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JOIN CAMPAIGN TO MOVE PLANET AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS

Greta Jonyniate | 20.09.11

Moving Planet, the worldwide action day launches on Saturday 24th September. Hundreds of thousands of people in over 150 countries will be calling on their leaders to end our reliance on dirty energy and take immediate steps to shift us towards clean energy. Moving Planet is being coordinated by the international climate campaign, 350.org.

Bill McKibben the founder of 350.org is calling on everyone to take part in Moving Planet to help make a difference and has said “The planet has been stuck for too long with governments doing nothing about the biggest problem we've ever faced: the climate crisis. This is the day when people will get the earth moving, rolling towards the solutions we need.”

There will be 2000 events happening worldwide including Indonesia taking part in 350 hours of cycling, Australia will be flying their “YES to 350” kites and our Brazilian friends will be holding a big parade in São Paulo. Cyclists in Zagreb, Croatia could not wait until Saturday and held a 1,000 person “pedal-off” with the message “Pedala nije sala” (Pedalling is not a joke).
 

Support the Moving Planet campaign in London where two events will be hosted on Saturday 24th September, between 12pm and 3pm. In Haggerston Park hundreds of cyclists will gather together to create London's Biggest Bike in a bid to demonstrate the sensational vision of a zero carbon transport City and in Highbury Fields there will be the Moving Planet Festival hosting an afternoon of fun, food, talks and music to celebrate our place on the planet Speakers include international lawyer and well know Ecocide campaigner, Polly Higgins.

From London to Wales, there are a number of other events happening right across the UK and you can find out more information about these events at http://www.moving-planet.org/map.

With support from Greenpeace International and Oxfam, Moving Planet is bound to be a success and just the beginning in making a worldwide difference to climate change.

 

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Stopping bad things and starting good ones

Greta Jonyniate | 21.09.11

We love Bill Mckibben’s article “Stopping bad things and starting good ones” published on the Grist this week. It is good to hear from the founder of 350.org himself about why Moving Planet project is so important and what it’s trying to achieve. Saturday’s events promise to be a colourful and creative display involving hundreds of thousands of people all around the world saying no to fossil fuels and calling on their leaders to take immediate steps to transition towards clean energy. 

Stopping bad things and starting good ones

Sometimes the world asks different things of you.

A couple of weeks ago, many of us heeded the planet’s call to block a bad thing: the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. All in all, 1,253 of us ended up in jail, and many more helped in other ways. That fight’s not over yet, not by a long shot. (You can keep up with developments at tarsandsaction.org).

But we’ve all got another side too, one that wants to start good things. Which is why I’m looking forward so much to Sept. 24 and Moving Planet day. All around the country and the world, people are concentrating on the kind of future we can build as we put fossil fuels in the rearview mirror.

Or, in this case, as we get rid of the rearview mirror altogether. Because Sept. 24 is largely about transportation—about all the other ways we can move our bodies and our stuff if we begin to leave the car behind.

People will be skateboarding and kayaking and marching, and most of all, they’ll be biking. In Indonesia, people will be cycling (and ferrying) for 350 hours from Bali to Bandung, collecting petitions for climate action along the way. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, thousands will march and rally for better public transportation and bike lanes. From Cairo to Quito, from Dhaka to Denver, millions of people will pound the pavement in every corner of the world, demanding action on climate change. And they’ll have three things in mind:

First, that bikes and such are a key part of the solutions we need. We know that 40 percent of commuters in Copenhagen go by bike. (In fact, there was a recent article about bike congestion in the city—now that’s a problem to have!) We’ve got to remind ourselves that simply because we’re used to getting around one way, that’s not the only way. For many Westerners, there’s a psychological unwillingess to even think about life past the car. Maybe you can’t do everything by bike, but once you start thinking differently, then buses and trains and so forth seem more plausible.

Second, in the rest of the world the psychological problem is sometimes a little different. In poor countries, bikes have been stigmatized and cars glamorized. Before everyone else follows us down the same blind path to climate ruin (and suburban sprawl), we need to peel some of that glamour off the car and stick it on the bike. The bike is one of the few tools used by rich and poor alike, and that means this is a great chance to show solidarity with the people hit hardest by climate change, to show them that they’re doing a great job already of building the solutions we all need.

And third: Bikes are fun. So are skateboards and canoes and feet and all the other ways we can move, together. And that together is vital: If you’ve never ridden a bike in a big crowd of other people, you’ve never felt the fun of being part of what feels like some powerful, galloping animal, slithering around corners and powering up hills.

Sometimes we’ve got to stop things, and sometimes we’ve got to start things. On Sept. 24, we’re moving into high gear, pushing the planet out of neutral. It’s going to be beautiful.

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Moving Planet is almost here!

Greta Jonyniate | 23.09.11

Moving Planet is almost here! There are just three things you need to know:

1) It's going to be absolutely huge, and you don’t want to miss it -- there will be thousands of events this weekend, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and just about everywhere in between. There will be rallies and marches and teach-ins and protests of all kinds. If you don't know which event is closest to you on Saturday, click here to search the map.

2) It's vitally important. The truth is, we've got lots of work to do to solve the climate crisis: big polluters are doing everything in their power to delay real climate action, and they are spending huge amounts of money to distort the truth and block progress. But this weekend's events can show the world that a vibrant movement is coming to life -- and that people everywhere are ready to do whatever it takes to move the world beyond fossil fuels.

3) It's about to begin! At the easternmost part of the earth, Moving Planet Day is about to dawn. That means there's not much time left to spread the word to all your networks -- on Facebook, on Twitter, and everywhere else.

Eco Commmunities | Share +
moving planet, 350.org