Moving Toward Sustainability

     My earliest memory of my personal environmentalist leanings was on the first Earth Day.  I was in high school at the time and many of us rode our bikes to school to demonstrate our commitment to protecting our Earth.  My mind flashed back to that bike ride when Bill McKibben introduced 2011's global participation day at the Cary Institute last Thursday.  McKibben, an environmentalist and author, has spent the last few years traveling the world, using the non-linguistic "350" in an effort to unite the people around the globe around one basic idea: to return the world's CO₂ concentration to under 350 ppm.  Their World Work Day on 10/10/10 brought together 74,000 people in 180 countries.

350.org's logo

     They are calling for this year's global rally, Moving Planet, to take place on September 24th, asking that people around the world avoid using fossil fuels for their transportation that day, to symbolize the direction we need to move as a global community. The website explains, “For too long, our leaders have denied and delayed, compromised and caved. That era must come to an end: it's time to get moving on the climate crisis.”  People are encouraged to use movement of any kind that does not depend on electric power or fossil fuels to demonstrate to all politicians our desire to move toward finding solutions to the climate crisis.      

   So perhaps on September 24^th, forty years after my bicycle ride, my daughter will ride her bike to school with other students who care about their future.

      If you were not able to attend Bill McKibben's talk at the Cary Institute on Thursday, here are two other opportunities to hear his message about our future.  You can watch the above video of his a speech given last week at Power Shift 2011, or attend the next speech he will be giving locally at Stone Barns, on June 22nd.