Fix Our World

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October 24, International Day of Action on Climate Change.

Event Details

Time: October 24, 2009 all day
Location: Hamilton
City/Town: Hamilton
Event Type: global, action, on, climate, change
Organized By: FixOurWorld
Latest Activity: Oct 20, 2009

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Event Description

As you probably know, people all over the world are counting down to a crucial UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen this December. Global action on climate change is vital for the health of our economy, our communities and our future. We can only address global warming by addressing it together. Individual actions like driving less help, but we need our political leaders to provide policies that make green living easier, not harder. Cheaper, not more expensive. And you can help make that happen.

What’s at stake at the UN climate summit?

The stakes are high for everyone on the planet.

* Rising global temperatures are changing the climate balance that has existed on earth for hundreds of thousands of years.
* Leading scientists say that if average temperatures on Earth rise just one more degree, global warming could reach a point where recovery is impossible; we are at a tipping point.
* Runaway global warming would destabilize our climate, affecting our water supply, food production and economy for generations.

Canada is at a crossroads, with a choice between responsibly addressing the problem now or dealing with severe consequences later. We can either lead and take advantage of this shift, or miss the boat as other countries act more swiftly.

Canadians want real action on climate change in Copenhagen. Our goal: 5,000 letters to the Prime Minister by December 7, when the UN Summit on Climate Change begins.

What you can do:

* Gather your networks together and create an event for October 24, International Day of Action on Climate Change. Enter your event on the map at http://www.350.org/map. (Let’s get that Canadian number up!) The event might be something as simple as a dinner party.
* At your event, make sure to include writing letters to Prime Minister Harper. Real letters have more impact than email. (Did you know that political leaders calculate the value of each letter received as representing 100 citizens? It’s true!)
* Although it’s more effective to send real letters, invite those in your spheres of influence to sign this petition if they can’t make it to your event, and to circulate it to all their contacts.

NOTE: October 24 is a ‘hook’ for action, but that doesn’t mean your event has to happen on that day. The important thing is to get those letters to Stephen Harper before December 7.
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In the first 24 hours, our invitation to tell Stephen Harper to take real action on Climate Change in Copenhagen resulted in 10,000 responses. Click here to help us get to our goal of 25,000 before December 7.

Save paper by collecting the letters and sending them altogether in one envelope to:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1A 0A6
(Letters to the House of Commons can be mailed postage-free!)

Send copies to:

Michael Ignatieff, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
Gilles Duceppe, Leader of the Bloc Québecois
Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party

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Comment by FixOurWorld on October 20, 2009 at 2:49pm: Plastic trash on beaches may shock you

To understand contamination of our oceans, check nearby shores

By Mike Robinson, Times ColonistOctober 11, 2009

* Story
* Photos ( 1 )

In the Victoria region, beaches such as Trial Island, above, and Whiffen Spit in Sooke tend to collect more debris.

In the Victoria region, beaches such as Trial Island, above, and Whiffen Spit in Sooke tend to collect more debris.
Photograph by: Darren Stone, Times Colonist, Times Colonist

Even the shortest stroll on any one of Victoria's beaches will reveal that British Columbia's beauty and cleanliness is being diminished by the astonishing amount of plastic garbage that ends up in the oceans every year.

Almost 90 per cent of marine litter is plastic, a product that scientists say takes 400 to 1,000 years to break down. This means that every piece of plastic ever made still exists in one form or another.

I could bombard you with frightening facts about how the chemicals added to plastics are carcinogenic and disrupt the endocrine system, or how tens of thousands of seabirds get tangled in plastic debris and at least 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins and sea turtles have suffered the same fate.

I could mention the Great Garbage Patch, a region in the north Pacific Ocean larger than our province where there are hundreds of thousands of plastic fragments per square kilometre or how 500 billion plastic bags are manufactured each year. But these numbers are so vast they boggle the imagination and seem to create a form of paralysis in people.

The best way to illustrate the magnitude of the problem, and to understand how it affects all of us, is to go for a walk on the beach and closely observe what lies tangled beneath your feet. The larger pieces stand out, but the closer you look, the more tiny particles you see. These are consumed by organisms and make their way up the food chain.

In the last five years, I have picked up hundreds of garbage bags of plastics and styrofoam from Victoria-area beaches.

Certain beaches collect more debris than others. Whiffen Spit in Sooke and Trial Island off the coast of Oak Bay are particularly effective collection beaches and in a way they represent opportunities. The ocean is returning our waste to us so that we can deal with it. By focusing on these collection beaches we can make a significant contribution to ameliorating the problem.

But whose responsibility is it? Neither the federal, provincial or municipal governments take responsibility, while the vast majority of individuals blithely walk right over the trash.

We are becoming conditioned to accepting plastics as a natural fixture of flotsam and jetsam.

My motivation is personal. In particular, I care about the effects plastics have on animals, but it was pointed out to me that I am contributing to the social capital, making the beaches better for everyone.

Mostly it is a lonely ex-perience and, though there is some satisfaction, to return a few months later and find the beach soiled once again is quite demoralizing.

In short, I can't do it all myself and I need your help. You can contribute by using less plastic, ensuring any plastic you do use is recycled and by picking up any plastics you see that have escaped the waste stream.

Alexander Pope said, "Do good by stealth, and blush to call it fame." I embrace this perspective, but there comes a time when a warning cry has to be shouted from the rooftops.

I'm shouting now. For our children's sake, we have to end the environmental vandalism our culture has embraced and to get on with becoming Earth's stewards, the most important mission humankind has ever undertaken.

It starts with you. It starts today. Go to any beach on the south Island and begin to lead by example. We can't afford to wait. Do it now.

Mike Robinson is a lighthouse keeper on Trial Island who believes in the importance of individuals making positive contributions to the world, no matter how small. He has c