at the town Common on October 17, 2020 at 1 p.m.

More information about all three events is at www.WomensMarch.com.

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As of October 15, more than 18 people had RSVP'd for the Keene Women's March that was set for October 17, 2020. The march was set to start at noon at Railroad Square. Details are at:

www.facebook.com/events/378493349850427

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Thanks to the many local people who RSVP'd to a planned march in Brattleboro, and signed a petition to the Brattleboro select board, a facility in Brattleboro that would have turned trees into electricity has been canceled. Due to this grassroots victory the November 15, 2020 march is canceled.

The Brattleboro facility would have been worse for climate change than a coal power plant, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The Brattleboro facility would have caused lung cancer, according to the American Lung Association. Search these group's web sites for "biomass."

The Brattleboro facility would have been allowed to burn the wood equivalent of 131,000 fifty-year-old trees per year. The trees would have come from Green Mountain National Forest. The next step for the activists is to turn the Forest into a national park, where logging is banned. Local people are working with a group that has a web site at www.restore.org to make this happen.

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As of October 15, more than 11 people had RSVP'd to a union rally that was set for October 21, 2020 in Westfield, Massachusetts. Westfield borders Holyoke. More information about the rally is at:

www.facebook.com/events/386125659215363

According to that web page, the rally will go from noon until 1 p.m. outside Noble hospital at 115 West Silver Street. The hospital is owned by Baystate corporation. The page has contact info for the organizers. It says, “Noble nurses have scheduled a safe, socially distanced informational picket... prompted by Baystate’s failure to provide information and its refusal to agree to nurses' contract proposals to preserve and improve hospital services, and properly value the care nurses have provided during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”

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The Center for Biological Diversity works nationally and employs dozens of lawyers. Stephanie Feldstein is the group's population and sustainability director. On June 23, 2020 she told the Valley Post, “We can’t ignore the reality that global population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and continues to rise. If we don’t address population growth through reproductive freedom and gender equity, our efforts to fight climate change will always be an uphill battle. And this isn’t just a problem in other countries – the average American has a carbon footprint 700 percent larger than the average person in most African countries, yet nearly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unplanned.”

She continued, “The climate crisis demands action on all fronts. We must simultaneously shift to clean, just renewable energy, hold polluting corporations accountable, transform our food system, and expand human rights to stabilize our population. When we avoid talking about population, we’re not only leaving out a critical piece of the puzzle to reduce emissions and advance reproductive rights, but we miss an opportunity to confront xenophobia and inequality as perspectives that have no place in the environmental movement and that interfere with real solutions.”

According to

https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2

“In just 2.3 days the average American or Australian emits as much (carbon dioxide) as the average Malian or Nigerien in a year.”

While the chances of stopping climate change may seem small, in 1989, the chances of Nelson Mandela -- who was then seven years into a life sentence in prison -- becoming president of South Africa were also small. In 1994, Mandela was elected president and one of the world’s most brutal and racist governments was overthrown.