The International Day of Climate Action last Saturday saw the power of grassroots activism leveraged by new media and social networking. Through an online and viral campaign, Bill Mckibben’s climate action group 350.org inspired an international response of more than 5,200 events in 181 countries. Hailed as the “most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history,” the action focused on a single number: 350. That’s the level in parts-per-million (ppm) many scientists now say is the safe level of CO2 in the atmosphere to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Focusing on that single number represents both the genius and the possible Achilles heal of the such a grassroots effort.

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In six years time, the number of people affected each year by the climate crises is projected to rise by 54 per cent to 375 million. This will not just be overwhelming for the humanitarian aid system it would also further the inequity that plagues the world and will make the fight for climate justice even more challenging.

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At the launch of the India Climate Solutions Road tour…

Not so long ago, and supported by Delhi Greens, the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) was formed to give a voice to the next generation of India in the climate dialogue. The Network called for youth to come together in order to ensure a clean, bright future. Several city summits amidst a National Youth Summit on Climate Change, and the first ever Indian youth delegation sent to the COP at Poznan ensured that the Indian youth got its voice heard both nationally and during the international climate negotiations.

Now, members of the Indian Youth Climate Network along with a solar powered band are traveling a distance of more than 3500 kilometers in the country in solar plug-in electric cars and alternative-fueled buses. The focus of this journey is to both raise awareness and convert awareness into tangible actions. Climate solutions would be documented all through the journey and the underlying objective is to communicate the message of working to bring down the Carbon concentration to well below 350 ppm.

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From a humble sprout, a fragile orchid grows.  Not all of the seeds of its parent plant were pollinated.  Not all were strewn, and not all began to grow.  Some did.  Of those that did, one blossomed.  The orchid blossomed, a realized vision of the parent orchid’s design.

Not all efforts toward organizing ourselves for a better future have blossomed.  Communism fell to the stresses of maintaining an absolutist ideology among many individuals.  At this moment in our very own country, capitalism is finally beginning to buckle beneath its own design oversights (infinite growth within a finite planet).  If one examines the human political legacy, it seems that there never will be a final, best solution to our social woes.

But there may be an evolution.

Totalitarianism is better than a monarchy.  Representative democracy is an improvement over a totalitarian society.  Direct democracy is probably even better than representative democracy.  Having civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights satisfied feels much better than widespread injustice.  The only exception here may be class stratification in the U.S., which is apparently justified by the fundamental theory of our economic system.

But maybe capitalism is on its way out too.  New Scientist magazine features in its October 18 2008 issue a section of a half-dozen contributors, entitled “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet“–which contains a thorough picture of the frankly unpalatable situation we’re in, and yet how appealing alternatives to U.S. capitalism seem.  Tim Jackson’s article “Why Politicians Dare Not Limit Economic Growth” speculates about the social worth of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into floundering corporations when social trends and urgent environmental trends indicate that the money would be best spent otherwise–such as on the sincere development of green jobs or industry standards and incentives to proactively bring our greenhouse gas emissions within manageable levels (the famous “350″ movement).  According to a chart in Bill McKibben’s article “The Most Important Number on Earth” (Mother Jones, November 2008), it would take just $33 billion to update our major energy providers, reducing our carbon emissions by almost 20% annually.  “Just $33 billion” is not a phrase I would have imagined myself saying, prior to the Wall Street bailout. 

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And suppose we just forget about what to do with the nuclear waste from the reactors, lethal to all life for more than 10,000 years. Even if we can contain the nuclear waste (a big “if” for many of us to swallow in these days of unforeseen financial market meltdowns), why pass this waste on to future generations, on to our great, great, great grandchildren?

That we’ve been unable to agree politically on a safe place to store nuclear waste (in Yucca Mountain, Nevada) masks the fact that we still need to move this toxic waste from as many as 104 currently operating nuclear reactors scattered throughout the continental U.S. Nice targets for those terrorists we’ve been unable to locate or perhaps for the swelling homegrown terrorist types as of late, folks who have come on hard times and can think of better things to do with a $700 billion bailout package and don’t like the way things are headed in Washington D.C. By the way, these nuclear reactors with a 40 year lifespan aren’t cheap, therefore they’ve been partially subsidized by American taxpayers for years.

What Senator McCain and Senator Obama seem to leave out in all their debates and public discourse is that America is no more energy independent with nuclear power than it is with oil. A key rationale for expanding nuclear power generation touted by those concerned about climate change – including both Presidential candidates: Nuclear power plants generate energy by splitting uranium atoms, resulting in no carbon dioxide emissions, standing in stark contrast to those CO2 emissions created by burning coal or oil. But the U.S., as it turns out, has even less uranium than oil as a percentage of domestic production.

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Addressing the fact that the United States has historically contributed the most to global warming, and over the past eight years has done the least to stop it, 350.org has come up with an exciting and timely campaign.

Realizing that whoever takes office as U.S. President next year has a lot of work to get the country back in the game and to ensure that climate change is taken seriously as an issue, it becomes important that the the next US President participates in the Conference of Parties (COP) that will be held in Poznan in December. And to ensure that this does happen, it is important that the people of the world invite them for the same!

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Over the summer McKibben got 350.org up and running - a network of organizations and individuals around the world with the goal of getting the word out about that all-important number. And it’s not just any old number. It’s the parts per million that Dr. John Hansen says we need to reduce emissions to in the near future to save life as we know it.

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In the crafts section, the winner is 350 Save Mother Earth by PEACEANDALLTHATJAZZ. In the t-shirt design section, the winner is Equilibrium 350 by artoo1121.  See the winners here, and congratulations to both of them!

As Kelly told us back in June, the Creativity 350 partnership and contest was launched to draw creative energy and attention to 350.org’s goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million to stave off dangerous climate change. Entries were accepted until August 31st, and then a voting process took place to determine the winners.

Reading recent posts in Craftster’s forum on Creativity350, I was not surprised to see that not all crafters believe in the science behind global warming.

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350 is the most important number on the Planet. This number is a safe line for our global climate and a start line for a global movement is how 350.org begins to explain the importance of 350.

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Returning to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our Earth’s atmosphere is the level that most of the world’s scientific community agrees as the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. When industrial revolution began, it was 275 parts per million. Today, we’re far above that at 385 parts per million and continuing to rise at an accelerating pace, often contributing to the extreme weather, shrinking glaciers and numerous other effects of climate change familiar to more and more of us.

View this stunning 350.org video animation on YouTube, created by the innovative Free Range Studios, designed to reach out to the world to foster the coming together of global community to address this challenge — and hold our political leaders accountable to provide the policies that encourage the changes we must all make as citizens and green business owners.

For most ecopreneurs, addressing climate change is at the core of our triple bottom line approach to operating our green business, putting into practice ways to mitigate climate change, be it in how we use or over-produce energy from renewable energy sources like the wind and sun, serve up organic or pasture-raised cuisine from a sustainable food system, focus on a more bio-regional or local economy, and cultivate relationships with their conserving customers. Many paddle a kayak with a community of like-minded ecopreneurs, rather than try staying afloat on the Titanic dependent on increasingly expensive fossil fuels while trying to dodge melting glaciers.

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350.org is spreading the word far and wide about the importance of the number 350 and you can help! Together with Craftster, Etsy, Craft Magazine, Burda Style and Thrifty Fun — 350.org has launched the Creativity 350 partnership and contest to draw creative energy and attention to 350.org’s goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million to stave off dangerous climate change.

The contest is in two parts; a 350-themed craft contest and a 350-themed T-shirt design contest. For the craft contest, you are invited to craft any project that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350, using any crafting technique. For the T-shirt contest, you may create an original T-shirt design that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350.

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