The Better of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change

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What is really better is that bloggers whether large institutional or small voice can help by doing what they are already doing, getting the word out and back again. In some cases, they can partner.

Jacklyn G. Rodney of the Fratelli Group recently sent me a hello, on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund and its "Act For Our Future" an integrated online and broadcast TV campaign to encourage the U.S. Senate to act on climate legislation.

Like Milestones for a New Millennium, we are also participating in Blog Action Day and we would like to join forces with you to spur Senate action on a climate bill this year. Your blog could help us reach more people and have a greater impact. In return WWF would like to draw our vast network of 1.5 million U.S. members to your site by cross-posting some of your content and links on our ActForOurFuture.org campaign site, as well as posting material on our campaign Facebook and Twitter pages.

I, of course, think that this great. The whole point of this blog is, beyond learning for myself, is trying to pass what I learn to whomever is interested. Apparently thousands are interested.

The “Act For Our Future” campaign strongly emphasizes the importance of reaching out to local Senators and asking them to vote “yes” on climate legislation. I strongly suggest that you take advantage and Act For Our Future. I was Supporting the Boxer-Kerry Climate Bill through Care2 before I knew about this opportunity.

For my efforts through Care2, I received the following reply from Senator Boxer's Office.

Dear Mr. Dowling:

Thank you for writing to me in support of clean energy legislation to fight climate change. I appreciate hearing from you.

I want to share with you the statement I made when Senator John Kerry and I introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733).

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer

United States Senator

Senator Boxer's statement on the introduction of "The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" on September 30, 2009:

I am very pleased to stand with my colleagues, national security leaders, veterans, business leaders, workers, environmental organizations, religious leaders, wildlife protectors, energy companies, state and local officials and so many others as we introduce the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. This bill addresses major challenges of our generation:

protecting our children and the earth from dangerous pollution;putting America back in control of our energy future;

creating the policies that will lead to millions of new jobs; and through our example, inspiring similar actions around the world to avoid an unstable and dangerous future. As Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I want to thank so many of my colleagues and their staffs, on and off the committee.

Senator Kerry's staff and my office have been a team, working together for weeks and weeks, and often late into the night. Colleagues and staff on the EPW Committee have been very important in this effort and their work is reflected. We built on the successful House effort. Our bill has stronger targets in the short term and we have expanded our coalition in the business community.

In our bill, the basic promise to consumers has been kept. The promise to regions that rely heavily on fossil fuels has been kept as well. The first major part of the bill includes authorizations, all of which would be eligible for appropriations and some which are eligible for both appropriations and allowances. Some of these are enhanced from the Waxman bill; some are new. Here are some examples of these authorizations: Investments in clean natural gas, new transmission infrastructure, nuclear R&D and worker training, and green economic development;Agricultural and forestry offset opportunities; Provisions to speed the transition to cleaner transportation, including investments in our transit systems, and incentives for efficient hybrid and electric cars;Adaptation authorizations that include wildfire prevention, flood control, water infrastructure, and investments in coastal communities and wildlife protection.

Our bill gives a much stronger role to mayors and local governments. The second major part of our bill sets up the Pollution Reduction and Investment incentives.

In this section we have strong principles laid out for market transparency and oversight and we set up an Office of Offsets Integrity.Allowances in this section will be detailed in the chairman's mark. We have put into this section a soft collar to address cost containment and limit speculation while maintaining the environmental integrity of the pollution cap.

And our bill does not add one penny to the deficit. In closing, let me say that my state of California is going through hard times right now and it weighs on me every day. But there is one bright spot. And that is clean energy jobs and businesses. The Pew Charitable Trusts reports that 10,000 new clean energy businesses were launched in California from 1998 to 2007. During that period, clean energy investments created more than 125,000 jobs and generated jobs 15 percent faster than the California economy as a whole.

The latest economic study predicts up to 1.9 million new jobs in America if we pass our bill.

We know clean energy is the ticket to strong, stable economic growth ...it's right here in front of us...in the ingenuity of our workers and the vision of our entrepreneurs. And in studies and models.

The global clean energy market is estimated to reach two and a half times the size of the global personal computer market by the year 2020.

We know from venture capitalists that billions of dollars from the private sector will flow into this market.

Others will move ahead if we don't seize this opportunity.

If we do, we will be a leader in the world as we protect the earth and all who dwell here from a future that the world's most respected scientists agree is threatened if we do not act.

No one knows what challenges will face them in their time.

No one chooses their time. But you know what? This is our time.

Global warming is our challenge.

Economic recovery is our challenge.

American leadership is our challenge.

Let's step up right now.

Let's not quit until we have fulfilled our responsibility to our children and our grandchildren.

Barbara Boxer

United States Senator

Related Posts:

• The Good of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Bad of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Ugly of the Good, the Bad and The Ugly of Climate Change

The Ugly of the Good, the Bad and The Ugly of Climate Change

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The Ugly of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change is the impact that a lack of action is having on those least able to deal with the negative affects of global warming. This has been discussed before at No Leadership or Consensus Regarding Climate Change as Nations Meet, more from different perspectives along the economic and political continuum.

Christian Science Monitor, The/Bright Green Blog (9/30) cited a Study: Climate change will lead to increase in number of malnourished.

Climate change is likely to affect crop yields negatively by 2050, an International Food Policy Research Institute study found. And, as the price of wheat, rice and maize increases, the study predicts, 25 million more children will be malnourished.
“Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate changes,” notes a new study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that looks at how climate change will affect food production around the world by 2050.

“Developing countries are likely to be hardest hit by climate change and will suffer bigger declines in crop yields,” said Gerald Nelson, lead author of the study and an IFPRI research fellow, in a conference call with journalists on Tuesday.

The Economist also wrote that the Developing world bears brunt of climate change's effects

Developing countries account for more than half of carbon emissions, but climate change still hurts those countries in an outsized manner. The housing, health and health care problems that the poor face leave them more vulnerable to natural disasters, and poor countries are more prone to flooding.

There is not yet a real sense of urgency. One Hundred Months, a blog about the effects of climate change, has a clock ticking away and says that we are running out of time.

We have 100 months to save our climate. When the clock stops ticking, we could be beyond our climate's tipping point, the point of no return.

Related Posts:

• The Good of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Bad of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Better of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change

The Bad of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change

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Nobody could look at where we are in terms of achieving Millennium Development Goal 7. Environmental Sustainability and believe that we are in good shape. The Bad is that addressing climate change is still being put on the backburner by too may people and too many governments. The months leading up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference have seen a great deal of activity, the trouble is that most of it is in the streets and not the halls of government.

Here is some background. Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times summarized the United Nation's session on climate change in this Video Library Player: U.N. Summit on Climate Change. He also covered Presidents Hu Jintao of China and Barack Obama, both of whom are acknowledging that a deal is an important goal, but are also stressing their own needs in U.S. and China Vow Action on Climate but Cite Needs. The problem is, has Neil MacFarquhar points out, that proposals lag behind promises on Climate.

At the start of October, New York Times ANDREW C. REVKIN was reporting that Obama Aide Concedes Climate Law Must Wait in U.S. / POLITICS|

An aide to President Obama said there was virtually no chance of a bill passing before global talks in December.

The Senate is a huge challenge — not impossible, but difficult,” Ms. Claussen said. “What we need is for the health care debate to conclude, and the president and the entire administration to work constructively and tirelessly to pass climate legislation as soon as possible.”

Thing are a bit better, thanks in part to activists and even slacktivists putting pressure on their government. According to Krittivas Mukherjee and Muriel Boselli of Reuters things are looking better at home, but Climate talks may go to last minute.

Reuters: UNITED NATIONS/LONDON (Reuters) - Official Washington sounded more upbeat on Monday than it has for weeks in sizing up U.S. President Barack Obama's chances of progress on a climate-change bill in Congress this year.
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer predicted the committee she leads would approve a bill before a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in December while Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he hoped all of Congress would pass a law by then.

It is still a nail-biter at Copenhagen though.

NEW DELHI/ PARIS (Reuters) - The world may have to wait until the dying seconds of a U.N. climate summit in December for a global deal to channel business dollars into low-carbon energy, industry and analysts said on Wednesday.
Senior executives warned progress so far in U.N.-led climate talks was inadequate to guarantee the future of low-carbon markets which could transform how the world gets its energy.

Related Posts:

• The Good of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Better of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Ugly of the Good, the Bad and The Ugly of Climate Change

The Good of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change

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The Good is that Blog Action Day is today Thursday, October 15 and as of this morning 8,912 Blogs in 148 Countries with 12,587,643 Readers were participating in this effort. Nobody can complain that they don't get the importance of climate change because of a lack of information.

Zunia Knowledge Exchange of Development Gateway provided the following resource in cooperation with the Danish government and Google Earth.

In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it. Working with data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we show on Google Earth the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century. Here is a video and more in the way of explanation

I already posted in the Ugly of Climate Change of the impact of climate on food and poverty. What about the impact of food on climate? I took the following information from the Blog Action Day Climate Change 2009 site itself. TED has been a long time source of information and inspiration for my blogs.

Food: Agricultural production is responsible for nearly as much greenhouse gas emissions as all forms of transportation put together. Blogging the Connections Between Climate and Food Oct. 8th, 2009 by Robin Beck.

I just saw this great TED talk about how food even gets to our plates in cities by Carolynn Steele in which she brings up a lot of the ways in which food itself influences how we live in an urban environment:

Other areas of interest included:

Travel: Check out who's blogging about the connection between travel, geography, transit and climate change.

Business:5 Ways Climate Change Will Change Business in the 21st Century .

Politics: The best political blogs participating in Blog Action Day this year.

Finally there are the Events going on around the world: People around the world are taking action locally on climate change, check out our friends at 350.org. They're organizing an INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION on October 24. They were featured in this blog before under the post One of the Morally Urgent Questions of Our Moment. Here is the map from 350.org showing actions going on around the world.

View Actions at 350.org

Related Posts:

• The Bad of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change
• The Ugly of the Good, the Bad and The Ugly of Climate Change
• The Better of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Climate Change

Supporting the Boxer-Kerry Climate Bill

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Blog Action Day is now two days away. I signed up to post something, this will be my third year being part of this joint effort to raise consciousness. This year the effort is in anticipation of the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen this December on a Climate Change Treaty.

I have been gathering material for a piece on Climate Control and Millennium Development Goal 7. Environmental Sustainability, but there is some information which should not be held for another two days. Recently, I wrote to my Senators in support of the Boxer-Kerry climate bill. It was, I admit, one of those online support letters provided by one of the progressive organizations to which I subscribe. I was respondent number 5,828. They are looking to reach 10,000. I also added my own "two-cents" to fulfill the purpose of this blog, and the fact that as Senator Boxer is my Senator, I would be asking her to support her own bill. So I added the following paragraph to the correspondence.

Now I fully realize that I am not only preaching to the choir, but to the one of the choir masters, but the relationship between environmental sustainability and economic sustainability in achieving world changing efforts such as the Millennium Development Goals is too apparent these days to be ignored. We need to do both, but we cannot go to Copenhagen or to Davos or some other conference claiming a leadership role until we have our own house in order. So even though you did not need to be asked, I am asking again.

The Senate's version strengthens bill passed by the House by:

• raising the 2020 target for greenhouse pollution reductions to 20 percent below 2005 levels.
• ensuring that revenues from carbon regulation goes to transit, bike paths and other green modes of transportation.
• giving the EPA the authority to regulate coal plants under the Clean Air Act.

The bill is being debated in committee, so if you think it needs to be made even stronger, you can tell your senators: Push for and pass a strong climate bill! >> At last count, they were at 7,006.

Change.org Launches Blog Action Day 2009

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Change.org has taken the reins of Blog Action Day, the annual event uniting the voices of the world's bloggers, both large and small, in posting about the same issue on the same day.

This year's event is in support the gravest threat to world as a whole today: climate change.

October 15th is Blog Action Day this year, there is still time to sign up at www.blogactionday.org

If you have a blog - either personal or professional - click here to find out more information and register your blog now to be part of the largest social change event on the web.

Reaping from Yesterday's Efforts Planting for the Future

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Both Blog Action Day - Poverty and Stand Up Take Action are now in the past. You can see the results of the Blog Action Day here. Stand Up Take Action will be holding their press conference tomorrow to talk about the results. I already provided input to both the folks at Blog Action Day about an idea for next year's Blog Action Day and my views to the Orkut group I belong to supporting EndPoverty2015.

I had two basic messages to the Orkut group. One was to send in what they had done as stories, pictures or links. This is actually a bit self-serving because I get so many useful and interesting resources this way. The other was to register online as having Stood Up Against Poverty Online if they couldn't make it to an actual event.

The idea of pushing Universal Education as a means of promoting the Millennium Development Goals has been running around my head for awhile. I did see one local event at a near by Long Beach magnet school on Understanding Global Poverty, then I realized that it was 6th to 8th graders. Now I am very happy that they are studying global issues, but it wasn't something I would want to attend unless I still had my own eighth grader. So I participated online with the the Australian Council for International Development Make Poverty History Campaign.

Looking over some of the other posts at Blog Action Day I found Lucy Barrow's EduBlog post on Blog Action Day - What does the world think about poverty? | ICT and TLC. I did not know what an ICT trainer was until now. Lucy's post lead me to a more interesting resources such as Edublogger, and the polling site Ask 500 People. The pertinent question was “Do you believe it is possible to make poverty history?” That led me back to to Make Poverty History.

Another new and interesting find was Blog Action Day posts by "association" bloggers courtesy of Lisa Junker via Acronym by on 10/17/08. I have to admit that I am not familiar with the use of the term Association as a profession, but it seems like they do great work and that there is a great deal to learn from them. The Bamboo Project seems to have a good deal to offer.

I particularly liked the insight from Kristin Clarke the day after October 15th “Blog Action Day”.

Can one day’s worth of blog posts fundamentally shift public discourse on a major social issue? All I can say is that issues definitely won’t be addressed if no one is talking about them.

Next Year's Blogging Action Day - Getting an early start

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I left Collis of Blogging Action Day the following message by e-mail (sans some typos).

I am getting my "vote" in early about next year's Blog Action Day - Universal Education. Not too long ago I got interested in the UN Millennium Development Goals. I joined an Orkut group supporting Stand Up Take Action and the thought came to my mind wouldn't it be cool if the Blog Action folks had poverty as their focus this year, lo and behold you did. Trouble is despite the online success of Blog Action and the participation of people around the world in Stand Up Take Action these issues are still not mainstream which can be seen by the lack of 1st level mass media attention. Yes, I know that they are owned by corporations, but if this was understood and appreciated by the average person in the Western World there would be more main stream stories on it. So then Blog Action Day 2009 focuses on supporting Universal Education and then we can use it as a means of increasing awareness of all the related issues. Get Junior High School students on board and by 2015 they are or just about ready to vote. People are likely to be more willing to provide education for others when they are educating their own kids. Kids are more likely to be comfortable with the net having grown up with it. Lastly, this came to me because of the recent work of TED and Dave Eggers Once Upon a School, seems like there is something there that could be built upon.

Blog Action Day Is Today The Struggle Continues

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This is my Blog Action Day post against poverty. It's a workday and I am doing this on my lunch hour. This is where I am suppose to make a statement against poverty, for a cause, on some worldwide solution. The truth is that I am not that good of a writer. Obstinately, it appears to be one day to add one small voices to over 10,000 others.

Not that I haven't been dealing with the subject of poverty or promoting this event. The last few days have been spent doing that, leading up to this with a number of posts; all inspired by Easton Ellsworth's post on How to Make Blog Action Day 2008 Unforgettable which appeared at Blog Action Day 2008 on 9/22/08. Here are my takes on these themes.

1. Ponder. Think about poverty.

2. Believe: Blog Action Day 2008 Reminder!

3. Dream

4. Act.

5. Share - Across The Globe

6. Change For Today - For Oct 15th - For the World

Easton has done it again with his post on 88 Ways to DO something about Poverty. Easton has done what many of us do and that is take ideas from across the World Wide Web and shared them with others. We, in turn, do the same again. That may be the essence of Blog Action Day.

It is not one day to add one small voices to over 10,000 others. It is 2,500 and more days following today to add my voice to growing millions. It may be small, often simple, but like water it can be made a persistent, unyielding force, especially en mass.

Today, of all days, I was given the opportunity to become of a moderator on the Orkut group End POVERTY by 2015 United Nations Millennium Campaign Stand UP Take ACTION 17-19 Oct 2008.

One Small action (from Easton's list) Visit The Hunger Site every day and click the link to feed the hungry. It’s fast and it’s free and there’s absolutely NO excuse not to do it every day you’re online!

Buddhist Thought of the Day

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills. - Buddha ...

It's Blog Action Day TODAY!

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Like it says below, today is Blog Action Day. This is not my post for the effort. It is about half an hour before the work day and I am just putting this up to get the word out to a few more people who may not already been signed up.

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. It's Blog Action Day Today! Hello Bloggers! The day is finally here and it's already rockin! Thousands of posts have been going up in the last few hours as countries wake up to Blog Action Day. Follow the action over at http://blogactionday.org Posts, Press and More ... There are so MANY amazing posts, ideas and articles going up, here's just a small taste: Use Your Business Success To Help Eliminate Poverty How To Make Yourself Happier During the Economic Crisis On Footy and Poverty 30 Simple Ways to Battle Poverty With Technology 15 Volunteers with 200 Lunches hit the streets of San Antonio Instantiate Podcast- How Technology Companies are Contributing to Fighting Poverty It's all happening people! Find TONS more articles through Google's Blogsearch Start a Kiva Lending Team! Mobilize your blog audience into a Kiva Lending Team. Starting a lending team is easy and you can invite your readers to join getting them involved too! Anyone can lend money to entrepreneurs, allowing them to build sustainable businesses in their areas to help lift the community! Visit Kiva.org Mobilize your Audience to Microfinance at Microplace Kiva is filling loans very fast! Fortunately you can also mobilize your audience to microfinance action with MicroPlace. MicroPlace lets you invest in microfinance to enable loans to hard-working entrepreneurs in developing nations. Visit MicroPlace Kiva B4B Donates $10k The KivaB4B Project has committed $10,000.00 USD to Blog Action Day 2008 to help us encourage conversation about and solutions for alleviating poverty. Got an idea on how we should spend the $10,000? Tell us now. 12hr BAD08 BlogTalkRadio Broadcast BlogTalkRadio will host a special 12-hour live radio show from noon to midnight Eastern (New York) time on Wednesday, October 15. Get call-in and prize info here (yes, there are prizes for good listeners!). $1700 and Counting - Donate to the Global Fund The Global Fund combats AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria which have a crippling effect on the fight against poverty. You can donate to the Global Fund via: Change.org/Blogactionday Shop for Poverty with aGoodCause As a part of Blog Action Day 2008 we've teamed up with aGoodCause.com who offer a revolutionary shopping concept to fight poverty. Now it is possible to fight poverty through shopping! Grab their software and when you purchase from more than 5,000 online shops you'll be automatically making a donation to a charity of your choice. http://www.agoodcause.com/content/view/429/146/ Vote for BAD08 on Digg & Reddit Help get the word out about Blog Action Day through Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and ... well any way you can think of! Voting buttons for Digg and Reddit are on the Blog Action Day homepage! Poverty Buttons - Proceeds to Charity Buy one of these nifty Blog Action Day "Solving Poverty" buttons from CafePress and all profits go to Kiva.org entrepreneurs. Designs from PSDTUTS and VECTORTUTS artists. Visit the CafePress Store or Buttons of Hope Get Social with Change.org and Causecast It's always better doing things with friends, so get social and join one of these two awesome social networks for people interested in a better world! Better yet, get your readers to join with you! Visit Change.org | Visit Causecast Organise a Stand Up Against Poverty Event! The United Nations Stand Up Against Poverty event is happening just two days after Blog Action Day. Last year 43 million people participated and organisers are aiming to smash that record this year. Why not organise a Stand Up event with your readers and help tell our leaders that poverty is an issue we care about passionately! Visit StandAgainstPoverty Heifer - Charitable Gift Giving We are thrilled to have the support of Heifer International as well. Heifer Intl is a nonprofit charitable organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas, dedicated to relieving global hunger and poverty. It provides gifts of livestock and plants, as well as education in sustainable agriculture, to financially-disadvantaged families around the world. Visit Heifer What Can One Person Do? Looking for ideas on how regular people can make a difference? We've got lots of ideas - from advocacy to professional contribution, find out how you can get involved in the fight against poverty, and how you can get your readers involved too! What can one person do? ... more updates on the Action Blog and Twitter Feed! Not enough Blog Action Day updates for you? Tune into Easton's barrage of news and awesome links on the Blog Action Day Twitter Feed or the Action Blog And from all the team ... Happy Blog Action Day! Unsubscribe Here

Change For Today - For Oct 15th - For the World

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The last of of the 6 different ways to make Blogging Day unforgettable that Easton Ellsworth provided in his Action Blog post, is 6. Change.

Decide to care a little more about poverty from now on. When it comes up in conversation, take it seriously. Changing the conversation is the first step toward changing the people in it. Please join us in making Blog Action Day 2008 an unforgettable experience for thousands - maybe millions - of people across the world.

Change for me is taking place through a number of different avenues that I have been exploring over the last year. This blog and my original one have started me thinking more globally than I had before. This blog and my other have also begun exploring the world of social-enterprise, though I have done little on that subject here beyond listing a few at the right-hand column. Both are tools for educating myself, and hopefully benefiting others, and exploring different avenues to bringing about change. That will be a discussion that will go beyond October 15th.

Here are a couple done today:

Using the Web to take action is Change

Adding your voice to a cause is Change

Using the Web to take action is Change

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The outreach of the web as a tool for change is undeniable. What could be questioned is its effectiveness. What seems to insure effectiveness is, like any other political action, is the number who participate. Worrying if my particular post is going to change the world is not useful, but participating even with a small voice in a greater cause does have efficacy.

Being relatively new to this endeavor, I continue to find new resources for engagement. The latest is Avaaz.

Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Sydney and Geneva.

My first action with them was to sign the petition The Poverty Promise Breakers.

This week world leaders gather at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Here, all focus is on a multi billion dollar bailouts of financial institutions and the real untold scandal -- global poverty -- risks being forgotten. France, Canada, and Italy are threatening to slash their development aid budgets and break their promise to assign a mere 0.7 % of national income to the world's poorest. If these countries retract on commitments, others may follow --

Petition to President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Berlusconi and Prime Minister Harper:

As concerned global citizens, we urge you to honour your pledge to deliver 0.7% of GDP to development aid. This aid is vital to lift the world’s most vulnerable people out of extreme poverty. Keep your promise so that the potential of the world’s poorest communities can be unleashed and our common future can be built.

They are looking to reach 150,000 signatures. They were at 136,726 when I wrote this. I grabbed to petition off of the Avaaz site under the belief that people are more likely to sign if they see it immediately as opposed to going to another window. I am taking it for granted that Avaaz won't mind.

clipped from www.avaaz.org

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Second action with Avaaz.

Adding your voice to a cause is Change

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I have added my voice to the campaign for buy-ins and a global public rescue plan, instead of bailouts which benefit reckless financiers most. The petition will be delivered to Finance Ministers of the G7 countries in Washington by the end of the week, and to a Global Crisis Summit including many heads of state in November.

I have never been a Milton Friedman-type freemarketer, but I do believe in the Free Enterprise system as the most effective tool to bringing beneficial change to the world. That is a seemingly tenuous statement to make in these times. There are many who will deride me for having too much or not enough faith in the capitalistic system. My argument is not with the system, but with those who have abused the system and those who have institutionalized the means of abuse.

Yesterday MARK LANDLER of the New York Time BUSINESS reported on Rich Nations Pushing for Joint Financial Rescue

The United States and six other nations agreed to a plan to rescue the financial industry, but fell short of offering concrete steps to backstop bank lending.

My action was signing the petition supporting a "buy-in" rescue package instead of a bail-out. I am not in favor of nationalizing banks, but my action or the collective action, will not lead to that. It will endeavor though, I believe, to put greater controls on those institutions. I signed the Avaaz petition because I believe they made a viable argument for doing so.

Leading economists now agree that citizens and our governments are the only force powerful enough to solve this crisis -- only the public can mobilise the investment and oversight needed to fix the financiers' failings, get the economy moving and revive things on a sounder basis. The Great Depression of the 1930s teaches us that we cannot address this crisis with each acting alone -- only by acting together can countries head off disaster.

According to Calculated Risk, "This would essentially be the plan supported by most economists":

VOX cites 18 leading economists from across the political spectrum and around the world -- "Rescuing our jobs and savings: what G7/G8 leaders can do":

How we respond to this crisis will shape our lives for years to come. We're still a long way from tackling the fundamental problems of the global economy, but the tide is moving in our direction. So let's take control of our future in the interests of people not financiers, and raise a worldwide voice across borders for a global public rescue. 3.4 million of us in every nation of the world will get this email -- that's a start. Click below to sign, forward this email to all your friends and family, and let's raise a voice our leaders can't ignore:

clipped from www.avaaz.org

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Share - Across The Globe

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Both Blogging Action Day Poverty and I are on the same page that it's 5 days until the big day when over 7,000 blogs raise a ruckus against poverty.

Today is a great day to talk about No. 5. Share of the 6 different ways to make Blogging Day unforgettable. Easton Ellsworth (plug), who started this off with his Action Blog post, was kind enough to leave an encouraging comment at my post "3. Dream":

Brian, this series rocks! Thank you!

Tim O'Reilly, who was an initial source of inspiration, is telling the Web 2.0 world techies that they need to get more involved (my personal take on what he had to say).

The whole intention of this blog is to put forth my true thoughts and opinions about poverty on October 15 and beyond. It was social media accounts, or the people in them, that got me involved in this effort in the first place. I am participating in Facebook, MyBlogLog and am trying to start a diigo group, but the most fruitful has been Orkut. Aditi (a mysterious visitor to my other blog) led me to the Orkut group Stand Up Take Action Against Poverty (may have to join to see). The fact that I can join a group in India proves the global reach of blogging. I have been very impressed with what they have put together. They have reached 1,965 members and have a number of involved forums. Rupesh Manda from Watconsult.com, which handles all the social media presence and management for UNDC s poverty campaign in India, was also supportive of my efforts. He recently told me that Blog Action Day is now Blogging Action Partner for UNMC now. Together we will make a difference!

More from Blog Action Day 2008

1. Ponder. Think about poverty.

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There are now 9 days until Blogging Action Day Poverty. My recent re-blogging of Easton Ellsworth's Action Blog post listed 6 different ways to make Blogging Day unforgettable.

1. Ponder. Think about poverty.

There are two components to this it would seem, the moral outrage and compassionate outpouring and the rational and systematic solutions. I have the moral outrage and I have compassion, but they are not, to my mind, going to bring about change. They may provide the impetus for the change, but at some point we need to put the outrage aside. Outrage only works for the short term, compassion can be made to work for the long term but it needs skillful means to be successfully realized. You should let the numbers appall you and let the images disturb your sleep, but you should not let the complexities of the causes and solutions vex you. These should be seen as solvable problems.

The links featured in this post lead to the Global Issues blog/website which has been featured in this blog under Millennium Bloggers with Minds of Their Own since its inception. It was chosen because it was judged to be an excellent source of knowledge put forth with a sense of passion about the subjects.