Editor's Note: Colin Beavan, also know as No Impact Man, asked me to write a post for his site about Bill McKibben’s new campaign, 350.org, which seeks to create the political will in the U.S. to develop legislation to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, the number our own NASA scientists say we need to reach to mitigate the effects of climate change. Read the article and join in the debate on what it will take to get us there.
The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth. - 350.0rg
Bill McKibben’s new 350 Campaign is designed to get people to champion a goal to reach a safer level of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Pressing lawmakers to do what needs to be done to get to this level of emissions is brilliant as a means to take the decidedly unpopular - legislating conservation, higher energy prices, carbon taxes and the like - and making it seem politically popular.
Right now, we are at 385 parts per million and that number is rising as China builds a new coal powered plant every week to ten days and new wealth and industry in India creates new levels of energy use. I am left wondering what it will take to reach the 350 goal and stay there and if people are willing to take the medicine, as it were, after they clamber for it.
Read the rest of the article and join in the discussion here.
