Hi Everyone -
Happy International Day of Climate Action
I'm sharing this address being given at a rally in Burlington, Vermont today by
my friend Beth Sawin (of the Sustainability Institute in Vermont) because I
really like the approach. I hope you do too.
International Day of Climate Action Burlington, VT • 24 October 2009 • Beth
Sawin
Welcome to the celebration.
Today, October 24th, 2039 marks the thirtieth anniversary of a historic day.
Historians agree that October 24th was the day when worlds people came together
for the first time to declare a goal for the amount of CO2 in our shared
atmosphere – 350 parts per million.
I was there on Oct 24th, 2009 – on a rainy afternoon at City Hall Park in
Burlington Vermont. I know many of you were there as well.
As the world’s governments prepared to meet for the 15th time since 1992 – this
time in Copenhagen -- to try to agree to a climate treaty strong enough to
prevent dangerous global warming, the people of the world took matters into
their own hands.
At that time, computer models were predicting that, with no action CO2 levels
would reach 900 ppm by the end of the century. Models suggested that in October
2009, the pledges of action on the UN table would be enough to bring future CO2
levels down to 700 ppm – enough to save some species, some cities, some
ecosystems, but not nearly enough to satisfy the people of those days,
especially the young people, the vibrant organizers of the International Day of
Climate Action.
And act they did.
They acted on horseback in Mongolia with a banner that proclaimed three hundred
fifty.
They carried their 350 banners to the tops of mountains and underwater to coral
reefs.
Children grinned at the camera behind their hand-lettered banners in Nairobi,
San Francisco, Tokyo, and Mumbai.
People made a 3 in Israel on the shore of the dwindling Dead Sea.
Their neighbors made a 5 in on the beach in Palestine.
And their neighbors made a 0 in Jordan.
They made art about 350, and songs, and they danced together, too.
On October 24th, 2009, people already knew that our Earth was fraying beneath
their feet, that the ice was melting the ocean acidifying, the storms worsening.
They knew the peril, were aware of the mounting losses, but that didn’t blind
them to the gifts of those times, the awakening of a sense of global
solidarity, the recognition of how irreplaceable our precious Earth really is,
and how much they loved their families, their communities and wild places of
the Earth. They remembered how responsible they felt for future generations.
And so, on October 24th, people came together at their events around the world
and realized that people they would never know whose language they would never
speak were standing in their own beautiful place, holding the hands of their
own beloved children, claiming their birthright to live and love and work and
contribute and sing and dance and grow old on a planet with a stable climate.
Of course it didn’t end there – the people of the world didn’t stop after
October 24th. They knew that naming the goal -350 – was only the beginning.
In that same year – 2009 – a new tool sprang up, from a small team of computer
modelers. It allowed for real time tracking of the proposals on the table in
the negotiations because it added up the pledges on the table in the UN process
and forecasted the long-term impacts on the climate.
The treaty negotiators began to rely on this information and so did citizens
around the globe. The modelers made the information available over the
internet, to everyone. They called it the climate scoreboard. There they posted
the state of the global deal, and they created an embeddable version of the
scoreboard that anyone could add to their own websites and blogs and Facebook
pages.
Churches, community groups, youth, labor groups, more and more people started
tracking the gap between their goals and the pledges on the table. They posted
the results in their newsletters and bulletins. During the negotiations in
Copenhagen they arranged for electronic billboards showing the scoreboard in
strategic locations.
And the people applied pressure where it mattered. Applying pressure in the US
was critical in moving the negotiations ahead, because China and India didn’t
move until the US passed strong climate legislation at home.
You know the rest from the history books. You know how the work wasn’t finished
in Copenhagen, how it took a few more rounds of international summits. But you
know that eventually, with all the worlds countries signed on to a low carbon
future the incentives finally started to line up the right way for investment
in renewable energy, public transportation, efficiency, organic agriculture,
forest perseveration, walkable cities and all the rest.
You know how quickly the other benefits were realized – improved public health
as coal was phased out and bike lanes where phased in, higher air and water
quality, new jobs and new industries, increased global security as conflict
over oil and other resources declined, and a sense of common purpose and local
community as people came together and worked together.
As we look back, historians say it was those years starting in 2009 when the
work was the toughest – setting the goal and turning the tide – once the ball
began to roll it quickly became unstoppable, bringing us to today, when
finally, after decades of effort we see CO2 emissions as their lowest point in
generations.
_____________________
OK, I don’t really know what someone like me will say to a crowd like you in
2039.
But I think there is a very good chance that today will be remembered and
looked back upon as the start of something very big, something very important.
In trying to imagine a speech from 30 years in the future I didn’t have to make
up anything that doesn’t already exist. There are these 4800 events today in
182 countries (there are only 192 parties in the UN process)
And you know the co-benefits are real. There will be huge payoffs for health,
the economy and communities once we get off of our carbon-intensive path and on
to another one.
The small group of modelers dedicated to helping global civil society track the
state of the climate deal -- that’s real too.
I’m one of them.
Our model is called C_ROADS. It’s being used by key negotiating parties in the
UN process and we are dedicated to it being available to the media and civil
society.
We call it the climate scoreboard. You’ll find it on the web at
cliamtescoreboard.org.
Our team will be in Barcelona in November and Copenhagen in December, updating
the scoreboard. The results are already on our website, and by next month you
will be able to embed the scoreboard in your blogs and Facebook pages and share
them with your networks.
Many civil society groups are already committed to using the scoreboard. It
will be broadcast by the Global Observatory media project in Copenhagen, and
groups are working on billboards in Copenhagen, Sao Paulo, and Karachi during
the weeks of the Copenhagen summit.
And we think there will be more actions, actions our team hasn’t even imagined,
because we have faith that people like you, people willing to come out in the
rain to act on behalf of the climate and future generations will find endless,
creative, constructive ways to use the climate scoreboard to pressure coax and
cajole a strong, equitable agreement out of the global treaty process. An
agreement capable of delivering an atmosphere stabilized at 350 ppm.
At ClimateScoreboard.org will give you all the data and analysis we can,
updated as the negotiations evolve – in clear simple shareable forms. Please
use it early and often and well on behalf of all of us and on behalf of the
goal of 350 ppm.
Thank you.
_______________________________________________
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