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At last - Let Us All Do Something! "Step It Up!" April 14th

By Kerry Martin

13 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org

Dear Friend of the human race... I found this Action this morning via Climate Ark. I am in Ireland. I am going to participate and make a Gathering in my home town on April 14th. I would like your help with two things... One is to make "Step It Up!" into a successful Global Day of Gathering - not just a parochial American thing! .

Second is to step up the idea of Step It Up! and introduce the concept that April 14th is only the beginning of a Global Gathering Movement that is going to gather momentum and evolve as needs be over the coming months and years.

Below here, I have made a simplified and globalised version of the letter that I read at Climate Ark, and added comment intended to encourage participation. I am going to start posting this around to everyone. I hope very profoundly that you can support this day of action in every way possible, because we DO need a very visible open non-partisan global mass movement for change, and we need it quickly... I am happy to see that things are already well advanced in America. You can say there are 789 actions already planned there AND one in Ireland! Please respond to me soonest what you will do with this particular day. It would be very good to see gatherings great & small all over the world...


Step It Up 2007 - Global Gathering - Day of Climate Action on April 14, 2007 A (Revised) Letter from Bill McKibben, Dr. Glen Barry, in America, and Kerry in Ireland...

Dear Friends-

This is an invitation to help start a movement--to take one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Those of us who know that climate change is the greatest threat civilization now faces have science on our side; we have economists and policy specialists, courageous mayors and governors, engineers with cool new technology. But we don't have a movement -- yet! If we're going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need a massive global non-partisan public movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn't enough.

So pitch in. We are organizing a Global Day of Action - a day of hundreds and hundreds of rallies large and small nationwide on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every nation, and in many of our worlds most iconic places... We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines, in every city, town & village, and on the steps of every government building. Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Government! For a start - enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, pledge an 80% reduction by 2050.

No half measures, no easy compromises - the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate.

As people gather, where-ever they gather, we'll link pictures of the gatherings together electronically via the web. Before the weekend is out, we'll have the evidence of the largest gathering the world has ever seen, in numbers and in extent. From every corner of every nation we'll start to shake things up.


By its very nature, this action needs all kinds of people to help out. We can't make it happen - it has to assemble itself. Sign up to host a gathering. We'll coordinate the responses, introducing you to others from your area, and give you everything you need to be an organiser, from banners to press releases. You don't have to have ever done anything like this before - you're not organizing a March, or the whole Movement, just a gathering in your town or local neighborhood. Maybe a few, or maybe hundreds - every gathering helps.

We need creativity, good humor, commitment. If you are active in any group - a school or a college or a church or a local environmental group or a garden society or a bike club-or if you just saw Al Gore's movie and want to do something-then we need you now. And by now, we mean NOW!!!.

The best science tells us we only have ten years to fundamentally transform our economies and help lead the whole world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA's Jim Hansen, we will face a "totally different planet," one infinitely sadder and less flourishing. Polling shows most people know there's a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality. Please join us.

Bill, Dr. Glen & kerry (in Ireland)

http://www.climateark.org/

[email protected]

[email protected]

Step It Up! and Step Out! April 14th Global Gathering Day of Action Thank God here are some folk with a healthy SENSE OF URGENCY! I am very happy to see Step It Up! happening. At last now there is something to really DO! Thanks lads!

Ten years is such a very short space in time... Every day that goes by, I can hear the countdown to zero and it keeps me awake at nights. Nothing will be done in time unless people mobilise and make very visible to others their desire for change. Every body resists change - it is in our nature. Every body needs support & encouragment from others in order to change. That is true for individuals and for organisations.

Step It Up! is not just about lobbying our governments to take action - it is also about lobbying ourselves to take action. It should not be described as a protest.

It is not a protest. It is a pro-active encouragment to every one - governments, companies, groups and individuals - encouragement to take bold action! NOW! Not next year. To make brave changes. NOW! Not next year. To keep the issue top on the agenda. Today, tomorrow, next
week & next year. To Step It Up! and then Keep It Up! until the job is done...

Step It Up! is not just about governments & specific actions, it is also about gathering... Gathering together and gathering momentum... Gathering visibly in the great outdoors together with other humans who are also worried, who are also scared of what the changes might mean, who are also getting ready to embrace those changes, however strange or uncomfortable they might seem to be at first... Gathering together like this brings many benefits that can only support the change process - creating friendships, sharing resources, swapping ideas & inspirations, strengthening faint hearts and building hope for the future. Who knows what might happen, what seeds may be sown at these gatherings...

It is very exciting and I hope the sun shines! I hope that in every town square and on every village green in the whole wide world, groups of people stand together under a banner on April 14th, and furthermore I hope that we don`t waste all this energy on a once off event. I hope that every little gathering appears again a month later, and again, and again...

So that we not only Step It Up!, we also Keep It Up!, & Step On It! That we continue to evolve & accelerate the changes in attitude & activity that need to be made every where by every body. There are six & a half billion individual responses to be made to climate change - & only ten years to encourage them. Not a moment to lose hey!

I can`t Step It Up! in America because I am in Ireland... So I have to make this parochial action go Global. Effective response to climate change needs Stepping Up - all over the world...
You guys just stand in the middle & keep handing out the banners.

It will organise itself.

There is only one planet here.

THERE IS ONLY ONE BODY HERE!

Act local! Think Global!


Step It Up! April 14th Even if it is just you and your mates on the street outside your house... Paint a step it up banner, photo yourselves under it and send it in to base. It will all add up at the end of the day. Step It Up! and Keep It Up! May 12th. Do the same thing again... Only maybe this time there will be more of you! Keep It Up! and Step On It! June 9th
Step On It! AND GLOBAL PARTY! July 7th. I hope you see what I mean...

Step It Up Again! only bigger... August 11th

Keep It Up! September 8th etc.etc.

You DO see what I mean!

If at first you don't succeed - TRY AND TRY AGAIN! Gathering Together... Gathering Momentum...
Changing the Nature of Climate Change...

Keep It Up!

Send the barest details of this Day of Gathering to every Earth Care People Care organisation and individual that you know... And get the Gathering going in your own locale!Yeehah! Here is the birth of y/our movement... It has got to be GLOBAL.

http://www.climateark.org/

[email protected]

[email protected]

Biographical Paragraph.

I am 46 living in Co.Kerry, Eire. I was born in Australia, reared in the S-E of England. My dad is a research biologist & naturalist living back in Australia. I dropped out of the official study of Environmental Science in order to live up a mountain & radically reduce my ecological footprint to as near zero as possible. This is actually great fun to do, especially with friends, & nowhere near as difficult or miserable as mollycoddled westerners think it is! I am back in the middle of a small town now - but without the gross consumer lifestyle - as I realised eventually that with galloping global heating, my solitary potato patch is doomed, & that the survival of some of that I love is much more likely if I put my energy & talents into collective political activity at this time. I am very behind the times with technology as all this computer Internet mobile phone stuff arrived while I was up the mountain eating weeds - I am catching up with it fast. I don't want to join any existing political party but desire deeply to somehow mobilise the whole human race to become confidently bold and radical in rising to meet this challenge



 

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