The White House sent a clear message to Bill McKibben: WE need to build the movement to pressure DC so that Obama can take effective climate change action not achievable within the current political forces.
Next Saturday, October 24th, is the International Day of Climate Action, when people around the world will make their voices heard to pressure world leaders to provide real climate change reform. Communities around the U.S. will be taking a variety of actions because ACES and international measures seek 450 ppm as the target goal. Problem is that we are experiencing climate change impacts now because we are at 387 ppm, which is consistent with a study showing the safe target is 350 ppm, not 450 ppm.
350.org has a handy tool to find events planned for your community. DK GreenRoots is also organizing a blogathon for Saturday: Will you join us? Please sign up in the comments so that we can post a climate change diary every 20 minutes at Daily Kos.
450 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a level that scientists say could mean temperate increases as high as 2.4 degrees C or more, and sea levels as high as 75 feet higher than now.
The need for effective climate change measures is more urgent because the predicted impacts of climate change that affect the "earth's big physical features," such as melting glaciers and acidifying oceans, are happening "ahead of schedule." Last year, a study by NASA's James Hansen found that the "red line for the planet" is 350 ppm or the CO2 levels that would enable preservation of a "planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted" versus "global warming that would be dangerously out of control":
The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
Bill McKibben explains why world leaders need to reduce CO2 to a safe level of 350 ppm:
It is because our present status of 387 ppm exceeds the red line of 350 ppm that we are currently experiencing significant climate change impacts, such as the Arctic melting. As McKibben states, it also means we have more work to do NOW that can not be delayed:
For another thing, it means the work nations and individuals must do to reduce their carbon footprints is much larger, and must happen much more swiftly, than we'd believed. Hansen's data shows that as a planet we'd need to get off coal by 2030 in order for the planet's forests and oceans ever to bring atmospheric levels back down below 350--that's the toughest economic and political challenge the earth has ever faced.
Here's the problem and the reason for urgency. World and domestic leaders have been fixated on a target of 450 ppm. However, many climate experts, including British economist Nicholas Stern, Nobel Prize winners Desmond Tutu and Al Gore, Bill McKibben, coral reef scientists and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Rajendra Pachauri personally endorse Hansen's 350 ppm as the target.
In fact, one reason Dennis Kucinich voted against ACES is that the bill's target is 450 ppm that was supported by the IPCC report, which is now out of date. Yet, some lawmakers are discussing expanding climate change legislation to include GOP measures, such as offshore oil drilling, BEFORE there is first an assured target of 350 ppm.
The urgency of meeting 350 ppm is why more than 3,000 climate change action events have been scheduled in 170 countries.
In the Maldives, President Nasheed held the first underwater cabinet meeting with 11 ministers using hand signals and white slate to communicate before signing a declaration calling on all nations to join hands to reduce carbon levels to 350 ppm.
Nasheed --- a former investigative journalist that was imprisoned frequently by his authoritarian predecessor for reporting about the corrupt regime and its abuse of human rights as well as 1991 Amnesty prisoner of conscience --- is fighting for his low-lying island nation that is predicted to be physically lost by rising seas from climate change because most of the islands are just 4.9 feet above sea level. Nasheed is taking steps to become a carbon-neutral state while also preparing for the worst by discussing "buying a new homeland" in India, Sri Lanka or Australia to prevent his people ending up in refugee tents. Think about that. A president of a country must take action now to prepare for setting up a new "country" after climate change literally swallows up Maldives.
On October 24, President Nasheed will lead the world's largest underwater protest with 350 Maldivians:
Actions are planned around the world:
In New Zealand, singers will be creating a mass choir for climate action in Christchurch’s Victoria Square. At Cape Town’s Muizenberg Beach, photographers will be capturing the changing beach scene as ice blocks spelling out the number 350 slowly melt.
In Germany, 350 ravers will march in silent climate parade to "dance to music which only they can hear through earphones to demonstrate the silence which still exists around the problem of climate change."
Four actions are planned for Iran.
Governments are running powerful ads.
Britain has a disturbing government ad with a father reading a bedtime story to his little girl about a place where high CO2 levels is causing heat waves and floods:
In Germany, the focus in on climate change injustice:
Interested in climate change events? Do you live in New York? Greenpeace has planned a march across the Brooklyn Bridge. In Portland: Kayakers, canoeists and paddle boarders will participate in a River of Action on the Willamette River. You can find out about climate change actions in your community by checking out 350.org's interactive map.
Each event will highlight the number 350 with a group photo that is then assembled by 350.org as a "gigantic, global, visual petition" to our world leaders at Copenhagen, to the big screens at Times Square, UN headquarters and newspapers.
What will you be doing on October 24th?
Will you join us? You can blog the climate change event you attended in your community or write about climate change.
Please help spread the word about the urgency for climate measures with a 350 ppm target. We need to raise our voices to make DC understand that 450 ppm is NOT acceptable. There should be no deals with GOP drilling dreams until after we have climate change legislation that seeks 350 ppm and then any GOP measures should not be added unless it maintains 350 ppm.