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NATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION
| News |
| Rallies To Confront Global Warming Dangers April 13, 2007 Hartford Courant - Hartford,CT,USA The Step It Up campaign was conceived by Bill McKibben, author of "The End of Nature," a seminal book on global warming's threat to the planet. ... Activists prepare for anti-warming rally April 13, 2007 Bowdoin Orient - Brunswick,ME,USA The 80 percent reduction, "won't prevent global warming—it's already too late for that—but it may be enough to stave off the most catastrophic effects." ... Rallying the masses in support of the Earth Big buzz builds for Step It Up, a nationwide global-warming event tomorrow. By Sandy Bauers, Inquirer Staff Writer, April 13, 2007 "Step It Up founder Bill McKibben at the White Dog Cafe this week. "It's gone off like a rocket ship," he said of the project. Around the dinner table, they included a few hybrid-car drivers, two cyclists, a walker, a telecommuter. They've changed their lightbulbs and their lifestyles - one guy even moved in with his elderly mother to reduce his energy consumption - and now they want to change the world. Their attention was on the lanky guy in the red sweater, eco-darling Bill McKibben, who by now is also a very tired guy...." Climate Change: Too Big and Too Little. Commentary by David Roberts, Gristmill, Grist Magazine, April 3, 2007. "People need tangible, short- and mid-term goals and causes. Luckily, virtually everything we need to do to fight climate change has other, more proximate benefits. So when you're trying to get people fired up in the near-term, focus on those benefits -- benefits they can understand and that they might witness in their lifetimes... What we really need is to remake the way humanity lives on the world. We need a Second Industrial Revolution that produces more equitable distribution of resources, greater local and regional self-sufficiency, reduced terrorism, war, and conflict, and above all an immensely reduced ecological footprint. That's the kind of charge that can inspire a generation. That's the kind of charge that lends itself to narrative and myth. That's a story a generation can tell about itself. 'Fight climate change' is clinical, narrow, and negative. 'Remake the world' is inspiring, encompassing, and positive. In short, 'climate change' is an inherently scientific notion, one that's too large to inspire concrete change and too small to frame a generational struggle." Evangelical's Focus on Climate Draws Fire of Christian Right. By Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times, March 3, 2007. "Leaders of several conservative Christian groups have sent a letter urging the National Association of Evangelicals to force its policy director in Washington to stop speaking out on global warming. The conservative leaders say they are not convinced that global warming is human-induced or that human intervention can prevent it. And they accuse the director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for government affairs, of diverting the evangelical movement from what they deem more important issues, like abortion and homosexuality... The letter, dated Thursday, is signed by leaders like James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Gary L. Bauer, once a Republican presidential candidate and now president of Coalitions for America; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Paul Weyrich, a longtime political strategist who is chairman of American Values. Step it up 2007. By Steve Curwood, Living On Earth, National Public Radio, audio and transcript, March 2, 2007. "Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben and a small team of recent college graduates have launched a grassroots movement via cyberspace to combat climate change. They're organizing a nationwide day of rallies on April 14th to urge Congress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. McKibben and his web director, Jon Warnow, [talk] about their call for climate action." Who Needs Newspapers when the Web Can Do the Job?. By Bill McKibben, Grist Magazine, February 28, 2007. "By now, the six people doing most of the work of national organizing for stepitup07.org have introduced themselves on the website. Will Bates, Phil Aroneanu, Jeremy Osborn, May Boeve, Jon Warnow, and Jamie Henn are all recently minted college grads (well, one of them has a thesis still to complete)... We're building the biggest grassroots environmental protest in many years, and so far we've done it almost without a single story in the conventional press. It's been fascinating to sense the power of [the internet]. Grist, of course, has long been in the vanguard of electronic environmentalism. For most of us, though, the new mental models that go with web organizing are only now developing. To be honest, we hatched the idea of a widely distributed protest in part because we knew we lacked the financial and organizational muscle to stage a march on Washington. We worried about the carbon emissions, too. But we also sensed that such distributed action fit more easily with the ethos of the moment, a real internet ethos... I'd define that ethos this way: it's easy to both put in and take out. Instead of massive centralized systems (TV networks, agribusiness, huge coal-fired power plants, and indeed marches on Washington), there's now the possibility for widespread local systems of all kinds. The solar panels on my roof tie into the grid; when the sun shines, I'm a utility. Similarly, the April 14 demonstration in my small Vermont town will be a good thing in and of itself -- and it will tie into a vast network (nearing 750!) of such protests that we can link together electronically. In this way, we will make them more than the sum of their parts... We're about, I think, to get some more conventional publicity for Step It Up -- newspaper and TV attention, which is already starting to show up at the local level thanks to organizers in each community, will soon be coming from national outlets as well. That will help, because there are still all sorts of people who are still not fully immersed in the web. But it's been fascinating to see that conventional media attention is no longer the absolutely necessary oxygen of political organizing -- and that the alternative structures the web is building are suggesting a whole different way of thinking about doing politics." In from the cold: In New England, worries about warming trend Boston Globe - Boston,MA,USA - 17 Feb 2007 Global warming expert Bill McKibben, who lives in Middlebury, says the biggest toll from changing winters may be psychological. ... Musicians Stepping Up for April 14th Rallies. By Bill McKibben, Grist Magazine, February 12, 2007. "Less than two years ago, I wrote a piece for Grist noting that though scientists had tackled climate change head on, artists hadn't. As a result, I argued, we didn't yet feel the crisis as deeply as we needed to. 'Though we know about it, we don't know about it. It hasn't registered in our gut; it isn't part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?'... When we marched across Vermont last summer, we relied mostly on old standards -- the march ended with our local favorite chanteuse Anais Mitchell belting out 'This Land Is Your Land.' But we need new songs too, which is why one of the nicest things that's happened in the month since we launched the website was an email from the folks at Cool Our Planet and the MUSE campaign. They're mobilizing songwriters to produce hundreds of tunes about climate change, a profusion of rhythm and melody and lyric that should pay off for years to come. And they're supplying musicians for as many of the Step It Up rallies on April 14 as they can manage. It's just the kind of enthusiasm we're finding across the country, and, truth be told, it's moving as hell." One Step Closer AlterNet - San Francisco,CA,USA - 6 Feb 2007 There's all kinds of pent-up energy -- people who have been obsessing about global warming for decades, or years, or the months since they saw An ... Ethicist inspires sincerest form of flattery Albany Times Union - Albany,NY,USA - 1 Feb 2007 Another noted author, Bill McKibben, will speak about global warming as a moral issue Tuesday at Union College's Nott Memorial. The environmentalist, author ... The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Stop Global Warming AlterNet - San Francisco,CA,USA - 1 Feb 2007 McKibben is spearheading what will be the largest public demonstration against global warming our country has ever seen. "On April 14, instead of doing a ... |