a set of theoretically informed tactics for social activism that scholars can continue to examine and movement builders can incorporate into their repertoires. Finally, this book importantly challenges social movement scholars to make their research accessible and relevant to the people who are carrying out the on-the-ground work of social activism. We need to have this information if we are going to do better next time—and given that we're still losing, there is going to have to be a next time.
Now, our team is trying to do the same thing globally. Again there's an unmet need—as the world prepares for the Copenhagen summit in December of 2009 that will decide on a framework for dealing with climate change, the plans of our leaders are much too timid. And there's no activist movement in much of the world to push them harder.
So we're taking the latest science—the climatologists' assessment, after the great Arctic melt of 2007, that 350 parts per million carbon dioxide is the most we can safely have in the atmosphere—and trying to use a wide variety of tactics to ram it home. We want 350 to be the most well-known number in the world, the one thing that people know about global warming if they know nothing else.
Again we're underfunded, and without some big organization behind us. But that's OK, because we have the Web—check out http://www.350.org—and because we have a world's worth of creativity. In the few weeks since we launched the drive, we've already heard from farmers in Cameroon planting 350 trees on the edge of their village, and from bike riders in Salt Lake City, 350 of them, circling the state capitol. Many churches have already rung their bells 350 times; students in China and India have marched under the 350 banner. It's growing.
If it grows large enough, it will matter—it will set the bar for success or failure in Copenhagen and move the debate a little further in the direction of the science. It's the most effective way we can think of to make a dent in the biggest problem the world faces, and in the short time the physics and chemistry allow. So visit the site, dream up something cool, and help us spread the message around the planet.
—Bill McKibben, scholar in environmental studies,
Middlebury College