All around the world, national governments are trying to hammer out
their global warming policies, preparing for the United Nations' climate-change
conclave in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2009. And in too many places, the
effort seems to be going nowhere.
Here in Australia, for instance, the government earlier this month
decided to postpone any real action for another year, citing the recession. It
weakened major elements of its ''emissions trading scheme,'' bowing to pressure
from the coal industry, which is the country's biggest exporter, and other
major polluters.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Obama administration is valiantly helping
to push a bill through Congress that would finally set a cap on U.S. carbon
emissions. Introduced by Reps. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward J. Markey,
D-Mass. it has the support of most environmental groups and represents the
culmination of years of hard lobbying work. And if the leaks coming out of the
committee are correct, it's watered down with lots of loopholes and
compromises. These concessions are clearly necessary to win passage, but they
may also limit the speed and breadth of the legislation's effect.
The trouble is, physics and chemistry aren't adjusting their schedule to
fit our political and economic convenience. Each week brings new accounts of
crashing ice sheets and spreading droughts. The scientific journal Nature said
in its April 29 cover story that a growing number of scientists agree that the
carbon dioxide challenge ``is even greater than had been previously thought.''
As politics gets slower, global warming speeds up. The problem isn't
feckless officials. President Barack Obama has a dream team of climate
specialists: Clinton administration EPA veteran Carol Browner as energy czar,
Harvard physicist John Holdren as top science adviser, Nobel Prize-winning
physicist Steven Chu as Energy secretary and Oakland, Calif., activist Van
Jones as White House green jobs coordinator.
And the problem isn't that environmental groups aren't working hard
enough. I've never seen them work more tirelessly, with lobbying efforts in
capitals around the world.
In fact, the problem is pretty simple: The environmental movement isn't
big enough. It's one of the most selfless of advocacy efforts. But the movement
has been sized to save whales and build national parks and force carmakers to
stick catalytic converters on exhaust systems. It's nowhere near big enough to
take on the fossil fuel industry, the biggest player in our global economy. It's
like sending the Food and Drug Administration to fight the war in Afghanistan.
Exxon Mobil Corp. made more money in 2008 than any U.S. company in the
history of money. That gives it more clout than all the green groups combined. Which
is why, if the Copenhagen conference is going to be anything but a disaster, we
need to build a stronger movement. All around the world. Very fast.
That sounds quixotic, but maybe not. I'm here in Australia, organizing
people for a new campaign called 350.org. We take our name from the most
important number in the world, a number that scientists only identified about
18 months ago. It's the amount of carbon dioxide, measured in parts per million
in the atmosphere, that scientists now say is the safe maximum for the planet
-- a maximum we're well past. Currently, our atmosphere holds 387 parts per
million, which is precisely why the Arctic is melting, precisely why Australia
is catching on fire.
Our plan is simple. We asked people around the world, through our Web
site, to hold organized actions on Oct. 24 -- from high in the Himalayas to
underwater on the Great Barrier Reef, from Easter Island to inner-city America
-- in an effort to take that number and drive it into the human imagination. If
we can, it will help the world understand that this is not some future problem
to be set aside until conditions improve, but a capital-E emergency now
overtaking the Earth that demands a powerful and urgent global response. We can
reboot the conversation, make it about the peril we face but also about the
promise of green jobs and clean economies.
So far it's working. Although 350 parts per million carbon dioxide is an
arcane number, those three digits mean the same thing in Delhi and China and
Melbourne and Washington. Already, more than 700 actions have been planned in a
third of the countries of the world. There will be 350 bicyclists leaving on
350-kilometer trips, and 350 surfers on the waves in one beach town after
another; 350 divers at the Great Barrier Reef.
Environmental groups from across the spectrum have pledged to help, as
have human rights organizations such as Oxfam, and big networks of young people
in the developing world, and leaders from every faith community -- hundreds of
churches have pledged to ring their bells 350 times on Oct. 24.
The news coming out of world capitals makes it clear that we need more
than lobbying by environmentalists to get the changes the science demands. We
need a movement, a groundswell, to give those lobbyists the clout they need. But
we can make it happen only if we join together fast.