A Number Heard Round the World
And what a group of Balinese orphans taught me about the climate.
Tue Oct. 27, 2009 8:18 AM PDT
Nearly two decades after writing a book that popularized the term "global warming," MoJo contributing writer Bill McKibben founded 350.org. He is chronicling his journey into organizing 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.
It's been a remarkable few days for all of us working in a warren of temporary offices deep in downtown Manhattan. We've had one wild high after another, as it became clear that we had actually managed to pull off what one journalist after another has now called "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history," with 5,200 actions in 181 countries. Those ebullient moments included:
* Our first hint that the 350.org global day of action would be a bigger success than we'd dared hope actually came a day early, when our Ethiopian team jumped the gun and held their rally—and suddenly we had pictures of 15,000 people surging through the streets of Addis Ababa.
* The first official pictures, from the sunrise action in Wellington, New Zealand, which arrived midday Friday, followed by photos from across the country's North and South Islands, a stream that would continue undiminished for the next 36 hours as the sun moved across the globe.
* The moment on Saturday when it became clear that we'd managed to crack through in the press: All of a sudden we were across the top of the electronic New York Times and the dominant story on Google News, a surer sign that our message was getting out in every language and on every continent.
* The slightly insane feeling of standing in the middle of Times Square addressing a rally while the huge JumboTrons behind us stopped advertising beer and started showing hundreds of pictures of actions.
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By now things have calmed down a little. The core team of young people who actually made this happen—Phil Aroneanu, Will Bates, Kelly Blynn, May Boeve, Jamie Henn, Jeremy Osborn, and Jon Warnow—are off to the UN to present its top climate negotiator with a book of pictures from around the world. I did one more round of the TV talk shows, and looked at the stack of Sunday front pages from every corner of the planet. It's been a heady few days, in other words.
But none of that is actually what's on my mind. What I keep thinking about is the bank of pictures now resting in our Flickr photostream—nearly 20,000 at last count. We've hardly had time to get through a third of them, but they are beyond amazing. They show, from place after place, the sheer creativity and commitment of people. There's not a rock star or a movie actor or a charismatic politician in sight, just crowds of people trying to figure out how to get across to their leaders that they simply have to pay attention to the science.
We have pictures of climbers with banners high on cliffs on every continent, and sailors out on boats on every sea with 350 flags; endless teams of 350 bicyclists, or 350 scuba divers down on reefs, or—you name it. But there are also whole subcategories of pictures that make me just as amazed: big groups of women in full veils, holding signs in Arabic letters but also in Arabic numerals: 350! Kids from around the planet: a Pentecostal school in Ghana, say, or an entire student body spread across a Delhi cricket pitch. From the banks of the dwindling Dead Sea: a giant human 3 in Israel, and a 5 in Palestine, and a 0 in Jordan. I can't begin to say how powerful these pictures are—I could spend the rest of my life looking at them, and I probably will.
We've been doing our best to communicate in everyone's language, and the offices have been full of people shouting in Spanish or French to be heard over bad cell phone connections. But around the world our organizers have been writing us in their best English. Here's something that just arrived from Indonesia:
"The action took place in Sidhi Astu Orphanage House, Tuka, Bali, Indonesia. The action was Success, the children so excited and learnt with fun. They also painted with hope and caring about climate change. They shared to us how they feel about global warming, and never knew it clearly before or what habits can make the earth more hot now. It was great pleasure to us that the children who little bit far from information about climate change and another actual issues accepted us in this action and want to learn more about this issues. We relized that the orphanage Children also have a chance to learn and mitigate climate chance, as they may be the first kind of people who will get impact on climate change as they have no family.
"Last, we want to share with you from The Orphanage Children that: 'Even No One Care of Us, We Can start to Care Each Other and Nature First.'"
Hard to write when you're tearing up.
Comments
Check out the new book on
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 12:37 PM PDT.
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kind of nodded off after the
Submitted by gogojuice on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 10:41 PM PDT.
kind of nodded off after the first couple pages..... you went all over the world...you have super cool friends...what was it you were talking about?
What a country and world...
Submitted by Barry on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 9:37 AM PDT.
Isn't it great that someone can make a wonderful career and small fortune creating boogeymen, writng books, traveling all over the world creating more of the same boogyman (CO2) - and all under the guise of a "not for profit" organization.
If you have any doubts, follow the money.
Go to www.guidestar.com and check out any "not for profit" - they all must file a form with the IRS that is public info. Guidestar posts these forms, which are like a 1040 form. It tells you how much income they had, who the five highest paid employees are, how much money they have in the bank, etc. You will find that most of the high profile people in the climate change business are doing ok for themselves. And hey...I am all for individuals working hard and making a buck. But you all should know exactly what they are up to and realize they have personal agendas, too.
Without a boogeyman, what would they do? Other examples...Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Amory Lovins, or just pick any erson wanting headlines. Their strategies are the same... create a problem, advocate, be the solution, but never solve the problem because then they wouldn't need you anymore.
Where is the retort and McKibben transparency?
Submitted by Barry on Fri Oct. 30, 2009 10:28 PM PDT.
My post above has been here two days now with no response. I really thought McKibben might have responded... or any other MJ writer.
Aren't they for transparency? If they were...and not after your money...they would list every not-for-profit they serve as a director, officer, or employee and let us investigate them!
What's good for the goose.... come on you "greenies" and "Bush haters" and "self proclaimed intelligencia" who write for MJ... show us the transparency you want from the federal government... or should I say from the federal government when a Republican is president?
More spam please
Submitted by ironmal on Mon Nov. 2, 2009 10:03 PM PST.
For all the time Mother Jones takes to provide content, can someone there spend a few minutes a day deleting the spam on these comment pages? There are 6 comments on this article (including this one) and 3 are bot generated spam. Please get your act together a little and get an intern or something.
You know when someone will care about Global Warming? When enough wealthy people figure out a way to make MORE money on it. With 1/1000 of the energy and the money invested into producing fossil fuels and machinery to burn them, we could have had a clean and cheaper energy supply and better more efficient systems decades ago.
Transparency in what? A tiny little personal income? How about the fact that one third of the economy is unreported? If we eliminated $100 dollar bills and made them electronic requiring a thumbprint to cash in, we would end the drug trade in 12 hours. Unfortunately dozens of US Senators with frozen bricks of hundreds in their freezers would have to live on a legal income which would be terrible - and uncharacteristic of this country.
Mahalo Aloha - Mal
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Submitted by avannavon on Mon Dec. 14, 2009 11:13 PM PST.
Using Balinese orphans and villagers from Tuvalu as poster children for your discredited "global warming" theory has to be about the nth degree of opportunism. Either you are all dew-eyed True Believers, or you are worse than snake oil salesmen.
Which is it?
How can you look at global temperatures steadily cooling for over a decade and claim that such a problem even exists? Obviously, we are NOT seeing global warming. At most, we are seeing global drying----a loss of atmospheric water vapor that accounts for higher day time temps, droughts, declining ice fields, and increasing ocean salinity, but warming, and particularly warming caused by man-made air pollution doesn't account for this.
Stop a moment, people, and THINK. When these alarmists point at "a 30% increase" in the concentration of carbon dioxide, they are talking about increases in parts per billion of a gas that accounts for only one four-hundredth of one percent of our atmosphere. Thirty percent of near nothing is still nearly nothing. Carbon dioxide at those concentrations would have to be far beyond the very best insulator on earth to have any impact whatsoever on global temperatures. Instead....
Water vapor has been proven to insulate the earth, but there is absolutely no physical experimental data that suggests that carbon dioxide or methane have similar effects. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissociates and the methane molecule, CH4, is too small to physically insulate or to refract sunlight. Even water only has the ability to insulate because of its unique structure.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is just crazy talk--politicized "science", which is the same as crazy talk. Physicists and chemists and mathematicians who stop and think about it, have known so all along. So what is the matter with the rest of you? Just feel like having a blue day and need something to feel guilty about? Want the politicians to tax you some more? Are you all going to the mountaintop to wait for The Rapture?
I am embarrassed for all the good people who are buying into this idiocy. Please understand in no uncertain terms that this is a verifiable hoax, politically motivated and designed to part you from your tax money.
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