AN INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION
october 24/09 GLOBAL WARMING. GLOBAL ACTION. GLOBAL FUTURE.
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take a stand This is an invitation to
to take October 24, 2009 and use it to
reshape the future. The science of climate change says that we’re running out of time—that we have just a few years to begin a rapid transition to a global clean energy economy. The stakes are high: billions of people, millions of species—in short, the world as we know it.
We’ll make it clear: the stakes have never been as high, and the whole world is watching. ABOVE: School children in Nagpur, Chennai, and Mumbai, INDIA all staged powerful demonstrations drawing attention to the interconnectedness of promoting a safe climate, saving tigers and their threatened habitat, and the urgent need for a global agreement to get back below 350 ppm co2 in the atmosphere.
If we’re going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left to us, we’ll need the muscle of a strong international climate treaty to back us up. But to get the kind of treaty that science and justice demands, we need a movement. So pitch in. A small team of people from around the world is trying to organize a global day of action on October 24, 2009. Just weeks before world leaders meet to create a global treaty in Copenhagen, we’ll send a powerful
message that the entire planet is ready for equitable climate solutions grounded in the best available science. We hope to have rallies, demonstrations, protests, and concerts in at least 350 of the world’s most iconic places—the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower. We will go everywhere to make our voice heard, from the tops of the Himalayas to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef—and in a thousand communities in between. As people gather, we’ll link pictures and videos of the events together electronically via the web—we’ll show that there is a global movement ready to take on the greatest challenge of our time. From every corner of the planet we’ll start to shake things up.
350
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it’s more than a number, it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet. a target for transforming the world we have into the world we want.
ppm
WE'RE HERE: 384.75 ppm
390 370
384.62958011212 ppm
350
WE NEED TO BE HERE: 350ppm
330
310 1960
1970
1980
1990
Year
2000...
Leading climate scientists now say that we need to be aiming to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere at a level below 350 parts per million (ppm). With storms intensifying, glaciers melting, and droughts and wildfires on the rise, it should come as no surprise that we’re already above 350. As of this writing, we’re at 384 and rising—so we’ve got to cut carbon from our energy diet, and fast.
To get to 350 we need a renewable energy revolution--and it needs to start now. It will require unprecedented collaboration across all sectors of society, with everyone moving at record-speed. This kind of effort will only be possible if the countries of the world agree to invest in an
getting back TO
350=
transforming
our world equitable global deal that will put the planet back on track.
Make no mistake, getting the planet back to the safety-zone below 350 will be no easy task. But if we rise to the challenge, a path to 350 offers a unique opportunity to rethink and remake the world’s energy system. The path to 350 means building solar arrays instead of coal plants, it means planting trees instead of clear-cutting rainforests, it means increasing efficiency and decreasing our waste. Getting to 350 means developing a thousand different solutions--all of which will become much easier if we have a global treaty grounded
in the latest science and built around the principles of equity and justice.
Over the next year, we’ll create and highlight these positive solutions together. 350 represents a vision that belongs to everyone: you can help shape what 350 means in your community, your country, and the world.
Never before has the world been as connected as it is right now. Over half the world’s population has mobile phones, and the number of people using the internet has quadrupled in the last eight years. It truly is a brand new world, and there is enormous potential to harness communications technology to solve the climate crisis. Through these new technologies, we can unite people—locally and globally—to create a new kind of movement, a movement that transcends boundaries of geography,
class, and language. 350.org is translated into 11 languages, and is poised to launch a powerful new set of free online tools to empower users to organize for climate action in every corner of the planet. There have been few big global grassroots movements, in part because there are few issues where everyone on earth shares a common interest. But “global warming” is the right word for this problem--everyone has to solve it or everybody suffers.
It means providing clean-energy jobs to rewire every corner of the world and catalyzing a global transformation built on principles of equity and opportunity. –Van Jones So we’re building a network of people around the world who want to take a stand, from farmers in the Cameroon to university students in China, from engineers in India to business people in South America, from the leaders of Pacific Islands facing inundation to the Australian activists watching their country turn brown from drought to Inuit elders who see the landscape of the far north suddenly melting away. The diversity of this movement is not just geographical. Standing with us are elite
athletes and Olympians, who are hosting marathons and mass bike rides; poets and writers who are lending their words; artists and musicians. Churches are ringing their bells 350 times; mountain climbers are hanging 350 banners from the highest peaks, and scuba divers are holding underwater protests off of endangered coral reefs. It’s easy to tell, just from looking at the interactive globe at 350.org, just how widespread support for real climate action is becoming.
For more from our 350 Messengers, visit http://350.org/en/messengers
Vandana Shiva, Environmental Leader
Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus
Van Jones, Civil Rights and Environmental Advocate
Bill McKibben, Writer and Environmentalist
David Suzuki, Scientist, Author and Activist
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Indigenous Inuit Activist
Dr. James Hansen, Climatologist
Messengers
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Getting to 350 means changing everything.
whatever you do, and whoever you are,
the world needs your talents and ideas brought to bear on creating this global movement. Young people clearly have a unique role to play in a movement for real climate action. For one thing, young people will live their whole lives with the results of the world’s action or inaction--the effects of sea level rise in, say, 2050 are not an abstraction to someone who’s 17 today. More than that, they’re more comfortable with the emerging technologies that can still save the day. To the young people of the world, it makes perfect sense to turn to the sun and wind for power--and to turn our backs on the dirty power that we’ve been using for generations. Youth form the backbone of the 350 campaign. Optimistic, hard-working, and techno-saavy they’re reaching out to people
of all ages all over the world. 350.org is supported by youth on every continent who are helping organize October 24’s international day of action. But young people can’t do it alone--the global climate movement must engage every generation. Whether you’re 8 or 88, get in touch with our team and we’ll equip you with the tools you need to build a movement in your community. Building a global movement to raise consciousness on a complicated issue in a short period of time is hard work. But it’s the only thing that can move the upcoming Copenhagen talks farther in the direction of what science now demands. If you want to move the world towards a safe and just future, please join us in planning for a big day of global action on October 24.
join
us
The first step is to go to 350.org and sign up. We’ll help you find others in your city or town who are planning to help. And over the next year, we’ll make sure you have all the materials and support you need to pull others together and organize a creative event that will make a real impact. With the support of the entire 350 movement, you’ll be able to do the most important work of all -- spreading this message around the world. If we work together, on October 24, 2009 we’ll show the world images of joyful, committed action all over the planet. Please join us at 350.org.
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