How To Create Massive Change When It Comes to Climate Change 

It's time to kick it into high gear, people!!!

For the last 20 years or so, there's been a reasonable excuse for not building a movement big and tough enough to tackle climate change: It had no chance. Washington was filled with such obstructionists that everybody knew meaningful change on a scale large enough to dent the carbon concentration in the atmosphere was pretty much doomed.

Well, we screwed up that excuse last November. With the advent of the Obama administration , there was suddenly at least the possibility of real change. It's populated by people who believe in science, who think about the future instead of obsessing over the past, and who even believe in working with other countries.

But it would be utterly foolish to imagine they can do what they need to do by themselves.

For one thing, the scale of change required is so massive it must frighten even Barack. Look, in the last couple of years the science has been unremittingly dark. We now know that global warming is not a future problem—that it's crashing over our heads right now. We know that from the evidence around us: the melting Arctic ice, the rapidly dying forests of the north, the spike in methane releases from beneath the tundra. And we know it from our best scientists: James Hansen and his team at NASA have said, unequivocally, that any concentration of carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet "on which civilization developed and to which life is adapted." That's Not Good News, since the current level is 387 parts per million and rising. That's Not Good News because it means that we need to move very, very fast—Hansen's data indicates that if the planet hasn't stopped burning coal by 2030, we'll overwhelm the planet's systems and never get back where we need to go.

So we have a target—350 parts per million—and we have a political process, not only in this country, but internationally. It will culminate in December in Copenhagen, when the world’s leaders get together to sign a new treaty. At the moment it looks weak and tepid, but if we build a movement we can change that. We can scare some leaders, and we can open some political space for those, like Obama, who really want to do something.

But we can't do it without you. On October 24, we're organizing demonstrations and rallies and events in every corner of the planet to spread that 350 number. There will be climbers high in the Himalayas, and scuba divers on the Great Barrier Reef, and even a rally on Easter Island. But we need thousands more, including one in your community. It doesn’t need to be huge, but it does need to be clever. Check out the ideas people are hatching at 350.org, and by October turn yourself into an honest-to-God organizer.

Because we're not going to solve this one light bulb at a time, but we just might if we can build one light-filled, light-hearted, lightning-fast movement.

Earth Month guest contributor Bill McKibben is an author, educator, and environmentalist who frequently writes about alternative energy, genetic engineering, and other environmental issues. He is the author of The End of Nature, the first book about global warming, and co-founder and director or 350.org, an international campaign "dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis."

Socially Responsible Investments are growing at breathtaking speed, driven by the challenges of climate change, surely unprecedented in our time.

Globally, it has already become a multi-billion dollar industry, with very high growth potential which is attracting record investment. Over the last few years, eco-industries in the European Union have grown to such an extent that they have now become a prominent force across the entire European economy. Today they represent about 2.1 per cent of its gross domestic product and account for 3.5 million jobs.

Frost & Sullivan Green  experts are analysing all the key segments of this market, both in Europe and globally. There is no doubt that this area is expanding at an extraordinary rate and - based on their research - Frost & Sullivan analysts forecast that revenues are set to double, triple or increase even more over the next few years.

Its application is spreading as the environmental costs and limited supply of other power sources such as fossil fuels are realized.

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a booming market in both the US and Europe. Assets in socially screened portfolios climbed to $2.71 trillion in 2007, an increase over the $2.16 trillion counted in 2003 according to the Social Investment Forum’s 2007 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States.

From 2005-2007 alone, SRI assets increased more than 18 percent while the broader universe of professionally managed assets increased less than 3 percent.  As of 2007 about one out of every nine dollars under professional management in the United States is involved in socially responsible investing—11 percent of the $25.1 trillion in total assets under management tracked in Nelson Information’s Directory of Investment Managers.

Research estimates by financial consultancy Celent predict that the SRI market in the US will reach $3 trillion by 2011. The European SRI market grew from €1 trillion in 2005 to €1.6 trillion in 2007.