International Day of Climate Action

October 24, 2009

By Brett Connolly — 10/24/09
It seems as if the entire world has its eyes on the environment. And it all has to do with the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference. To get ready for the conference, environmental activists from 350.org organized a world-wide “Under Water Festival.”
350 denotes a number many scientists say is a safe upper limit measurement for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The U.S. Commerce Department has reported that our current level for carbon dioxide is near 400.
“The first goal is to join the rest of the planet in asking world leaders to come up with a climate treaty in Copenhagen in December that gets us back to 350 parts per million,” said one of the event’s attendees Seth Itzkan.
This prompted 350.org to organize a day of action with over 5,000 events across the world.
Vanessa Rule, of 350 Boston, said that it is, “not enough just to stop global warming, we actually need to go in reverse. We need to take CO2 out of the air and bring the ice caps back to where they were.”
There were over 5,000 events across the world. Almost 200 countries participated. Activists are hoping this turnout will influence the Climate Control talks.
According to Greenpeace New England Field Organizer David Pomerantz, “that really will be where we decide as a global community as all the countries of the world, are we going to do what scientists say we need to do to prevent catastrophic disruption of the planet.”
Over 1,000 showed up in Boston for 350. Many were wearing swim gear to show the flood effects of global warming near our shore lines.
“Today went great, we had a great image that came out of this that hopefully we’re going to broadcast all over the world. We had tons of people come out and have a good time,” said Pomerantz.
Former US Vice President and global warming champion Al Gore says President Obama is likely to attend the conference in Copenhagen. The UN Climate Chief is counting on President Obama to successfully engage China and India and convince them to sign the next treaty.