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