An Organized Mob for Climate Change

I received an email the other day from Darren Barefoot, who is working on a big campaign to raise awareness about global climate change. Having been born and raised in Vancouver, I guess I’ve always been surrounded by an interest in environmental concerns, but these issues really rose to the surface after Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. We only have one planet and we should be taking better care of it.

The “big climate change campaign” is called TckTckTck. Rather than work in isolation, TckTckTck represents a giant coalition of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who are working together to “put pressure on world leaders to agree to a fair, binding and ambitious deal in Copenhagen this December when they negotiate the sequel to the Kyoto Agreement.” Among the organizations involved are Greenpeace, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Amnesty International.

The big event today is something that they call the Global Wake Up Call. This is set to take place across over 100 countries, getting large numbers of people to gather together and sound off about the climate change crisis. From the official TckTckTck page:

“The world is sleepwalking into a crisis of epic and historical proportions. On September 21st, over 1,500 events in 112 countries organized by TckTckTck partners and individuals like you will sound the Global Wake Up Call in cities, towns and villages around the world. We need to wake up world leaders to the crisis of climate change by making noise and ringing bells and showing them that the world is ready for a bold climate deal.”

Darren tells me that there are at least 20 events being organized in the Lower Mainland today, including the biggest one at the Vancouver Art Gallery at 12:18pm. Expect some flash mob action. You can also follow along or show your support on Twitter via @tcktcktck, the official account for this “global movement for climate change.”

While it certainly wouldn’t be fair to say that I am completely innocent, I do what I can to reduce my impact on the environment. I reuse or “repurpose” whenever I can, and since I work from home, I don’t do much driving either. My greatest environmental sin is probably my power consumption, though the number of courier shipments I receive could come in at a close second. Even so, I try my best to do good things for the environment when I can.

This is on an individual and personal basis, but what TckTckTck is trying to achieve is on a global scale, involving countries from all around the world at the government level. It’s debatable how effective these agreements will be in addressing our climate change concerns, but they’re certainly doing a good job attracting attention to their cause.

For more information about the TckTckTck campaign, point your browsers over to TckTckTck.org.