People and pols join historic climate march

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Riverdale’s elected officials were just as ardent as the roughly 400,000 other people who descended on Manhattan’s streets Sunday to protest policymakers’ inaction on climate change.

Rep. Eliot Engel, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and Councilman Andrew Cohen seemed to share in the frustrations of demonstrators vexed at the lack of a comprehensive response to climate change in New York, the U.S. and the rest of the world.

“It’s time to stop pushing these things off to the next generation,” Mr. Engel said in a phone interview Monday. “I understand all the arguments: ‘We’re not the ones. It’s China; it’s India; it’s this country or that country.’ That may well be true, but we can do our part.”

Two days before the march, the Obama administration announced the U.S. would not contribute any money to a depleted United Nations fund for poor countries to deal with the effects of climate change.

“Obviously, I’d like him to contribute, but we don’t have unlimited resources,” Mr. Engel said. “I don’t know what context he rejected it in.”

“You have to understand… that I have colleagues that really think climate change doesn’t exist and global warming is a hoax,” he continued. “You have people like that who are elected to high office.”

A spokeswoman for Rep. Charles Rangel, whose district includes part of the northwest Bronx, said he was unable to attend the event, but added, “In our District, we have seen asthma rates exceed the national average, and the link between climate change and mounting health problems are [sic] undeniable. He will keep working with the Administration and participate in various events around the District to support initiatives directed at combating climate change.

People's Climate March, Eliot Engel, Jeffrey Dinowitz, Andrew Cohen, Jeff Klein, fracking, Shant Shahrigian
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