GreenToppers Call for Action on Climate Change in “Step It Up ‘07”

This April 14th, over 1,300 events nationwide, and 14 in Kentucky, will be held to call for meaningful action on climate change. Event organizers say there will be actions on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West. These actions will bring national attention to the problem of Climate Change and ask Congress to “Step It Up” by passing strong, ambitious legislation to cut carbon emissions 80% from current levels, by 2050.

GreenToppers Students for Campus Sustainability will create a voice from Western by forming a human sign, capturing it, and sending it off. Everyone’s presence is requested! The event will take place at the Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center outdoor amphitheater, at 3:00 p.m.

To achieve this ambitious goal, national and international groups are calling for decisive action to improve fuel efficiency of cars, investment in renewable energy, implement energy efficiency, fund and expand mass transit, cap global warming pollution. Citizens are also asked to make climate-friendly changes by retrofitting homes for energy efficiency or converting to renewable energy, using compact florescent lightbulbs, walking and biking more, driving and flying less.

The current Congress has its hands full with many high priority issues, but for the first time climate change is one of them. Four bills setting mandatory caps on economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions are under active discussion in the U.S. Senate, along with a narrower bill that restricts emissions from the electricity and automobile sectors. The latest science tells us, and is supported by a just-released United Nations report, that temperatures are increasing faster than expected, and can be expected to cause catastrophic drought, species extinctions, and population dislocations if not abated. It is now generally agreed that the costs of not taking action will far exceed the costs of taking rapid action to curtail the problem to manageable levels.

The Stern Report (Cambridge University,) the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a number of European countries, the State of California and others, have referred to 80% carbon cuts by 2050 as a solution commensurate to the scale of the problem. While this level of reduction sounds like a lot, it is less than a two percent reduction per year. It won’t be easy switching from a fossil fuels economy to one based on new sources of energy, but renewable energy and conservation technologies are being rapidly developed and introduced into the marketplace. At the same time, people and communities everywhere are becoming more conscious about how lifestyle choices play into the problem of climate change, and are making different choices about how they live their lives and structure their communities.

For information, about the national campaign, go to http://stepitup2007.org/section.php?id=8. To learn more about events in Kentucky, go to http://events.stepitup2007.org/events/search/state/KY

For information about the local event, contact Ouida Meier, ouida.meier@wku.edu or Christian Downing, christiandowning@bellsouth.net.