Bring the Noize: Making a Racket at Climate Change Week
by Roberta Cruger, Los Angeles 
on 09.17.09
Photo by Graham Bones via Flickr
At 12:18 pm on Monday, September 21, people around the world will kick-off Global Climate Change Week in New York City by making some noise, ringing a bell, banging a gong, clanging cymbals, hollering, etc. to urge leaders to take bold action. Mark your calendars. As the UN Assembly meets, 9/21-26, in preparation for COP15, concern mounts that the political quagmire will mean a repeat of Kyoto's negligible results. Is it make it or break it? Here are ways to give a shout out.
This campaign, called the "Global Wake-Up Call," is organized by the TckTckTck Environmental Coalition along with Oxfam, Greenpeace and others. But don't confuse it with Oxfam's "Climate Wake-Up Call," which will create a Human countdown in Central Park with people standing in as grains of sand in a giant hourglass. This photo op at the Wolman Skating Rink Sunday, 9/20 at 1 pm, will demonstrate "Time is running out."
While the UN confabs, Climate Change Week NYC hosts an impressive list of symposiums, forums, and roundtable discussions open to the public, covering a range of eco-issues. There will also be tree-planting, park clean-ups, white roof painting, an Eco-Expo, a forest of origami, and Brita's Climate Ride from NYC to DC.
Not on the east coast? Sign the Seal the Deal petition and get your mayor involved. TckTckTck is specifically calling on city officials to play a role by ringing bells in public buildings and setting clocks to chime at town halls for the Wake-Up Call.
Check with Avaaz, the online advocacy group, to see where to get involved in the noise-making moment next Monday. (Appropriately, Avaaz means "voice" in several languages, per the org.) Find one of 350 clatter-making events in one of 52 countries near you or sign up for an online toolkit to host your own clamoring gathering and get the crowd roaring. The site also lists theaters for live screenings of The Age of Stupid, a post-environmental catastrophe film, happening that night.
Is it a stunt a la Earth Hour's lights-out? Or will the noize be heard? Maybe the media will play it up like a town hall raucous. So set your cell phone alarms or Clap If You Hate Climate Change.
More on Climate Week and COP15:
NY Event: The Next Step in Cause Marketing - 'The Good Web During Climate Week NYC'
The UN Needs You! Millions of Signatures Sought to Seal the Deal
World's Largest Companies Need to Double Pace of CO2 Reductions to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change
US Must Have a Climate Bill Before December's UN Climate Talks
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- Nothing Can Ever Replace Face-to-Face Activism
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