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Technorati350: The Most Important Number in the World
From Mt. Everest to the Maldives, people worldwide are turning an arcane number into a movement for a stable climate. Bill McKibben asks: Will you join them?
Let's say you occasionally despair for the future of the planet. In that case, the place you need to be this week is the website for 350.org.
Every few minutes, something new arrives at our headquarters, where young people hunched over laptops do their best to keep up with the pace. News that activists in Afghanistan—Afghanistan—have organized a rally for our big day of action on October 24. They'll assemble on a hillside 20 kilometers from Kabul to write a huge message in the sand: "Let Us Live: 350."
Or news that there's all of a sudden a 350 website in Farsi to help organize the rallies taking shape across Iran. Or maybe a short story exactly 350 words long from the great writer Barry Lopez. Or the news flash that the World Council of Churches has endorsed the 350 target, and is urging its 650 million members to ring their bells 350 times on October 24. Or...
But wait—what's 350? It's the most important number in the world, though no one knew it even 20 months ago. When Arctic ice melted so dramatically in the summer of 2007, scientists realized that global warming was no longer a future threat but a very present crisis. Within months our leading climatologists—especially the NASA team led by James Hansen—were giving us a stark new reality check. Above 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, they wrote, the atmosphere would begin to heat too much for us to have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."
That was terrible news. We're already at 390 parts per million, and rising two parts per million per year. That's why the Arctic is melting, why deserts are spreading, why the Himalayas are melting. And it's why we need much faster action than most big governments are currently planning. They're focused on old, out-of-date targets: 450 ppm, say, which would allow a slower and easier transition to a post fossil-fuel society. But the research is clear that it's suicidal. Earlier this month, for instance, the journal Science reported on a landmark new study, which showed that when carbon levels got that high in the past, sea levels rose 75 to 120 feet.
So here's the good news. The planet's immune system is finally kicking in. When we started organizing 350.org 18 months ago, the task seemed a little ludicrous—we were a small band, mostly recent college graduates, with little money. How we were going to get the world behind an arcane piece of scientific data?
But it turns out that everywhere around the world there are people deeply worried about the planet's fate, and given even a small platform to stand, on they're willing to shout their loudest. At this writing, activists have scheduled events in about 170 nations, which is pretty much all the nations there are. (Nothing in North Korea yet). There will be thousands and thousands of rallies: bike rides that cover 350 kilometers, climbers high on the melting slopes of Mount Everest, even the cabinet of the government of the Maldives holding an official underwater meeting to send a 350 resolution to the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen.
Some of these actions are so beautiful they make you weep: around the dwindling Dead Sea, Israeli activists will form a giant human 3 on their shore, and Palestinians a 5 on their beach, and in Jordan a huge 0. The message: even in places with deep divisions, people understand that the crisis that faces us now calls for real unity.
You're a part of this planet. Feel good about the rippling message now going out around the earth: if we shout it loud enough, even our leaders will hear. Already 92 nations have endorsed a 350 target (albeit the poorest countries on Earth). But we need you involved, too. Right now: figure out an action to join on October 24, or start one of your own. And use your email address book to send out an alert—in a wired age, you can be a useful Paul Revere. Or, to go back to my earlier metaphor, if the earth has an immune system, then you're an antibody. Get to work!
16 Comments so far
Show AllWhen I taught middle school science it was 300ppm. I read in Mother Jones today that it was already up to 384ppm.
12 people responded. Tells me much. The non responders are more concerned about Michael Moore's anthropoentric environmental agenda, and Obama's corporate sellouts on behalf of coal and nuclear than they are with authentic planetary transformation. It is a steep climb, Bill. Keep up the good work.
A Right-Wing Republican's Night-time Prayer
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray to God my soul to keep
I voted for Bush the Texacutioner
Who put more people to death than an executioner
The highest execution rate of any governor in history
How he was elected president is still a mystery
The biggest serial killer since Timothy McVeigh,
mocks Karla's pleas for clemency during her final days
I hold stoutly to my world view
Despite being contradicted by what is proven true
I believe the earth to be only 4000 years old
“Intelligent” design is the view I hold
Even though evolution explains how life changed and adapted
verified by countless experiments not retracted
the scientific facts should be stricken as inadmissible
teaching creationism to our children is permissible
Take some parts literally, others out of place
And I can use the Bible to judge the whole human race
Pat Robertson said 9/11 was a punishment from God
That innocents died instead of him he didn’t find odd
For lifestyles of feminism, liberalism, and being gay
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said over 3,000 people died that day
That God will punish them for their remark
Pride has hidden from a judgmental heart
“After the last tree standing is felled”
“Christ will come back” I heard James Watt tell
you see evangelicals don’t care about generations
because they won’t have to be here to face elimination
“compassionate” conservatives fantasize about journeying through the air
As Left Behind: The Series plays out below everywhere
While pollution they caused brings about ecological collapse
It doesn’t bother them that people will die perhaps
by Cherokee American
Only a score of comments so far?
Where's all the climate deniers? Where's the guy staring at the ocean with the crayon mark on a bolder in Australia? Did they loose their GOP funding I wonder?
I'm not even sure 350 is going to do it. Since our children's lives all hang in the balance, wouldn't it be better overshoot quite a bit?.... to declare a war on internal combustion engines for five years? Just quit using them cold turkey and see if that helps? So what if we have to walk, heart attacks and type-II diabetes will go down. CO2 Abolitionists would kill off two birds with one stone.
Shame we don't have a JFK challenging us to the moon on Solar power.
Driving their SUV's, spewing their poisons, and paying lip service to progressive values. The 'in' thing these days.
Try to understand: CO2 is an extremely small percentage of the atmosphere, yet it, along with water vapor contribute to the greenhouse effect more than Nitrogen (78%) or Oxygen (21%).
It requires only a small increase in CO2 to double or even triple it's percentage of the atmosphere. Some of you come to this class to sleep. It's time to wake up.
Some of you think your teachers have nothing important to say. This is important. If I were you I'd pay attention for once.
20yrs ago, researchers realized that rising temps due to rising CO2 would increase H2O levels in the atmosphere. Since H2O can cool the planet (through cloud formation and resultant shading) and also warm the planet (through the fact that its a potent greenhouse gas all its own), they set about studying whether it was a negative feedback, or a positive feedback. But, if you assume that Earth's climate is self-stable (not a bad assumption), it likely is a negative feedback: shading will trump the greenhouse effect.
The science finally weighed in: H2O makes global warming WORSE, MUCH WORSE! Its a potent positive feedback to CO2.
The point of relating this is that just 'assuming' the earth is self-correcting and is filled with negative feedbacks that will act to dampen an originating impulse, like rising CO2, is naive in the extreme. H2O acts to multiply the effect of rising CO2 levels. Other positive feedbacks? Increased solar absorption in the polar regions as ice melts (something that will massively affect the Arctic), and increased methane production as Arctic permafrost melts and oceanic methane clasts warm up (something that, though little known, has the potential to ramp up global warming to levels that would truly destroy all life on the planet).
Its not what we know about global warming that could potentially destroy us. Time and time again, as the effects of global warming are studied and conclusions are drawn, it is revealed that what we DIDN'T KNOW is what had the potential to radically change our lives.
Case in point: two years ago, the IPCC (bastion of reasonable scientific consensus on the GW issue) estimated that GW would increase sea levels by 1.5 ft by the end of the century. The VERY NEXT YEAR, they admitted that the true rise would be twice this: 3 ft. Today, the most credible estimate I've read (at realclimate.org) is 3 to 6 feet. Given the relative naciency of Greenland/Antarctica ice melting understanding, and the fact that scientists are naturally conservative and historically have had to INCREASE the draconianism of their GW estimates, year after year after year, I would estimate today that an 8 ft rise in sea level is most likely by end of century, with a 3 ft rise within 10-20 years.
Remember, if scientists estimate a 3ft rise by end of century (the current consensus) and it turns out to be 3 ft by 2030, who will get fired? It literally PAYS scientists to be conservative about their estimates. But, what's the downside? If you own land in Honolulu, or in Southern Florida, a 3 ft rise by 2030 means your property is worthless TODAY. Sell NOW, or pay the price once the rest of the country figures out that this is for REAL.
I'm not so sure this is the most important number in the world. It means nothing to the average person because they don't understand it and most likely didn't listen in or didn't even have chemistry class.
I think this campaign just perpetuates the apathy and confusion the average person feels about climate issues.
THis post is especially for Thomas Jefferson poster here.
TJ
this is for you...
about the author above, and american , the kind that I admire...-
to show you that I am NOT all about "criticising" america, however harsh you think i have been and that it hurt your feelings. this is ALSO another reason why I can cry sometimes because I KNOW there are fine, fine, great individuals among americans...and it is hurtful to everyone that their good work has been so "diminished" by the Monster Empire we all know so well...
this is for you . :-)
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Bill McKibben
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Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben speaking at Rochester Institute of Technology
Born Bill McKibben
1960
Palo Alto, California
Occupation Environmentalist and writer
Genres global warming, alternative energy, risks associated with human genetic engineering
Spouse(s) Sue Halpern
Children one daughter, Sophie
Official website
Bill McKibben (born 1960[1]) is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy and advocates for more localized economies. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history.[2] McKibben is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing is sometimes spiritual in nature. Al Gore wrote in 2007 that "when I was serving in the Senate, Bill McKibben’s descriptions of the planetary impacts... made such an impression on me that it led, among other things, to my receiving the honorific title 'Ozone Man' from the first President Bush.”
McKibben grew up in suburban Lexington, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, he was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper. Immediately after college he joined the The New Yorker as a staff writer and wrote much of the Talk of the Town column from 1982 to early 1987. He quit the magazine when its longtime editor William Shawn was forced out of his job, and soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
He currently resides with his wife, writer Sue Halpern and his daughter, Sophie, who was born in 1993, in Ripton, Vermont. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, where he also directs the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. He is also a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
Thanks teddy,
Now we're agreed that there is at least one good American out of 300 million!
;-)
(Note: I wasn't trying to change how you post; you're a powerful writer and you stop us all in our tracks. Did you see my response on the "hurt" thread?)
Cheers buddy,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
The solutions to addressing climate change are found in returning to manufacturing based on producing durable products that last a lafetime and to a lifestyle based more on necessity rather than excess. Rather than trying to talk to people about their carbon footprint and climate change until we are blue in the face, we simply have to enact as policy the truths we've already learned.
Older generations who bought small homes, repaired things when they broke (rather then threw them out), turned off the lights when they left a room and grew their own vegetables out back understood sustainability. They lived it.
Americans then lived under public policy that supported this lifestyle. Their worldview means more than efforts to "green" Wal-Mart or make new super-sized homes "green." Listen to our grandparents talk about the way they lived and we largely have the answer.
"if we shout it loud enough, even our leaders will hear."
Our leaders (sic) are already aware of our dire straits. It is the corporations who need to be convinced, you know, those legally fictitious persons, that actually rule.
Even global warming doubters should understand the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. If you doubt climate change, then accept ocean acidification. It is simply a fact--more CO2, more acidity, more disruption to ocean food chains and the death of coral reefs. No one can deny the terrible harm this causes to our oceans and the inevitable effect it will have on our own species.
I suspect the real reason people deny global climate change is that they do not want to make sacrifices in changing their lifestyle. "Rational" justification is just a cover for underlying selfishness. When the impact of warming hits--when Lake Michigan is down two meters--then and only then will people alter their behavior. Until then, global warming will be a tough sell to the American people.
drosera says:
global warming will be a tough sell to the American people
yes...i agree with your post...selling them on the idea of abandoning the notion of private property will also be tough...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...let's get planning and planting!