Editor's Note: Maureen Plumleigh is not a member of the Rogers Lake Authority. Information in an article that ran in Monday's edition was incorrect.

New York — Maureen Plumleigh of Old Lyme had never participated in a demonstration before, let alone one as massive as the 310,000-person throng that converged on New York City Sunday to demand world leaders take substantive action to combat climate change.

“It would have been easy to stay in bed,” said Plumleigh, 65, who serves on the town’s Conservation Commission and the Environment Committee of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme. “But if I’m going to carry a message for people to stop using pesticides and herbicides and chemicals, I have to be part of a bigger voice. It’s a big message that many more people than me are carrying.”

Plumleigh was one of 50 people, including 35 members of the congregational church, who rode a bus from Old Lyme to the Peoples Climate March, an international event timed to call attention to the threat of climate change as world leaders prepared to converge at the United Nations for a climate summit this week. Two busloads of southeastern Connecticut residents and students also left from Connecticut College.

The Old Lyme bus was organized by Old Saybrook residents Mariette and David Brown, who carried an 8-foot Earth flag fashioned from cardboard tubes, duct tape and fabric to serve as a beacon for the group throughout the march.

“You hope this is the beginning of a significant movement,” he said several hours into the march, as the diverse crowd wound its way along 6th Avenue.

As he spoke, his wife motioned to a large screen monitor along the route showing marchers in France, one of 156 countries where climate marches were taking place.

“Look, they’re marching in Paris, too,” she said. Climate change, she said, has been “on her brain” for at least 10 years as the world’s most pressing problem.

“I’ve been more worried about it than anything else,” she said.

Massive traffic jams greeted the bus as it entered the city around 10 a.m. for the march, which was to begin at 11:30. Due to the larger-than-expected crowds, the actual walk along the question-mark-shaped route didn’t start for the Old Lyme group until 2 p.m., and they didn’t reach the official starting point of the march at Columbus Circle until 3:30. As they waited, they chatted with the groups around them — 280 college students from Toronto wearing red anti-fracking headbands, another group from Ontario, a contingent from Waco, Texas, and a retired elementary school teacher from Portland, Ore.who arrived on a “climate train.” Several in the crowd noted that they ended up at one of the more fitting locations along Central Park West for such a wait — the front of the American Museum of Natural History, near the iconic statue of President Theodore Roosevelt, who is known for his pro-conservation policies.

Paul Burger of Thunder Bay, Ontario, was among a large group of Canadians holding signs opposed to fracking and what he said are the Canadian government’s pro-fossil fuel policies.

“We’re really upset about tar sands and fracking and what’s going on with our government,” he said.

A sea of floats, signs with clever slogans and eye-catching pictures — from an ostrich with its head in the tar sands to the earth as a scoop of ice cream atop a sugar cone (“If it melts, it’s ruined”) stretched as far as anyone in the group could see in both directions. When the march finally started — at a pace many joked was more of a saunter or a “climate crawl” — drums, saucepans and harmonicas came out to give a rhythm to the slow movement. Geoff Kaufman of New London, a singer at Mystic Seaport, had led the busload from Old Lyme in several call-and-response environmental-themed songs as they traveled.

April Hyatt, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor from Moodus, said she joined the march because “I’m really interested in climate change and I really love our planet.”

Despite the traffic jams and the long wait at the start of the march, Hyatt said they day had been well worth it.

“It feels amazing,” she said. “I’m just really happy to be here.”

Carleen Gerber, senior pastor of the congregational church, came with her grandchildren, 8-year-old Leland Hine and 11-year-old Isabella Hine.

“They’re the youngest marchers in our group,” she said.

The event, she said, is a way of sending a message to political leaders that people will vote for candidates willing to give climate change the attention it deserves.

“And being here is a good morale booster,” she said. “It’s easy to get discouraged.”

j.benson@theday.com