Franklin Area Climate Team: March 2010

Earth Hour: 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM

8:30 to 9:30pm local time, hundreds of millions of people around the world will switch off their lights and participate in Earth Hour, the largest climate awareness event ever held. As climate change will effect people on every continent, we think a united, global call for action to address the problem is needed.

Quote from the Google Blog here

"composting enriches soil and reduces the need for water, fertilizers, and pesticides"

Living in the country, I have the luxury of a backyard compost pile. Right now it’s overflowing with acrid slop, but eventually it will yield dark, rich soil nutrients for the garden. If my potato peels, leftover rice, and parsley stems had been buried in a landfill, deprived of sun or air, those same scraps would have given rise to methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Nationwide, there’s a lot of potential in all that slop. In 2008, Americans generated nearly 32 million tons of food waste, and less than 3 percent of that was composted, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Read the full article in the Boston Globe Magazine section here

Do you compost?

Letter from Bill McKibben: Actions underway!

Dear Friends,

It's been a week since we sent you our plan for how to strengthen our campaigning in 2010--a plan that's based on ideas sent in by thousands of people from around the world.

I've spent that week on the move: I've given big talks in Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico, and California in the United States; now I'm in Oslo, Norway. I've talked with colleagues in South America, Africa, and Asia; the 350.org team has checked in with friends and partners all around the world.

And what we're hearing is: real excitement about everything, especially the Global Work Party planned for 10/10/10. In fact--and this goes way beyond our wildest hopes--there are already 431 actions scheduled for that day. It's hard not to be impressed with the diversity and creativity of the plans that are streaming in: everything from a "Green Sneakers" team going door-to-door to educate their community about energy efficiency retrofits, to the installation of a new wind turbine in a Kenyan village--and hundreds and hundreds more all over the world. Some people are even getting an early start--check out this picture that just arrived yesterday from a tree planting work party in the Philippines.

431 actions in a week blew us away--but we need to keep this momentum going. Can you help us break the 500 mark by the end of the week and show the world that we are truly ready to get to work?

http://www.350.org/oct10

You can register right here to organize a work party in your community--you don't need to have all the plans sorted out yet (though we've got a great list of ideas here) and you can fill in the gaps later. And you don't need to have ever done anything like this before--the team at 350.org will provide resources, how-to guides, and more to make sure anyone can pull off a successful climate solutions project in their community.

My sense from talking to so many people is, everyone understands the underlying message. Which is not that we're going to solve climate change one solar panel at a time. Instead, it's that by getting to work in our communities, we can demand that our so-called leaders get to work in parliaments, palaces, and congresses the world over. "If I can get up on the school roof and put in solar panels," one man told me in Texas, "then our US Senators can surely do the work they're paid to do."

But people are focusing not just on the Work but on the Party too. They know that doing things like this together can be the truest kind of fun, the kind that leaves you feeling good at the end of the day. Tired, but good. And they're understanding the Global too, figuring out the power that comes from doing the same thing as people all over the world at the same time. Laying out a bike path in your town, and knowing that people are doing the same thing on five other continents--it reminds us all that our hopes for the future are pretty much the same.

Not all the week's news has been good, of course. Researchers reported on Monday that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere climbed yet again last year¹, meaning we have that much less time to get turned around and heading back towards 350. But there's only one way to do it, and that's together.

431 actions already scheduled means the ideas so many of you sent us were the right ones--that you figured out how to capture people's imagination. Now let's make it really count.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben and the 350.org Team

Letter from Bill McKibben

Dear Friends,

Well, no one said it was going to be easy.

Last year, thanks to many of you, we built up enormous momentum for climate solutions. The global day of rallies you pulled off on October 24th turned out to "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history," according to CNN, with 5200 actions in 181 countries.

And in Copenhagen that translated into 117 countries--most of the world's nations--supporting a tough 350 target.

But it didn't translate into political victory. The biggest polluters wouldn't go along. So we still have work to do.

In fact, our slogan for 2010 is "Get To Work." Get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. We've sifted through thousands of your emails from all over the world, and come up with an action plan for this year that we think may break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we act together to make it happen.

The first date to mark on your calendar: October 10. Working with our friends at the 10:10 campaign, we're going to make the tenth day of the tenth month of the millennium's tenth year a real starting point for concrete action. We're calling it the 10/10 Global Work Party, and in every corner of the world we hope communities will put up solar panels, insulate homes, erect windmills, plant trees, paint bikepaths, launch or harvest local gardens. We'll make sure the world sees this huge day of effort--and we'll use it to send a simple message to our leaders: "We're working--what about you? If we can cover the roof of the school with solar panels, surely you can pass the legislation or sign the treaty that will spread our work everywhere, and confront the climate crisis in time." 10/10/10 will take a snapshot of a clean energy future -- the world of 350 ppm -- and show people why it's worth fighting for. It's not too early to sign up here: www.350.org/oct10

Every nation is not created equal in this climate crisis, of course. If we can't get the biggest polluters and the biggest economies to change, then we'll never win. So we're going to focus some particular attention on China, the United States, and India with a Great Power Race--college and university campuses will compete to see who can come up with the most, and the most creative, climate solutions. We hope friendly competition will help governments see that they have a lot to gain by diving into clean energy--and a lot to lose by missing this opportunity.

And we'll keep figuring out ways to apply political pressure where it counts--in the U.S. Senate, say, where we're joining a group of our best allies in backing the proposed Cap-and-Dividend approach that would stop letting big polluters pour carbon into the sky for free. In other parts of the world, we'll hold more of the climate leadership workshops that produced so many great leaders last year.

And as the next UN conference approaches in Mexico in December, we'll stage the largest piece of public art in the planet's history--a reminder that we have to bring passion to bear along with science and economics if we're going to move this process.

We know, from the calls and emails we've been getting, that people all over the world are ready to go to work. We think this plan can increase the odds of real action. We know that we have no choice. When, years down the road, the next generation asks what we did to save the planet, we want to be able to say: "We rolled up our sleeves and got to work." There's no guarantee we can beat the rich and powerful interests that we're up against--but thanks to you we've got enough momentum to have a real chance. Let's use it now.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben and the 350.org Team

P.S. We've learned that there's great power in pictures, and so we decided to make an audio slideshow that walks through our plan for 2010 and how we got here. Please watch it here, and share the piece with family & friends by spreading this link: www.350.org/audio-slideshow. Also, please forward this message far and wide--2010 needs to be a year of unprecedented growth for this movement.

P.P.S. We want to know what your reaction is to the plan for 2010--will you share your ideas and thoughts with the Global 350 Facebook Community by leaving a comment in the latest message? (www.facebook.com/350.org)

"we don't need energy miracles"

Bill Gates is flat out wrong. (Again. I have a tendency to see Mr. Gates as getting things wrong, starting with much about Microsoft and including his apparent theory of how to create social change. But that's not today's topic.)

The fact is, we don't need energy miracles and calling for miracles gives the wrong impression about how to go about solving our serious energy policy dilemma.