Press Statement of David Merrill
Executive Director of GlobalWarmingSolution.org
White House
July 6, 2005

Good morning.

My name is David Merrill and I have the honor of serving as the Executive Director of GlobalWarmingSolution.org, a national coalition of environmental, religious, peace and justice, youth, agriculture, and indigenous rights organizations.

We are gathered here in the shadow of this mightiest of houses…

Because somebody had to come…

As the very hopes and dreams of all mankind are on the agenda of a meeting in Scotland.

Somebody had to bear witness…

Because an out-of-control Fossil Fuel Machine is tearing through the Garden where we all live.

Somebody had to be here…

Because we are turning the atmosphere gracing this planet into a chaotic vat of fury and instability.

Somebody had to come…

So we did.

For fifteen years, like physicians attending a gravely ill patient, climate scientists have issued report after report of distressing signs, followed by plea upon plea for forthright action to stem further deterioration of the planet that has sustained us all for so long. A rare join statement from the science academies of the G8 nations has added to this crescendo of looming disaster, a crisis my own country, the United States, has played a leading role in creating, and I am ashamed to say, has become the chief impediment to humanity’s often noble efforts to address.

We come for three days.

And as we forgo bread and our bodies contract we aim to draw closer to the vulnerable spirit of all humanity. As we stand and sit upon this sacred space in our nation’s capital, resting upon the living earth, we are drawing a moral line in the sand, as we place our lives between the Fossil Fuel Machine the President deigns not to defy and our brothers and sisters, here, and in Africa, and wherever the four winds sweep the planet.

Who are we?

We are people of faith mindful of the unity of all mankind and aware of our dependence on the glorious Creation that sustains all life.

We stand with students, who by innocence born into a wayward nation, by their innocence and love are striving to bring that nation to a truer path.

We come from environmental organizations who demand that a sustainable balance be struck between human activity and the natural limits of this marvelous earth.

But most fundamentally, we come as American citizens from across this land to take moral responsibility from a President who has refused it, and through his recklessness has thereby placed all of mankind in unprecedented peril. And over the course of the next three days we hope a new spirit of determination will rise among our fellow citizens to join together with people of good will everywhere to dispel the shadow of ecological calamity falling over our lives and those of our children.

And not for these three days only, but until the specter of a destabilized atmosphere begins to recede before all humanity’s eyes.