A new Reuters poll found that 83% of Americans believe that climate change is happeningand even 71% believe it is caused in part by humans! For those of us who have beenreading this for decades, blogging, writing, and teaching about it this is very good news. But I am not here to say “I told you so.”The big question is, “Now that Americans believe in climate change, now what? What are we going to do about it? We need leaders who willstand up and be leaders, cast aside special interest groups, lobbies and political actioncommittees and deal with climate change. This is where you come in. You can be part of theclimate action at the Moving Planet Vermont Rally on Saturday in Montpelier, Vermont on thestatehouse lawn. The excitement begins at 2 pm and goes till 6 pm. Check out the Moving PlanetVermont Rally. See you there!If you ride a bike, you can ride to the Moving planet rally, leaving the Burlington waterfront at 10am! The Moving Planet ride is being organized by Local Motion. Register now at LocalMotion.org.
On 10/10/10, the planet is getting to work on climate change with more than 1600 events in more than 135 countries.
Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That’s the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.
We’re calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both ‘work’ and ‘party’. In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they’re putting up solar panels on the President’s office. In Kampala, Uganda, they’re going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they’re installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.
Since we’ve already worked hard to call, email, petition, and protest to get politicians to move, and they haven’t moved fast enough, now it’s time to show that we really do have the tools we need to get serious about the climate crisis.
On 10/10/10 we’ll show that we the people can do this–but we need bold energy policies from our political leaders to do it on a scale that truly matters. The goal of the day is not to solve the climate crisis one project at a time, but to send a pointed political message: if we can get to work, you can get to work too–on the legislation and the treaties that will make all our work easier in the long run. (From Bill McKibben at 350.org)