Don’t forget, the massive 10/10/10 Global Work Party is this Sunday. Find an event near you, or if you’re feeling creative and motivated, you can still register to organize your own event here. Already, there are more than 6,700 events planned in 188 countries (only North Korea, Andorra, Equatorial Guinea, and San Marino are unaccounted for), and it’s clear that this will be a record setting day for civic engagement. Last year, 350.org’s global day of climate action was called by CNN “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”
From our friends at 350.org:
On 10/10/10, in every corner of the globe, we will implement solutions to the climate crisis. From solar panels to community gardens, wind turbines to bike workshops, we’ll start to change our world from the bottom up. At all of these events, we’ll take a moment to shoot a group photo with a call to action for our political leaders. We’ll tell them “We’re getting to work–what about you?”
President Mohamad Nasheed of the Maldives got in on the act early, putting some solar panels on his roof on Wednesday (beating Obama to the punch). The whole 10/10/10 “invitation” is pasted below (or here).
Dear World,
It’s been a tough year: 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.
Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That’s the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.
We’re calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both ‘work’ and ‘party’. In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they’re putting up solar panels on the President’s office. In Kampala, Uganda, they’re going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they’re installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.
Since we’ve already worked hard to call, email, petition, and protest to get politicians to move, and they haven’t moved fast enough, now it’s time to show that we really do have the tools we need to get serious about the climate crisis.
On 10/10/10 we’ll show that we the people can do this–but we need bold energy policies from our political leaders to do it on a scale that truly matters. The goal of the day is not to solve the climate crisis one project at a time, but to send a pointed political message: if we can get to work, you can get to work too–on the legislation and the treaties that will make all our work easier in the long run.
You can sign up to host a local event at www.350.org/oct10
Or search for an event to join at www.350.org/map
And don’t worry about being alone at this party: there are already over thousands of groups in 150+ countries around the world scheduled to do something great that day. We’ll knit all these groups together with a powerful mosaic of photos, videos, and stories from around the world. You wouldn’t want to miss it.
It’s been a tough year—but it can be a beautiful day on the 10th Of October if we work together, and party together. And if we do it right, then we’ll take a big step towards the kind of political solutions we desperately need.
Onwards!
Bill McKibben and the 350.org team
P.S.—If you feel a little shy, or wonder if you can really make a party work, check out these pictures from last year’s Global Day of Action. There were 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries, which means an awful lot of folks like you figured out how to get it done!
