14 April 2007Yahoo! News
Global warming activists planned to ski down a Wyoming glacier, hike to the Hollywood sign and fan out across New York's financial district on Saturday to call for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
The Step It Up campaign has organized more than 1,400 events in all 50 states, all with the aim of urging the U.S. Congress to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
As a prelude to U.S. Earth Day on April 22, the day of climate action began on Friday with events including a gathering on a New Orleans levee by some 500 demonstrators, organizers said online at http://stepitup2007.org.
The New Orleans group met on the levee in the Holy Cross neighborhood that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005. Rebuilding in that area is focusing on sustainable development and reducing carbon emissions.
In New York City, about 750 people rallied in Battery Park, at the tip of Manhattan, and planned to spread out in a line across the city's low-lying financial district.
The so-called Sea of People demonstration, in which participants were urged to wear blue and bring such props as scuba equipment and beach balls, was meant to delineate the part of the city that would be submerged if half of the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, said organizer Ben Jervey.
"DISTRIBUTED ACTIVISM"
"I've been concerned with climate issues for a long time and the approach of this action -- distributed activism around the country ... to send a message directly to senators and representatives that we need to cut carbon emissions -- it's a much better approach to citizen action," Jervey said in a telephone interview from the rally.
Environmentalist Bill McKibben and others at Middlebury College in Vermont came up with this strategy. In a telephone briefing on Friday, McKibben said Saturday's events were meant as a kickoff to a week of activity leading up to Earth Day.
McKibben said support for cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide has been building in the United States with the release of two reports on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Supreme Court's April 2 decision that found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the power to regulate global warming emissions as pollution also was a spur, McKibben said.
The United States is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, followed by China.
Washington's demonstration -- vying for attention with the annual Cherry Blossom Parade and a meeting of world finance ministers -- was set for Capitol Hill, where participants aimed to pose for a human postcard to Congress, urging legislators to cap climate-warming emissions.
Other planned demonstrations include a hike to the Hollywood sign overlooking Los Angeles, a four-day trip by ski mountaineers including a descent of the shrinking Dinwoody Glacier in Wyoming and scuba divers staging an underwater rally off the coast of Key West, Florida.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070414/us_nm/globalwarming_usa_dc_1
