Demonstrations for Climate Change Dot the Globe
October 24th, 2009
Environmental activists staged events around the globe on Saturday to highlight the number needed to prevent disastrous climate change due to human induced global warming from the burning of fossil fuels: 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.
Scientists say that’s the safe upper limit, although the atmosphere already reaches up to 390 parts per million, according to research by NASA climate scientist James Hansen.
In what 350.org founder Bill McKibben called a global game of Scrabble, hundreds of events highlighted the number in different ways across the globe. In Australia, Ecuador, India, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Denmark each spelled out one of the numbers in 350. Hundreds gathered in New York City’s Times Square and watched slide shows of the other events on giant screens.
McKibben, an environmentalist and author of The End of Nature, said the day was unique because it emphasized the science behind a politically complicated topic.
“It was ordinary people rallying around a scientific data point,” McKibben said. “Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
For more coverage, check out this slide show from the Washington Post:
A Global Call for Climate Action
Also in Washington, climate legislation took a small step forward this week as Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) issued a version that includes big benefits for farmers, provisions for deficit reduction and a ceiling on carbon prices. It calls for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to a level 20 percent below 2005 emissions, a more ambitious target than the 17 percent set in a climate measure approved by the House in June.
Senate’s Climate Bill More Ambitious
Students at Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, also staged an event. Organizers said 75 people showed up, including students from UAB, Samford and BSC, as well as citizens interested in communicating the message that the U.S. and Alabama energy systems need to be changed to prevent climate change from getting worse.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 pm
[...] featured by the local Channel 12 News Station that evening, and received a nice write-up from the Locust-Fork News Journal I have attached our “iconic crowd photo” which was shared around the world and shown [...]