Step it Up!
Here is a letter from Bill McKibben
Dear Friends
This is an invitation to help start a movement--to take one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Those of us who know that climate change is the greatest threat civilization now faces have science on our side; we have economists and policy specialists, courageous mayors and governors, engineers with cool new technology.
But we don't have a movement—the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people. If we're going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn't enough.
So pitch in.
A few of us are trying to organize a nationwide day of hundreds and hundreds of rallies on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every state, and in many of America's most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West.
We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines in our coastal cities, in cornfields and forests and on statehouse steps.
Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises-the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate." more
I agree with McKibben that their is no movement.
And I think the Nationwide day on the 14th of April could be an important step to building some momentum.
McKibben closes his letter with:
The best science tells us we have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy and lead the world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA's Jim Hansen, we will face a "totally different planet," one infinitely sadder and less flourishing.
The recent elections have given us an opening, and polling shows most Americans know there's a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality.
Please join us."
Dr. Glenn Barry of Climate Ark is also joining with the Step Up folks for this effort.
If you want to do something to raise the visibility of the Climate Change issue now, please go to the web page and help make this effort a success.
As for me, I think we need something a little more worthy of the gravity of situation. I fear that more weakly attended, half baked old style movement mechanisms will do perhaps as much harm as good.
We need real action and real activism if we expect to gain something other than half measures.
But quite frankly, not enough of us are "hurting" from this issue.
The actual people who will suffer from our behavior today,
are still in an ovary somewhere.
Something will still have to make us angry,
As if NOLA wasn't enough.
I applaud this effort,
It may even make the news.
Dear Friends
This is an invitation to help start a movement--to take one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Those of us who know that climate change is the greatest threat civilization now faces have science on our side; we have economists and policy specialists, courageous mayors and governors, engineers with cool new technology.
But we don't have a movement—the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people. If we're going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn't enough.
So pitch in.
A few of us are trying to organize a nationwide day of hundreds and hundreds of rallies on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every state, and in many of America's most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West.
We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines in our coastal cities, in cornfields and forests and on statehouse steps.
Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises-the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate." more
I agree with McKibben that their is no movement.
And I think the Nationwide day on the 14th of April could be an important step to building some momentum.
McKibben closes his letter with:
The best science tells us we have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy and lead the world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA's Jim Hansen, we will face a "totally different planet," one infinitely sadder and less flourishing.
The recent elections have given us an opening, and polling shows most Americans know there's a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality.
Please join us."
Dr. Glenn Barry of Climate Ark is also joining with the Step Up folks for this effort.
If you want to do something to raise the visibility of the Climate Change issue now, please go to the web page and help make this effort a success.
As for me, I think we need something a little more worthy of the gravity of situation. I fear that more weakly attended, half baked old style movement mechanisms will do perhaps as much harm as good.
We need real action and real activism if we expect to gain something other than half measures.
But quite frankly, not enough of us are "hurting" from this issue.
The actual people who will suffer from our behavior today,
are still in an ovary somewhere.
Something will still have to make us angry,
As if NOLA wasn't enough.
I applaud this effort,
It may even make the news.
.
.
.
.
.
Labels: political philosophy
posted by oZ @ 10:10 AM
2 Comments:
Don't count on coverage. When 1.25 million women filled the National Mall in Washington, DC, in 2004, for the March for Choice it was the largest demonstration in human history. It hardly got a ripple in the national news.
not sure the best way to organize something like this. Austin has so many events....can we overlap some of them? MW
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