"For almost two decades, the few of us working on climate change felt like we were trapped in a bad dream, unable to get anyone else to see the monster looming behind them,” writes author, lecturer, church activist and, now, organizer Bill McKibben. He’s trying to get us to see the monster at a nationwide rally on April 14.
He wants some direct action, more or less, and he’s taken on the task himself. He calls it Step It Up . He wants Congress to order carbon emissions cut by 80 percent, by the middle of the century. And to Step It Up. Not much to ask to save the world, but as you’ve seen, not many of us are willing to put the effort needed into the job. McKibben wants to change that.
No one can doubt the sincerity of McKibben’s intentions. OK, maybe those people who call enviros watermelons—green on the outside, red on the inside—but the rest of us can’t.
Nor can we doubt the breadth of his knowledge. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, was an introduction to many people of the extent and depth of the human footprint on the planet. While he’s often written on other subjects, he has returned to environmental crisis with a forthcoming book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .
McKibben is clearly not satisfied with the somewhat muted response of America to onrushing climate change. As he notes unhappily, “the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people.” Moreover, the federal response is, in case you haven’t noticed, inconsequential, when it’s not actively hostile.
To get some response, McKibben, together with a few underpaid assistants, is organizing “the first nationwide do-it-yourself mass protest, and by far the biggest demonstration yet against global warming.”
It’s a clever concept: Rather than bus people to Washington, using tons of carboniferous fuels and lots of money, he’s urging that people rally across the country. Step It Up wants people in places scenic and mundane. From the Grand Canyon to town hall, culminating, on April 14, with hundreds of rallies. In each spot, people will take digital photos and send them to Bill. The result will be pictures linked on the web of “the largest protest the country has ever seen, not in numbers but in extent.”
To follow McKibben's progress, read his dispatches from the field at http://www.stepitup2007.org, and reproduced on many other websites.
Can he do it? Will it work? There’s a lot of good ideas out there, but ideas need organizers. Here’s hoping McKibben and his crew can pull this off. Because if it fails to ignite the public, well, invest in suncreen and don’t worry about going to Hell, because it’ll be coming to you.
--Alec Dubro |
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:18 AM
