93 Days - Upcoming International Climate Action Days

September 21st - GLOBAL WAKE-UP CALL TO WORLD LEADERS

Avaaz is pulling out all the stops. A stunning 96% of over 100,000 people in 182 countries said YES! to a day of wake-up events in public places all over the world to make leaders sit up and listen.

The world's presidents, prime ministers and other heads of state are gathering at the United Nations on 22 September 2009, at the invitation of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, for a summit on climate change.

Avaaz says, "We have to show a massive public demand for them to sign a fair and binding deal in Copenhagen. Thousands of simultaneous events [on September 21] will give us a unique chance to seize the attention of world media and of leaders everywhere."

September's high-level summit is a time for political leaders "to be forced into the crunch issues" of climate change, identifying these as financing for adaptation and mitigation strategies, according to Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate and Energy of Denmark. She added that the meeting is the "last chance" for political leaders to "push for unity in Copenhagen, thus setting the cue for negotiators in December."

So, start dreaming up ideas for your own wake-up call to your elected representatives on September 21st! And if you can help Avaaz fund the wake-up call, please click here.

October 24th - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION

350.org (I still wish they were ZeroCarbon.org, but they didn't ask me!) has over 100 countries signed up to take climate action this fall. They are sponsoring a huge day of global events on 24 October 2009 to ask for progress on climate change that gets the planet back to 350 parts per million of CO2 (which is still too high, but better than where CO2 levels are now: nearing 390 ppm and rising).

But numerous countries still have no events registered. Visit the 350.org Action List to see if your country has one or more events listed. If not, just contact 350.org for advice on how to get something going.

Let's get behind these two growing international campaigns to sound the climate change emergency alarm. Do something in your local community or country on September 21st and October 24th. Do something simple or complex, radical or safe, imaginative or tried-and-true, but do something!!

ONE HUNDRED DAYS! Making Every Day Count by Joining Forces with Avaaz

Only 100 days until the Copenhagen climate talks. I'm not the only one noticing that time is tck, tck, tcking away.

Global campaigning organization, Avaaz, is asking everyone whether they should "pull out all the stops this month to beat climate change," making climate change their concerted focus for the next four weeks, until the next UN Summit in September.

I definitely voted YES, and hope you will, too.

Here's an excerpt from their message:

Avaaz is considering a massive, network-wide push for a "global wake-up call" to world leaders on September 21st. This would be the biggest organizing effort we've ever done, aiming to bring our whole network out (peacefully!) to the streets, ringing alarms, holding massive rallies in major cities, and gathering to send wake-up messages from schools, homes, and public squares. From all these places, we would flood world leaders with phone calls, and the actual sound of these millions of voices would be recorded, condensed and presented to heads of state at the UN climate summit in New York the next day.

If we do this, Avaaz will spend the next 4 weeks almost non-stop on it, and it will take hundreds of thousands of us joining efforts to pull it together -- hosting and attending events, reaching out to our communities, using all our creativity and dedication. This is an important decision, and we need to make it together. From now until September 21 -- should we do it?

Here's the link for voting YES (it would be silly of me to supply the link for voting no): VOTING YES TO A SAFE CLIMATE

By the way, here's what their petition to world leaders will say:

We call on our leaders to go to Copenhagen and sign a global climate treaty that is:

AMBITIOUS: enough to leave a planet safe for us all.

FAIR: for the poorest countries that did not cause climate change but are suffering most from it.

BINDING: with real targets that can be legally monitored and enforced.

I wrote and suggested that their campaign also include a focus on

ZERO: carbon emissions, since zero is the only target with any hope of safeguarding the future.

COMPASSION: for all those already impacted by the ravages of climate chaos (since those who aren't affected yet are still being total jerks about pretending it's not going to impact them or their children).

I hope you'll take a moment to vote YES in Avaaz's campaign. They're a good organization that can really get things done.