09 January 2007

step it up 2007!

i got this note earlier today from a friend that i just must pass along! feel free to spread it in your area! and keep yer eyes peeled for the event in your hometown, or make one of your own!!!

peace.
k.

06072005.pdf. Hopefully, this will help you recruit folks to take part who haven't, up until now, been convinced the time to act is now.

http://www.grist.org/comments/dispatches/2007/01/08/mckibben/index.html?source=daily

Step It Up

Introducing a brand-new, mass-protest climate movement for 2007

Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College. His next book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future , will be published in March.

Monday, 08 Jan 2007

MIDDLEBURY, Vt.

The most important question about global warming right now is: what do I do once I've changed the damned lightbulbs?

And one small answer is StepItUp2007.

This is the first of 12 dispatches I'll write, one a week through mid-April, that will chronicle the first nationwide do-it-yourself mass protest, and by far the biggest demonstration yet against global warming.

If all goes well -- and by "all going well," I mean "if you help" -- then on Saturday, April 14, we'll kick off the approach to Earth Day with hundreds upon hundreds of simultaneous rallies all across America, designed to start pressuring Congress to take decisive action on climate change.

Americans will gather in iconic places across the country. Some will be familiar at a glance: the top of the Grand Teton, underwater off Hawaii's coral reefs, on the levees above the Ninth Ward, along a blue line on Canal Street in Manhattan that marks the city's possible new beachfront. Others will be less famous: the steps of your church, the picnic grove in your city park, the biggest barn in your county. But everywhere people will be saying, loud and clear, that it's finally time for serious action from Washington, D.C., on the mightiest problem the world has ever faced.

All you need to take part is a crowd -- small in small places, bigger in big places -- and a digital camera. By nightfall we'll have a cascade of images for everyone, including local and national media, to look at. We'll have proof that Americans care deeply enough to act. It should be lovely in every sense of the word.

We're not an organization. There are seven of us: six recent college graduates earning the sum of $100 a week for their labors, and me, earning only the chance to exorcise some of the ghosts that have been haunting me since I wrote The End of Nature in 1989. For almost two decades, the few of us working on climate change felt like we were trapped in a bad dream, unable to get anyone else to see the monster looming behind them. In the last couple of years, that's begun to change. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore, public opinion has turned. Polling shows people know there's a problem, that they want action. And we have the scientists to tell us exactly what's wrong, the engineers and the economists to offer useful solutions. There have been dozens of good books in the last two years, and fine documentaries. Every Rotary Club in America has seen An Inconvenient Truth .

We have, in other words, all the parts of a movement except the movement itself.

Earlier this year, a few of us led a march across Vermont for global-warming action. By the end of five days and 50 miles, we had a thousand people marching. That was sweet -- it was enough to insure that all our state's candidates for Congress pledged to support 80 percent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050. But it was also sad. Because that thousand people was the largest global-warming demonstration yet held in this country.

We could change that with a march on Washington. But traveling to Washington spews an immense amount of carbon. And anyway, for the first time in history, we have the tools to do this a different way: to assemble in the places that mean the most to us, the very places that will be wrecked as the planet warms, and make our point there. With digital video cameras and YouTube; with cell-phone pictures and Flickr. With the tools to let our political leaders know that people back in their districts care, that this isn't a second-tier issue -- something to deal with far in the future -- or with penny-ante compromises.

Anyone can play. Some of the day's actions are being organized by Sierra Club chapters and NRDC offices; many more will come from local groups who know that the cove or wetland or inner city or community garden that they've worked to protect and nourish is threatened by drought and sea level rise. Many more still will be organized by people who aren't official activists at all, just so concerned about climate change that they're ready to do something. We're using that same goal we used in Vermont: 80 percent cuts by 2050. But the numbers are less important than the intent -- it's time to finally start doing something, and something on the same scale as the problem we face.

We have most of the tools you need to make a rally work: banners, pointers on working with reporters, and more. And you have the most important tool: your list of friends and their email addresses. All you're asking is that they assemble for an hour on a Saturday to hoist a banner and take a picture. And each of them has a list of email addresses, and ...

The key first steps are to forward this small essay to as many people as you think might act on it, and then go to our website -- StepItUp2007.org -- and sign up to host a rally. It's not a perfect website yet, but it will get better quickly. And already it shows what really matters: a kind of desperate creativity from across the country. Desperate but joyful. And ready to get started.

--
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminister Fuller

Labels: action, bill mckibben, global climate change, rally, step it up 2007

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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE!

Q: What causes global warming?

A: Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

Q: Is the earth really getting hotter?

A: Yes. Although local temperatures fluctuate naturally, over the past 50 years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts think the trend is accelerating: the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990. Scientists say that unless we curb global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of the century.

Q: Are warmer temperatures causing bad things to happen?

A: Global warming is already causing damage in many parts of the United States. In 2002, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon endured their worst wildfire seasons ever. The same year, drought created severe dust storms in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, and floods caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Texas, Montana and North Dakota. Since the early 1950s, snow accumulation has declined 60 percent and winter seasons have shortened in some areas of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of course, the impacts of global warming are not limited to the United States. In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1,500 deaths in India. And in what scientists regard as an alarming sign of events to come, the area of the Arctic's perennial polar ice cap is declining at the rate of 9 percent per decade.

Q: Is global warming making hurricanes worse?

A: Global warming doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and more dangerous. Because the ocean is getting warmer, tropical storms can pick up more energy and become more powerful. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a much more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the destructive potential of hurricanes has greatly increased along with ocean temperature over the past 35 years.

Q: Is there really cause for serious concern?

A: Yes. Global warming is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance. But each year scientists learn more about how global warming is affecting the planet, and many agree that certain consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. Among these: 1. Melting glaciers, early snowmelt and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages in the American West. 2. Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern seaboard, in Florida, and in other areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico. 3. Warmer sea surface temperatures will fuel more intense hurricanes in the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coasts. 4. Forests, farms and cities will face troublesome new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases. 5. Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.

Q: Could global warming trigger a sudden catastrophe?

A: Recently, researchers -- and even the U.S. Defense Department -- have investigated the possibility of abrupt climate change, in which gradual global warming triggers a sudden shift in the earth's climate, causing parts of the world to dramatically heat up or cool down in the span of a few years.

Q: What country is the largest source of global warming pollution?

A: The United States. Though Americans make up just 4 percent of the world's population, we produce 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning -- by far the largest share of any country. In fact, the United States emits more carbon dioxide than China, India and Japan, combined. Clearly America ought to take a leadership role in solving the problem. And as the world's top developer of new technologies, we are well positioned to do so -- we already have the know-how.

Q: How can we cut global warming pollution?

A: It's simple: By reducing pollution from vehicles and power plants. Right away, we should put existing technologies for building cleaner cars and more modern electricity generators into widespread use. We can increase our reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind, sun and geothermal. And we can manufacture more efficient appliances and conserve energy.

GLOBAL WARMING LINKS:

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09 January 2007

step it up 2007!

http://www.grist.org/comments/dispatches/2007/01/08/mckibben/index.html?source=daily

Step It Up

Introducing a brand-new, mass-protest climate movement for 2007

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