New York - From Asia to the Americas via Europe and the Middle East, activists around the planet have protested in an effort to mobilize public opinion against global warming 50 days ahead of a crucial UN climate summit.

    Many of the thousands that gathered on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House to kick off the event waved placards bearing the logo 350, a figure scientists believe is the maximum parts per million of CO2 that the atmosphere can bear to avoid runaway global warming.

Also see below:     
Mr. Obama, Be Tough on Climate Change    â€¢

    In New York's Times Square, a crowd of demonstrators gathered as giant screens beamed in images from around the world. Organizers told the activists that events had taken place in "more than 180 countries" at 5,200 events.

    To read more on the climate protests, click here.

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Mr. Obama, Be Tough on Climate Change

Friday 23 October 2009

by: Bill McKibben  |  Visit article original @ The Boston Globe

    President Obama will appear at MIT this morning to talk about climate change and energy - and chances are he’ll try pretty much to use the same tactic he has used in the health care debate, working with Congress to pass something modest. It’s the sensible and straightforward approach, but in this case good politics may be bad science.

    That's because global warming is different from almost every other problem we face. The negotiation that really counts is not between Republicans and Democrats or industry and the greens, or even between the United States and China. The real bargaining is happening between human beings and physics and chemistry, and that's a tough negotiation.

    Physics and chemistry have already announced their bottom line. In the last two years a slew of research has shown that the most carbon we can safely have in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million - indeed, a NASA team said that above that figure we can't have "a planet similar to the one on which civilization developed or to which life on earth is adapted."

    We're already well past the 350 figure, at 390 parts per million, which is why Arctic sea ice is melting, glaciers thawing, and the ocean turning steadily more acidic. To meet the 350 goal will mean a far more aggressive approach than the one Obama and Congress have so far taken (the bill making its way through Congress explicitly aims for a world with 450 parts per million carbon).

     To read more from the director of 350.org click here.

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