350.org's slogan for 2010 is "GET TO WORK". Get to work to start changing our commumities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead the way. The date to mark on your calendar is October, 10 2010 (10/10/10) as a date to start your own concrete action. Grab an idea and run with it, you can even sign up your project on the 350.org website so that other people can join in with you help get your project off the ground, this is the perfect time to GET TO WORK!
10/10/10 Global Work Party, a day to celebrate climate solutions.
As we speak there are a group of Unity College students (a college where a Sustainability course is mandatory for a degree) together with Bill McKibben are driving a bio diesel van from Maine to Boston to New York City to the White House, with a solar panel that is a portion of the solar panel array from Carter's White House in 1979.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. In 1986, President Reagan took the panels down and they were never replaced. Years later, Unity College of Maine adopted the panels where they have lived, on the roof of the cafeteria--still in working condition--until now... This is the email that we received from Bill McKibben today, and if you are signed up to receive his emails you did too, it's a moving and inspiring email that will give you rise to help and take action:
"I’m trying to type this as the biodiesel van I’m sitting in bumps down the highway in rural Maine. We left tiny Unity College yesterday morning, bound for the White House with stops in Boston and New York — and we’re carrying a piece of history with us.
It’s one of the solar panels that President Jimmy Carter installed on the roof of the White House in 1979, 31 long years ago. Here’s what Carter said that day: “A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”
Sadly, the panels were taken down a few years later in the Reagan administration. Not because they stopped working — but because we stopped thinking carefully about the future. The folks at Unity College salvaged them from a government warehouse and put them on the roof of the cafeteria, where they still work fine.
But now they’ve agreed to donate one back to the White House, in the hope that it will spur Obama to pick up where Carter left off.
Our great hope, of course, is that on 10-10-10 President Obama will be up there on the roof, helping to put the panels in place. Our friends at the solar company Sungevity have even offered to donate a massive, brand new solar array for free. (Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, has already taken them up on the offer — he’ll be up on his roof on 10-10-10 hammering in a new set of panels).
But so far, there’s no definitive answer from the White House. They say they’re “interested,” but that it’s “complicated.”
(portion email from Bill McKibben dated 9/8/10)
What Mr. McKibben is asking us to do here is sign up for a work party... then they can go back to the president and say that -- hundreds of people have registered for work parties since we last spoke...
hoping that this will tip the balance. Whether you are going to install panels yourself, plant a garden at your school, coordinate a bike trip with signs advertising 10/10/10 Get to Work! slogan, or you come up with your own idea for a work party! Or you can climb up on your roof (carefully) with a sign that says "Put Solar On It" and email it to the put solar on it website (click here) and become part of the photo petition! It's a good idea, it's a good cause and it can change our world!!
visit 350.org here for more information
for more information on "Put Solar On The White House" click here
(this is a great blog that you will enjoy reading the updates of the road trip and if you can meet up with the van along the way!!) - They will be in NYC tomorrow and Washington on the 10th of September!
