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U.S. Senate puts off action on climate bill until 2010

In his latest column, Bill McKibben lays a wide range of sins at the feet of Barack Obama, accusing him of "fibbing and spinning" on climate change. He says Obama is "not particularly focused" on climate (while linking to coverage of an Obama speech dedicated to climate). He says that by putting health care ahead of climate change, Obama "guarantee[d] that health care would occupy most of the year." He says that by focusing on green jobs and energy security rather than climate change, Obama has "left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day." Obama's administration is "spinning" by focusing on the still-common 450 ppm number for atmospheric CO2 rather than the 350 ppm favored by some activists and scientists.

I could not be more sincere when I say that I wish Obama were responsible for health care reform dragging on, for climate deniers and delayers, for the lack of ambition U.S. negotiators can promise the international community. If these things were a matter of Obama simply not trying hard enough, perhaps he could be persuaded to try harder. He's a reasonable guy!

Alas, despite the far-reaching powers people tend to ascribe to the U.S. presidency in general and Obama specifically, it seems to me the real culprit is -- yes, I'm going to say the same thing again, I'm boring! -- the U.S. Senate.

Bill says Obama is using the Senate like Bush used China, as an excuse for delay. The analogy is apt insofar as China was out of Bush's control and the Senate is out of Obama's. But it's inapt in that there's plenty Bush could have done without China and he didn't; there's plenty Obama can do outside the Senate and he's doing it. When it comes to matters under executive branch control, the progress over the last 10 months has been amazing -- new fuel-economy rules, new enforcement of efficiency standards, EPA moving forward on CO2 regulations, energy standards and goals for all federal departments, tons of green stimulus money, national retrofit programs, delay of mining and drilling permits, sustained bi- and multi-lateral international climate diplomacy ... the list goes on. Obama is doing what a president can do -- more than any president has ever done.

Ultimately, then, Bill's beef comes down to Obama's supposed refusal to "push the Senate as hard as [he] possibly can." Tellingly, there are no details offered on what this pushing might involve, just some handwaving at "spending political capital."

But how to push the Senate? That's the most important question! Surely it deserves a little more attention.

Bill Clinton tried getting out ahead of Congress to prod it to action. He sent Gore to Kyoto promising ambitious action on climate. He handed Congress a health care reform bill that he (or rather his wife) had hashed out behind closed doors in the White House, ready to go.

Conservative Democrats bridled; they felt no loyalty to his agenda; they rejected the Kyoto treaty; they picked at the health bill and were happy to let it die.

Obama has been trying the opposite strategy. He is very carefully instructing his international negotiators not to promise anything that the Senate hasn't already signed on to. (That means waiting for the Senate to pass a bill.) On both health care and clean energy, he has laid out a set of broad principles and let members of Congress work out their own bills, cheerleading occasionally from the sidelines. On health care, the progress has been impossibly slow, dragging out longer than anyone not totally cynical about the Senate could have predicted. But it's been progress. On clean energy, the strategy worked like a charm with the House clean energy bill. Obama mostly let Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) handle it, with some crucial behind-the-scenes help. The administration strongly endorsed the bill when it passed. A roughly similar bill got to the Senate and raced through Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) progressive Environment and Public Works Committee.

And ... conservative Democrats bridled; they felt no loyalty to Obama's agenda; they're trash-talking Copenhagen; they're picking at the clean energy bill and are happy to let it die. (See: Jim Webb.)

That's two very different executive strategies that ran into similar wankery from conservative Senate Dems. Maybe our conclusion should be that the problem is conservative Senate Dems. Many such Dems come from states that voted for McCain and/or Bush. Obama has no leverage over them; support from Obama isn't important or necessarily helpful for their electoral prospects. Unless they feel constrained by party discipline like their colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or God forbid feel the pull of conscience, they have no incentive to work to pass the progressive agenda Obama campaigned on. Nor do they have reason to accept any treaty his administration signs that goes beyond what they've already agreed to. Dems desperately need their votes, but they don't desperately need other Dems, and there's just very little in Obama's arsenal with which to "push" them. The dysfunction of the Senate is structural; it's not in Obama's power to change, no matter how much he tries, no matter how much capital he spends.

The difference between Clinton's flamboyant rhetorical pushing and Obama's relatively laid-back style is this: Obama's still has a chance to work. However frustrating it may be to activists who want bigger words, bolder promises, and faster action, the fact remains that the Dems are within reach of passing a health care reform bill and have at least laid out a path to passing a clean energy bill and ratifying a binding international climate treaty in 2010. It's too early to deem Obama's leadership a failure.

Yes: political realities can be changed. The kind of broad grassroots movement that Bill McKibben himself has been so instrumental in creating can shift the tectonic plates. But a crucial step in that process is to accurately identify what and who is blocking progress. It's not Obama who deserves the ire of the 350 army. It's Max Baucus (D-Mont.). It's Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). It's Jim Webb (D-Vir.). It's Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). It's the filibuster! These targets are harder to reach and in many ways less satisfying to battle, but they are the real locus of delay and inaction.

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

This essay appeared first on MotherJones.com. Bill McKibben is chronicling his journey into climate activism with a series of columns leading up to the global climate summit in Copenhagen this December. You can find the others here. And you can put yourself on the cover of MoJo's special issue on climate change here.

Two caveats. First, early in the primary season, when I was asked to join Environmentalists for Obama, I signed on immediately. I knocked doors, made phone calls, gave money, and celebrated his victory--I think he's the best president of my lifetime.

Second, Obama has done much that's right about climate, including surround himself with a stellar staff of advisers. From auto mileage to green stimulus spending, he's done more to deal with global warming than all of the presidents combined in the 20 years that it's been an issue.

But that's a pretty low bar. And the announcement yesterday from the APEC meeting in Singapore that next month's Copenhagen climate talks will be nothing more than a glorified talking session makes it clear that he has, at least for now, punted on the hard questions around climate. The world won't be able to get started on solving our climate problem, and the obstacle -- as it has been for the last two decades -- is the United States.

And in fact none of this should come as a surprise to anyone paying attention. For a year now it's been clear that the president is not particularly focused on applying the political pressure that would have been necessary to reach any kind of pact, much less one that approaches what the science demands. Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year. He talked very little about climate, tending instead to talk about green jobs and energy security, and in the process left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day. And then, as with health care, he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary legislation. That kept him from having to bear the blame for a Byzantine bill, but it also meant that the Senate -- the body from which he came, and whose culture he had to know -- could work in its usual style, without White House pressure. Which at the moment means that Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are essentially rewriting the legislation, to what end no one really knows.

The real tip-off of Obama's unwillingness to lead, however, has been the endless spinning of his climate negotiators. For 12 months they have been fibbing about the science -- reiterating over and over again that their goal is the "scientific standard" of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. That's no longer scientifically accurate -- in the last two years, since the rapid Arctic melt in the summer of 2007, scientists have made it clear that a treaty that aimed at 450 ppm would be a treaty that left the planet free of ice, a planet where many current nations would disappear beneath the waves. We're at 390 now -- we're already too high. The 450 number came from the various graphs and tables of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- but Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, has said repeatedly in the last year that that science is out of date. Recently, asked why he'd endorsed a 350 target instead, he said: "As a human being, I just couldn't keep quiet in the face of all this overwhelming evidence. I know it's probably not right for me to take a position such as this, but on the other hand, I think it would be totally immoral on my part not to take a position, so I came out and said so."

By contrast, the Obama administration's position has been that a tough treaty is politically unrealistic -- that the Senate would never pass it. That's certainly true, at least for the moment. But the White House is starting to use the Senate in the same way that the Bush administration used China -- as a scapegoat for doing too little. You don't get to blame the Senate if you haven't pushed the Senate as hard as you possibly can. It would take a huge commitment of presidential leadership, the sacrifice of large amounts of political capital, to change political reality. It would also take a movement of citizens, which we've tried hard to build. Three weeks ago we at 350.org organized what CNN called "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history." Many prime ministers, environmental ministers, and foreign ministers participated -- heck, the president of the Maldives convened an underwater cabinet meeting to make the point about how desperate the situation was. We asked the White House if anyone -- some spare undersecretary of something -- might come to one of the 2,000 demonstrations across the United States. They couldn't find a soul.

They'll have another chance. With groups around the world, 350.org will help organize candlelight vigils around the world on the weekend of Dec. 12. Many will take place at American embassies and consulates. Not because anyone is anti-American. Because everyone remains hopeful that America will finally help lead to solve the problem that it, far more than any other nation, caused.

None of this is easy. (I haven't even mentioned the obscenely low amounts of money the administration and Congress are talking about appropriating for the foreign aid that will be required to help developing countries adapt to the global warming America has caused.) But all of it is easier than trying to deal with the world that's coming at us faster every day we don't act. Pressuring Senate Republicans (or coal-fired Democrats) is hard; pressuring physics and chemistry is harder still. In fact, it's impossible. That's why this is different than health-care reform or financial re-regulation. You have to actually meet the scientific standard, not just do better than George W. Bush.

And of course, politically, Obama doesn't need to do it. He doesn't need to worry about environmentalists abandoning him for someone else -- he'll always be the preferable choice, and I'll always be out there knocking on doors for him. But his legacy won't depend on the shiny medal the Norwegians hang around his neck next month; it will depend, more than anything else, on whether or not he really tackles the biggest problem the planet faces. There is still time for him to make the crucial difference, but not if his administration continues in fib-and-spin mode. At the same meeting in Singapore where he made it clear that Copenhagen would not negotiate a new climate treaty, he invited all the other APEC leaders to meet in 2011 in Hawaii, adding "I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts."

Whatever -- that sounds more like his giggly, sophomoric predecessor than the leader we desperately need.

Related Links:

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Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

PARIS -- Leaders from nine major faiths meet at Windsor Castle on Tuesday in an exceptional initiative that supporters predict will harness the power of religion in the fight against climate change.

The ecumenical gathering at the home of Queen Elizabeth II, 22 miles west of London, is being co-staged by the United Nations and Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC).

Representatives from Baha'ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism will unveil programs that "could motivate the largest civil society movement the world has ever seen," said U.N. Assistant Secretary General Olav Kjorven.

U.N. Chief Ban Ki-moon will launch the event under the banner "Faith Commitments for a Living Planet."

"We expect to send a strong signal from religion to governments that we are extremely committed. It's about religions mobilizing their followers to act against climate change," Kjorven told AFP in an interview.

Eighty-five percent of humanity follow a religion, a figure that shows the power of faith to move billions, he pointed out.

In addition, faith-based groups own nearly 8 percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world's schools, and control 7 percent of financial investments worth trillions, according to ARC.

"But the problem is deeper than economics and money, it's much more about the moral idea [of] 'Nature is God's Nature, so we have to be kind to it,'" said Victoria Finlay, ARC's director of communication.

"Global warming and its impacts cannot be looked at just as a material problem. The root causes are spiritual," agreed Stuart Scott, whose Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change -- calling for the "stewardship and reverence for creation" -- has been endorsed by dozens of major religious organizations.

In July, some 200 Muslim leaders gathered in Istanbul to forge a seven-year climate change action plan.

One of the measures adopted was the creation of a "Muslim eco-label" for goods and services ranging from printings of the Koran to organized pilgrimages.

"We don't want to distance ourselves from governments, we are all in the same boat," said Mahmoud Akef, who led the initiative. "If we devastate the planet, we'll have no place else to live."

Sikhs who feed some 30 million people in need every day in their temples in India are poised to revamp their kitchens to make them "eco-friendly," and China's Taoist temples are going solar.

"Religions cross boundaries and don't have to deal with issues of finance, of sovereignty, of intellectual property on technology" -- all issues bedeviling U.N. climate talks, said Jessica Haller, director of the Jewish Climate Campaign.

American environmentalist Bill McKibben, the founder of grassroots climate group 350.org, has identified two wellsprings for the worldwide tsunami of support for his web-based cause: educated youth and faith-based groups.

350.org organized a day of "global action" on Saturday, Oct. 24 of more than 5,000 mainly small-scale climate-awareness events around the world.

"If Earth is in some way a museum of divine intent, it's pretty horrible to be defacing all that creation," McKibben, an author who is active in the Methodist Church, said.

"And if, in Christianity and other faiths, we are called upon above all else to love God and love our neighbors, drowning your neighbor in Bangladesh is a pretty bad way to go about it," he added.

Scientists warn that unabated global warming will likely cause ocean levels to rise at least 3.25 feet by century's end, enough to wreak havoc in high-populated low-lying deltas, especially in South, Southeast and East Asia.

For Peter Newell, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England who had tracked climate activism for more than a decade, religion has the traction to haul a truly global movement.

"It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," noted Newell.

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Obama going to Copenhagen

Learning how to count to 350

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world turned out for last Saturday’s International Day of Climate Action. The global climate event was organized by 350.org. Grist caught up with 350’s founder, writer Bill McKibben, in New York’s Times Square. McKibben talked about the event, the worldwide turnout and what it may all mean for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

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City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

Sarah Rifaat via 350.org Flickr Creative CommonsIf you’re still looking for a good reason to venture out and take part in an International Day of Climate Action event on Saturday, try this on for size: the day of action won't simply be a landmark moment for the global climate movement; it could very well turn out to be a landmark moment in human history. And that's not an exaggeration.

The truth is, nothing like the International Day of Climate Action has ever happened before. As Bill McKibben just said, with over 4000 events taking place in almost every country in the world, this day will be the most widespread day of global action on any issue in history. That’s no joke, and for that reason I’d also argue that this will be the first truly global event in human history. Not even the Olympics or a world cup final could come close to matching the Day of Climate Action as great global events. Sure they might draw global TV audiences that would dwarf our numbers on this day, but the real measure of a global event lies not in its numbers but in its spirit. And on that score I'd say the Day of Action will beat any Opening Ceremony hands down.

Just consider the context. As the first truly global-scale crisis humanity has ever faced, climate change is forcing us to start perceiving ourselves for the first time as a global community, as a common people facing a common threat. It’s becoming increasingly clear – and especially in the light of the sputtering UN climate process – that solving the climate crisis will require a new brand of international cooperation that transcends the traditional model of individual nations negotiating their way toward a middle ground between their individual interests. What we need now more than ever is action not as a united nations but as a global community. We need action by people and for people, not just by nations and for nations. To transcend this crisis, we need the first truly global grassroots movement – a movement which by its very nature will lead us through a door to a new era of global consciousness, to a transformation not just of the way that we consume energy, but of the way that we perceive ourselves, and our relations and responsibilities to each other.

That’s what October 24 is all about. That’s what this day is the opening ceremony for. And as the first truly global-scale expression of this coming transformative global movement, I think it’s safe to say that the International Day of Climate Action could turn out to be a pretty historically significant moment. Moreover, those of us who participate in it won’t just be helping to usher in a new stage in the global climate movement; we’ll be helping to usher in a new era of human history.

Come snow or rain or heat or gloom, I’d say that’s definitely something to show up for. Do not miss out. Go to www.350.org now to find an action near you.

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Learning how to count to 350

The International Day of Climate Action spearheaded by 350.org has already kicked off, and will involve more than 4,800 events in 171 countries. Find one near you—and then tell Grist about your big time!

Sometimes it can be quite expedient
To act all quiet and obedient.
But now’s the time, across the land:
Get off your butt and take a stand!

On October 24, climate voices ring—from Mongolia to Maine.350.org

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Learning how to count to 350

Kids just say no—to fossil fuels

Courtesy 350reasons.org350.org is taking a big-tent approach to activism on its International Day of Climate Action this Saturday, inviting anyone who wants to help to join a climate-change demonstration, or create one of their own.

That open invitation means not everyone will be pushing the same message. In fact, a trio of groups will use the day, and the number 350, to highlight their opposition to market-based approaches to capping global warming emissions. In other words, to oppose cap-and-trade, the mechanism integral to the clean energy bill in Congress and to the United Nations approach.

Those groups—Rising Tide North America, Carbon Trade Watch, and the Camp for Climate Action—recently launched 350reasons.org, a collection of reasons why they oppose emissions trading. At climate-day events on Saturday they'll be handing out pamphlets (sorry, "zines"), detailing some of those reasons. They’ve also promised a “video report,” to be released soon. They've essentially taken a no-compromise approach to climate action, preferring to defeat a flawed plan rather than see it succeed and hope it can be fixed later on.

“We’re trying to say there’s no way to reach 350 parts per million through carbon trading,” said Rising Tide’s Brihannala Morgan, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student. “It’s a false solution.”

Among the 350 reasons:

Actually, the group has 450 reasons at the moment, Morgan said; it’s working to edit them down.

350.org founder Bill McKibben says the point of Saturday's events was never to choose specific policies, but to build a broad movement demanding that leaders reverse the rising atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. For too long, he said, the climate problem has been a debate between experts—scientists, economists, and policy wonks.

“There’s been no movement to back them up, no counter-pressure big enough to stand up to the unrelenting pressure from vested interest,” he said last week. “We’re helping provide the popular part of that movement.”

While 350.org doesn’t take positions on specific policy strategies such as cap-and-trade, it shares the sense of urgency of the no-cap-and-trade groups. For that matter, most people working to push a climate bill through Congress share the same sense of urgency. Most readily admit that any bill that can pass through Congress will be too weak to stop climate change. But they would prefer to get started rather than to insist on a perfect bill.

“We have to start some place and we have to start now,” Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, said in response to a Rising Tide campaign last month.

350.org organizers say they’re OK with off-message groups joining Saturday’s events.

“We encouraged lots of different groups to join,” said May Boeve, a 350.org partnerships director. “We’ve cast a very large net.”

Those groups will include churches, performance artists, and extreme athletes. They will include Chinese businessmen holding a black-tie gala in Shanghai, an odd partner for the 350reasons.org groups critical of corporate influence.

When I asked McKibben about how to engage the ‘no-compromise’ types last week, he said it was too soon to fight over plans. No legislation would be sufficient until the public was making more noise on the climate emergency.

“It’s too early to make calls on what happens with the legislation, because we haven’t built a movement to push that process as hard as it needs to be pushed,” he said. “Politicians aren’t feeling pressure either in Washington or in Copenhagen to do more than the minimum. We need to provide that pressure.

“Another way to say that is, we need to give people who want to do the right thing some room to do it. Barack Obama has not laid his cards on the table yet. We need to give him some maneuvering room, to show him that people have his back, not just here but all over the world.”

The question, then, seems to be whether 350reasons.org and the like will amplify the pressure on political leaders, or fracture it.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Ken rewrote this song -- one of our favorites in the "music for the apocalypse" category -- as a rallying cry for the Day of Climate Action this Saturday, October 24, everywhere. He had to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes beforehand to get his voice that gritty. We'll be at the Boston Under Water Festival in downtown Boston.  Please join us in the spirit of 350, wherever you are. (Find an action near you at 350.org.)

Eve of Destruction (New Millennium)

music, Barry McGuire
new lyrics, Ken Ward

The Arctic ice, it is a'meltin'
The polar bears, they are sweltering
You've heard about this, till your brain's explodin'
Your lightbulbs are changed, but what's that car you're drivin'
And do you really think, we'll save the world by recyclin'?

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Necessary conditions, for civilization
Three hundred fifty, there is no debating
Three ninety now and, acceleratin'
Scientists say, we don't need more explanation
Look around you now, there's chaos in the making

But you tell me...

I feel so sad, just contemplatin'
what the world will be like, for the children we are raisin'
How do we prepare them for a world disintegrating
What good for them, is a liberal education?
And what do we say when they ask for explanation?

And you tell me...

Big Green Groups, they are hesitating
To tell the urgent truth, it's so frustrating
Lobby hard they say, and pass legislation
Cap and trade alone, will be our salvation
And BP, they tell us, is cooperating?

And you tell me...

But look around you now, it's so energizin'
October twenty four, we are organizin'
A planet-wide Day, of Climate campaignin'
To heed McKibben's call for, global action
for Three Five O, the only path to salvation
The most important number, in the whole damn nation
Let's not reverse course, of Almighty's creation!

So don't tell me
Over and over and over again my friends
You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction
Open up your eyes and and move your feet into action.

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This Saturday, Oct. 24, is the International Day of Climate Action.  You’re all geared up to join an event in your hometown or ‘hood, right?  Here are a few videos to get you even more pumped up.

350.org, which is sponsoring the day, gives us a sneak preview of the animations that will splash across Times Square on Saturday (warning: no headphones required):

Bill McKibben explains the significance of the number 350 to Stephen Colbert:

Current Green gets the scoop on how the 350 movement has gone viral from Bill McKibben and other 350-ers:

Denizens of the Maldives, an island nation threatened by rising sea levels, dramatize their plight with underwater escapades:

Greenpeace puts out the call for real action:

And, best of all, Umbra gets into the game:

Seen any other good Climate Action Day videos? Tell us all about them below in comments.

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City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

Climate Citizen: Wyclef Jean

PARIS -- Even as politicians dial down expectations for the Dec. 7-18 U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, analysts and activists detect a groundswell of anger, channeled through the Internet and voiced especially by the young, demanding action on global warming.

Conventional wisdom says environmental issues wax at times of prosperity and wane when belts are tightened.

But these sources believe that adage no longer holds true in the face of the unique threat posed by climate change.

When the talks to craft a post-2012 climate pact get underway, leaders may find themselves facing a coordinated movement cutting across continents, creeds, and class, they argue.

"As evidence mounts of the severity of the threat, civil society groups will be fueled by the urgency of acting now to avoid the worse consequences of a problem for which future generations will surely hold us accountable," said British expert Peter Newell.

"We can expect the continued and expanded use of all resources available to them -- legal and non-legal, constructive and coercive, national, regional and international," said Newell, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England.

Over the past half-century, broad-based movements -- from civil rights in the United States to anti-missile protests in Europe, "people power" revolts in the Philippines and South Korea -- have been largely confined to national borders.

Climate change, though, cuts across all frontiers. Some regions will be hit earlier and harder than others, but no place on Earth will be spared the greenhouse effect.

Awareness has also been boosted by disasters. Typhoon-driven floods that ravaged east Asia last month drove home the perceived links between warming and extreme weather, even if scientists point out such connections are far from linear.

"There is a growing awareness in developing countries that this issue is impacting them now and that they need to do something about it. That awareness is especially strong in Asia," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told AFP.

Then there is the Internet, an infinitely more powerful organizational tool for protest than the cassette tapes, fax machines and roneo-copied "samizdat" leaflets of the recent past.

In authoritarian countries, notably China, it has helped civil society cohere around environmental and climate issues to a degree not tolerated for political and human rights, or trade unionism.

The prospects for a borderless protest movement will be put to the test on Saturday, selected by grassroots group 350.org as a "day of global action" with some 3,000 events around the planet. The brainchild of U.S. environmentalist Bill McKibben, 350.org takes its name from a warning issued by climate expert James Hansen, who says atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be pegged below 350 parts per million (ppm) to avoid potential catastrophe.

Levels are currently around 385 ppm and on track to bust a 450 ppm threshold previously viewed as safe.

Launched in March 2008, the Web-based network says it has nearly 200,000 activists in dozens of grassroots groups spread across 170 countries.

"It has worked beyond our wildest expectations," McKibben told AFP. "We've basically got the whole world organized, much of it for the first time. Oct. 24 is going to be, by a very large margin, the most widespread day of environmental action ever."

Two demographic profiles dominate among 350.org's rank-and-file, McKibben said: educated youth and people linked by religion.

"I was aware of climate change but didn't know what I could do," Gan Pei Ling, 22, a student at Tunku Abdul Rahman University in Malaysia, said this month at climate talks in Bangkok, where she had come to lobby negotiators.

Meeting a small node of activists in Malaysia gave her the courage to speak out, and 350.org put her in touch with like-minded young people across Asia and beyond.

Gan Pei Ling and hundreds of other 20-something activists who converged on Bangkok -- many sporting T-shirts asking "How Old Will You Be in 2050?" -- see global warming as an injustice toward the poor and the young.

"Older people don't seem to care," said Lokendra Shrestha, a 28-year-old sociology student from Nepal, where vanishing glaciers threaten much of Asia's water supply.

Religion is also emerging as a lightning rod.

"Climate has risen up massively as an issue of concern in religious communities," said Stuart Scott, a former statistics professor from Hawaii who has crisscrossed the globe garnering support for his Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change.

His cause got a big boost when the declaration was included in an oecumenical ceremony at the U.N. Nations last month ahead of the world's first climate summit.

"It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," noted Newell.

Related Links:

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State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Bill McKibben and Chip Giller want you to get pumped up for the International Day of Climate Action.

When Grist was launched 10 years ago, a key idea behind it was that the web could be used to spread the news about what’s really happening across the planet. Turned out to be true.

Now the question is: Can the web spread more than information to the farthest corners of the planet? Can we really use it to effect the outcome of the most important scientific questions we’ve ever faced? And the answer to that looks to be "yes" as well.

Those of you who’ve been following 350.org know that the campaign has gone viral in recent weeks, in the lead-up to the International Day of Climate Action.  There will be more than 4,000 events in almost 170 countries on Oct. 24—pretty much every place that isn’t Burma or North Korea. It’s certainly the most widespread day of environmental action ever—as far as we can tell, it will set the record for political action in general. And it’s all been done without much coverage from radio and TV and the newspapers. It’s been the electronic media—the network of bloggers and YouTubeists that Grist helped to spawn—that have been spreading the word.

No matter where you live, there’s something going on nearby on Saturday—in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, and in Iran, and in the coup-ridden capital of Honduras.  Underwater on the Great Barrier Reef, and on the shores of the Dead Sea in Palestine and Israel and Jordan. In 300 Chinese cities, and just as many places in India. Against the backdrop of Machu Picchu and the Pyramids. And in a thousand American cities and towns. If you want to see what these actions will look like, check out some of the best early pictures on Flickr.

And every one of these events is scientifically literate—people just like you are taking a data point and using it to make a political point. 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere—and we've already surpassed it. The Copenhagen climate talks in December won't just be a forum for negotiations between China and the U.S.—the real talks are going on between humans on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other.

Help spread the word in the next few days, on the web and also to the mainstream press, so they’re not entirely left out of this huge spectacle. Call your local newspaper editor or radio station or AP bureau, and ask if they’re going to cover the International Day of Climate Action.

And, of course, join in the action yourself.  Wherever you are, there will be an event going on nearby; find one.  One of us (Chip) will be on Vashon Island, Wash., with his family, at the farmers market where the local action is taking place. The other (Bill) will be in Times Square in New York City, coordinating the showing of photos from events all over the world on three of those huge JumboTron advertising signs usually devoted to vodka or cigarettes.  Where will you be?

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Get involved in the fight against climate change.

Got plans for Saturday, Oct. 24?  Join up with climate-concerned citizens around the globe for the first-ever International Day of Climate Action, to demand that world leaders get moving in the fight against climate change. 

More than 3,000 events in 170 countries are in the works, many of them focused on the number 350, which represents the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere (we’ve already surpassed it—d’oh).

Find an action near you, or organize one yourself.  Anything goes!  Events will include everything from major rallies at iconic spots like the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu, to underwater scuba-assisted protests, to mountain climbers hanging “350” banners and churches ringing their bells 350 times.  Don’t miss out.  “It’s shaping up to be to be the biggest day of grassroots action on global warming ever,” according to Bill McKibben and the other organizers at 350.org.

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On a recent work day at the JP Green House, volunteers came out of the woodwork.Leise JonesOne of the early effects of climate change was the demise of my marriage. I was living a comfortable, middle-class life that was all wrong for my politics, and my essential devotion to simplicity. At some point in my mid-twenties I had gotten nervous, and opted for the safety of a life much like my parents'. It worked until I encountered the work of James Hansen and Bill McKibben in the late 1990s, and the part of me that longed to live and work for the truth rose up.

Most people thought it was a mid-life crisis when I left my marriage, determined to devote myself to full-time work on climate change. I'm sure it was, but I clung to the Jungian notion that our shadow rises in midlife and forces us to confront our unlived lives. Within three years I was divorced, working full-time as a community organizer, and building the JP Green House with Ken Ward, another casualty of truth and principles.

I had meanwhile been through that tangle of denial/despair/rage and bargaining that seems to afflict those newly acquainted with the realities we face. Like a person faced with terminal illness, there is no easy path through, and there is no reasonable order or timeframe to these feelings. I have spent several months in a robotic depressed state, struggling to remain functional for my kids. There are times when I still "bargain": I read about some new techno-fix to cool the planet and I think, "Thank God, maybe this will save us!" And denial is just a necessity in everyday life: None of us can really hold the sense that our children's lives may be hell on earth in our minds while we do the grocery shopping and run the carpool. All this was, and is, going on while I was falling in love, raising children, making a living, and building a house.

Ladder-day saints.Leise JonesI proposed to write about the best part about climate change here, ironic as it may seem, so here it is: courage. All over the world, and throughout history, people have faced down dictators, protested war and conquest, put their lives at risk defending their principles.  Remember the Abolitionists who sheltered slaves, the Europeans who hid and protected Jews during World War II, ordinary Tibetans. American life, at first glance, seems to offer little opportunity for real courage, for sacrifice of comfort in order to live in truth. Climate change, the company of activists, has offered me that, and I think it offers us all this opportunity. In order to turn our world around, save ourselves, we have to fight complacency, denial, political expediency, and our own love of excess.

When you are in the right place, you meet the right people.  The photographs you see here are of one of our recent "Work Days" at the JP Green House. With minimal publicity, we turned out 40 people who did not know us, to spend a day doing hard labor on a house that will demonstrate the best-case scenario of our future. We are the fearful, the despairing, the worried, and we are doing the only thing we can -- planting ourselves in a place of truth and getting to work.

Vaclav Havel, dissident and then president of Czechoslovakia, was the hero of my twenties, which I spent living in the Czech Republic. Havel's message was that we all "live in truth," to above all not accept the totalitarian conquest of our souls. His conclusion is where you land after the climate crisis hits you personally.

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Courtesy

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City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

Amazing news just arrived at 350.org headquarters.

Rajendra Pachauri is the U.N.'s top climate scientist. He leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which every five years produces the authoritative assessment of climate science. Its last report, in 2007, helped set the target of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a target that many environmental groups and national governments have adopted as their goal for Copenhagen.

As many of you know, that number is out of date. When Jim Hansen and other scientists looked at phenomena like the Arctic ice melt of the last two summers, they produced new data demonstrating that 350 ppm is the bottom line. But it's been hard to get that news out to the powers that be. So today it comes as enormous and welcome news that Pachauri, from his New Delhi office, said that 350 was the number.

"As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations," said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 ppm. "But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target," he told Agence France-Presse in an interview.

Many national governments (and even some environmental groups) have stuck to a 450 ppm target--it seems politically "realistic." But Pachauri has taken away that gray area, and laid down the real bottom line. Physics and chemistry say 350, and that's that.

Pachauri cited the decision of the small island nations and less developed countries to endorse the 350 target. "I think this is a good development," he said. "Now people -- including some scientists -- see the seriousness of the impacts of climate change, and the fact that things are going to get substantially worse than what we had anticipated."

This news makes it much easier for all of us to push hard leading up to the Oct. 24 "Day of Action" [http://www.350.org/actions] and the December Copenhagen climate talks. It's clear now that science is powerfully on the side of 350. Now we need the political world to follow suit.

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Bill McKibben—author, Grist board member, and 350.org leader—appeared on The Colbert Report Monday night to talk climate change and spread the word about the International Day of Climate Action on Oct. 24. He also gave a solid explanation of the significance of the number 350. The ever-courteous Stephen Colbert threatened to upstage him by launching his own 349.org.

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Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

That pleading little essay I wrote in 2005? It was probably the last moment I could have written it. Clearly there were lots and lots of people already thinking the same way, because ever since it's seemed to me as if deep and moving images and sounds and words have been flooding out into the world.

Bill, built from Flickr pix.Kalman Gacs, 350.org/galleryThat torrent of art has been, often, deeply disturbing -- it should be deeply disturbing, given what we're doing to the earth. (And none of it has quite matched the performance work that nature itself is providing. Check out, for instance, James Balog's time-lapse photography of glaciers crashing into the sea -- if we could somehow crowd that thrashing sheet of ice into the Guggenheim for a week, people would truly get it.) But for me, it's been more comforting than disturbing, because it means that the immune system of the planet is finally kicking in.

Artists, in a sense, are the antibodies of the cultural bloodstream. They sense trouble early, and rally to isolate and expose and defeat it, to bring to bear the human power for love and beauty and meaning against the worst results of carelessness and greed and stupidity. So when art both of great worth, and in great quantities, begins to cluster around an issue, it means that civilization has identified it finally as a threat. Artists and scientists perform this function most reliably; politicians are a lagging indicator.

But once a threat has been identified, the attack has to be at least a little organized. Which is why I'm so pleased that many artists are not just doing their own thing, but also increasingly figuring out how to come together to make the sum of their voices louder than the individual parts. Let me use the example that's closest at hand: the 350.org campaign that I've been helping run this past year, the biggest global grassroots effort on climate change.

We're working with ministers and mountain climbers and youth networks and even politicians. But with artists too. I've been shamelessly asking friends to shape their work to fit our message: that 350, as in parts per million CO2, is the most important number in the world, that beyond it the world simply doesn't work in the ways it must for our civilization to survive. And people have responded in remarkable ways. You can see many of them on our website, from crafters to fine artists to someone who somehow managed to make a portrait of me from hundreds of Flickr photos of 350 demonstrations around the world. (I've always hated looking at pictures of myself, but that one I stared at for a long time, because it seemed to illustrate a principle that matters to me: we are who we are because of our connection to others.) 350.org is one of the first campaigns I know of with an official artist-in-residence, Kevin Buckland, who is coordinating as best he can many of these contributions. But mostly it's like a potluck supper. Everyone is bringing what they do best.

We've asked writers if they would pen 350-word poems and essays, and many have responded. Here's the great Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, for instance.

Photographers are organizing around the world, not only to send us images, but also to document the thousands of actions that will be taking place on October 24 on our global day of action. (That day itself will be a carnival of performance art; I've just come from helping cobble together what we think will be the world's largest underwater demonstration, in the Maldive Islands.) We'll take the pictures they upload from around the planet and show them on a giant screen at the U.N. that day, and then deliver prints to every delegate and negotiator.

Amazing artists keep stepping up to fill needs we didn't even know existed. John Quigley, for instance, who is the Rembrandt of what you might call aerial art -- arranging human beings on the ground to make a point from above. Here's a picture from Poznan in Poland, and from Bonn, Germany, and from Bali, Indonesia. (See more aerial art in our performance art slideshow.)

Musicians too. Some of them world-famous: Moby will apparently headline a concert/rally on the big day in Mexico City, and Groove Armada in the U.K.; Sigur Rós let us use a song of theirs on our most recent organizing video. Fred Small provided us a marching song that we put to great use when we helped shut down the Capitol Hill Power plant in Washington in March. Rev. Lennox Yearwood and the Hip Hop Caucus have been helping us plan events across the country that use a different beat than old-school environmentalists are used to. Today's email brought not one but two cuts from one of my favorite pairs of singers, Michigan's Seth Bernard and May Erlewine. I asked them -- humbly but insistently -- for a song; they went to work. That's how it's been with pretty much everyone. (Read more about climate-change tunes and North American bands going green.)

A graphic depiction of the task at hand.Michael Lagocki, 350.org/galleryThere's no limit to the stuff we can use, from pros and from amateurs. Crafters have sent in endless great patterns; graffiti artists have started taking the number to the streets and building buzz; dancers have been creating dances of 350 steps and more; great video artists put together our first organizing video, which has now been seen all over the planet.

My point four years ago was that we needed art to help build a general consciousness about climate change, the greatest problem we've ever faced. That's happened. Now we need to focus some of that beauty and witness and anger sharply enough to help spur deep and lasting change. It's always hard for any of us who are writers and musicians and visual artists to subordinate our own personal vision even a little -- that's what makes us artists. But the pleasure of working together in common cause more than makes up for the imposition. Please join us!

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