We Stepped It Up!

Last weekend, OrganicFoodee took part in America’s biggest ever protest againt global warming. We organised a hike to the world-famous Hollywood Sign, which involves hiking through some beautiful little mountains in a huge wild park in the middle of Hollywood, California. This was as a part of a new kind of internet-age protest. In the past, protests meant a single march, perhaps in New York or in Washington. Then came the Iraq war, and protests meant one day of coordinated marches in cities throughout the world. And now, Step It Up has invented a whole new de-centralised way of protesting.

The guy behind Step It Up is Bill McKibben, a scholarly man and author of influential eco-books including ‘The End of Nature’. He decided in January of this year to invent Step It Up on April 14th, a week before America celebrates Earth Day.

The format of Step It Up is that volunteers sign up to organise local actions in their own neighbourhood. So a group of senior citizens in Idaho organised a tea party, a group of deep sea divers organised a dive to a coral reef, and OrganicFoodee organised a hike to the Hollywood Sign.

Whatever everyone did, they made sure to bring a banner that said:

Step It Up 2007. Cut Carbon 80% by 2050

This might seem a tall order, but actually, that’s only 2% per year, and is a figure that’s generally agreed upon to be what’s needed to reverse climate change.

So all in all, there were over 1400 local actions in every State in the Union. And in a year that saw Exxon Mobil make more money than any other company in the history of the world, it seems the very least we can do is let Congress know that we’re set on saving this beautiful planet.

Here are some easy ways you can lessen your impact on the environment:

1. Buy your organic food locally. The average American meal travels 1,500 miles from the farm to the store to your plate.

2. Replace common incandescent light bulbs with low energy compact fluorescent light bulbs.

3. Use public transport and bicycles, or ride share if possible.

4. Get a programmable thermostat and set it two degrees cooler for winter heating, and two degrees warmer for summertime air conditioning.

5. By an Energy Star washing machine, fridge, or other appliance when you replace your old one.

6. When you’re buying a car, make sure you prioritise the gas mileage, plus keep your tires properly inflated.

7. Switch to green power.

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This was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 12:54 pm by Ysanne Spevack. To link here, use the permalink. You can follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed.