Man Climbs World's Fair Unisphere To Draw Attention To Climate Change

As part of an elaborate display of protest and civil disobedience, a climate change activist last Friday climbed roughly 70 feet onto the Unisphere, the iconic steel globe in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Shortly after noon, Glen Schleyer, a 49-year-old Forest Hills resident who volunteers with the group Extinction Rebellion, made his way to the top of South America section of the sculpture and unfurled a 20-foot long banner calling for zero carbon emissions by 2025.

“The top of South America is where the Amazon is. That’s the most notable atrocity happening at this moment,” he said, referring to more than 26,000 fires—the highest in a decade—that have been recorded inside the tropical rainforest.

The action was timed to coincide with the U.S. Open.

Schleyer, a former attorney who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, said the entire enterprise took less than an hour. He claimed to be the first person to climb the Unisphere since George Willig and Jerry Hewitt accomplished the feat in 1976. Known as the "human fly," Willig was later known for scaling 110 stories of the World Trade Center.

According to Schleyer, the hardest part of ascending the World's Fair monument was making it up the approximately 10-foot-tall base of the sculpture, which is slippery because it is surrounded by a water fountain. To make matters worse, it started pouring as he made his way up.

“Otherwise I climbed like a third grader climbs the monkey bars,” he said.

As soon as he came down, Schleyer said he was initially met by several upset parks officials and then scores of NYPD officers who were likely nearby due to heightened security around the U.S. Open, which ended last night.

After being taken to the 110th Precinct in Queens, he was taken to the central booking unit, where he spent the day in jail before being arraigned Friday night in Queens Criminal Court. He was released with his period in jail counting as time served and ordered to pay a $120 fine.

Founded in 2018, Extinction Rebellion is one of several grassroots organizations that has sought to bring attention to the imminent dangers of global warming by coordinating major nonviolent civil disobedience actions such as shutting down major roads and scaling large structures.

Back in June, the group protested the New York Times over what it saw as its insufficient coverage of climate change. Its members briefly blocked Eighth Avenue in front of the newspaper’s headquarters with a staged die-in. During that event, Schleyer and another member were arrested for climbing and hanging a banner on the Port Authority, which stands across the street from the Times building.

For his latest action, Schleyer said he practiced the climb twice, once the night before during a walk with his Dachshund and climate activist mascot Roxie, and again on Friday morning.

He acknowledged that he may not fit the bill of a typical climate change activist, which has drawn the involvement of many young people. A former corporate attorney, he retired in 2017 as a partner at the prominent law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

"I got burnt out," he said.

Prior to getting involved in climate activism, he had been involved in various causes, but always by "working within the system."

He said he was persuaded to take a more radical approach after realizing the gravity of the situation that climate experts have laid out. Last year, a landmark United Nations report urged a series of near-term actions, including cutting emissions 45 percent from their 2010 levels before 2030.

Schleyer, a father of two, said the findings "made it clear that we have short period of time to transform our society or my kids are not going to have a stable world to live in."

He added: "Right now, people are just kind of sleepwalking a little bit. I’m just trying to raise alarms."