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Global day of climate action

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By Bill McKibben Special To The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 22, 2009

On Saturday Oct. 24, climbers on Mt. Everest will raise a huge "350" banner. The president of the Maldive Islands will don scuba gear and lead 350 of his countrymen in the largest underwater demonstration of all time.

We'll see hundreds of actions in all 50 states - churches will ring their bells 350 times, packs of 350 bikers will head off in every direction, and farmers will mow huge 350s into their fields.

All in all, it looks likely to be one of the most widespread days of political action in the planet's history. All on behalf of a number - 350 - that nobody even knew was important two years ago.

Here's the story. In summer 2007, Arctic sea ice began to melt at an extraordinary rate, faster than scientists studying global warming had expected - much faster. And all around the planet they saw other escalating impacts: glaciers in rapid retreat. Intensifying droughts, as hotter temperatures evaporated more water in some places. And intensifying floods, as that water fell in deluges elsewhere. Even the chemistry of seawater was rapidly shifting, as the ocean acidified. Scientists were scared by what they saw.

America's leading climatologist, NASA scientist James Hansen, published a series of papers beginning in January 2008 that stood old assumptions on their ear. Global warming was no longer a future problem, he said - instead, we were already dealing with devastating effects. And his team put a number on the crisis: any value for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million was "not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed or to which life on earth is adapted." That's scary news when you realize we're already well past that level - the atmosphere currently contains 390 ppm carbon dioxide. Which is why the Arctic is melting. We're already too high.

This new science means that we need a new politics. So far governments have reacted slowly and timidly to climate change, talking about carbon emission reductions by mid-century. But we can't wait. We need dramatic action now.

Nobody thinks this will be easy - fossil fuel lies at the heart of our economy, and replacing it with renewable power will be expensive and in some places wrenching.

But it needs to be done. Which is why some of us spent the last two years organizing 350.org, whose only goal is to spread that number and its meaning as widely as possible. It's no easy task - there's never been a campaign built around a scientific data point before. But this is the most important new piece of earth science data ever. We need to also make it the most well-known.

The fight will play out in final form in December, when the world's nations meet in Copenhagen to negotiate a new climate treaty. But if those negotiators are going to truly tackle the problem, they'll need a big shove from people around the planet.

That's why Oct. 24 is so important. It's not political - it's educational. We're trying desperately to let our fellow human beings know that we are pushing past the survivable limits for civilization.

Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and co-founder of 350.org.

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