Group Throws Global Party Against Climate Change

(Oct. 9) -- "It's been a tough year," writes environmentalist Bill McKibben on the website 350.org.

"In North America, oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico; in Asia, some of the highest temperatures ever recorded; in the Arctic, the fastest melting of sea ice ever seen; in Latin America, record rainfalls washing away whole mountainsides.

"So we're having a party."

That's the idea behind 350.org's Global Work Party on Sunday -- 10/10/10 -- when more than 1 million people around the world are expected to get out hammers and shovels, ride bikes, clean up trash, plant trees, hang out laundry instead of using the dryer or drink beer to fight climate change.

"I think people are frustrated, and they're realizing that they're going to need to take matters into their own hands," McKibben told AOL News. "And if it means literally getting out a hammer and shovel and getting to work, then we'll do it."

The party starts on Sunday just west of the international dateline in New Zealand and Australia, and then moves with the rising sun across 188 countries and 7,000 events.
In the Maldives, President Mohamed Nasheed will install solar panels on his roof. In the Philippines, students will plant mangrove trees to protect their coastline. In Congo, people will reforest logged areas in a town that holds thousands of refugees.

In Japan, sumo wrestlers will ride bikes in downtown Tokyo -- the idea being that if they can do it, anybody can.

The United States is hosting at least one work party in every state, for a total of more than 2000. In Atlanta, Presbyterian minister Alan Jenkins is holding an interfaith worship session across the street from the state Capitol that will include a rabbi, a priest, an imam and a minister. The punchline? They'll be weatherizing a church in an effort to bring all of their houses of worship toward carbon neutrality.

"We're realizing now that me must work together, and we must put our faith and prayers into action," Jenkins told AOL News.

350.org held a similar event last October, when activists around the world displayed the number 350 at places from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the tallest mountain in Antarctica. "350" stands for 350 parts per million, or the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide that scientists have identified as a safe upward limit.

McKibben was worried that this year's event wouldn't have the same kind of support as last year's after the dispiriting failed climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. But he was surprised when enthusiasm quickly began to build.

He says governmental failure to take substantive action has only galvanized grassroots activity, in a similar way that frustrations with the federal government have helped fuel the tea party movement in the United States.

"I think that there are a lot of people who are sincerely upset with the failure of our governing systems to accomplish anything," he said. "We've got big problems. This is the biggest one of them, and we're just not going to sit back."