Businesses For 350 - Join Us

A letter to business-people around the world:

Dear friends and colleagues:

We're writing to invite you to participate in something amazing--and something a bit untraditional: get your company involved with 350.org and their International Day of Climate Action, set to happen on Oct. 24 in pretty much every country around the world.

If you're reading this, it's likely that you care about making your business green--maybe you're taking steps to reduce your company's carbon footprint, or have been educating your colleagues about the environment.Perhaps you started a recycling program at your office, or are building awareness-raising into your product-line. Worthy initiatives, all--and it strikes us that now is the time to join our individual efforts together, to knit together our isolated work into a bigger picture.

That's where the 350.org day of action comes in--it has potential to engage your staff and customers, to complement what you're already doing by knitting local projects to a global movement. How you participate is largely up to you: maybe your employees could plant 350 trees, or collect 350 bags of trash. Maybe you can make a product with the 350 logo (like the folks at Patagonia), or put information about what 350 means for climate change on your next green product (like Camelbak). Perhaps you can sponsor an existing local 350 event, put a"Business For 350" poster in your store-front or a similar badge on your website, or host a mini-rally (with your logo on the banner) like the staff of Keen footwear. The possibilities are endless--this is marketing, which we're supposed to be good at.

One easy first step: grab the "Businesses for 350" web-badge and put it on your site, and let the whole world know that you're helping to build the drumbeat for strong climate action. You'll be building the buzz, and increasing your company's visibility as a business that truly cares about saving this sweet planet of ours.

The big climate UN Climate negotiations in December are approaching, and fast. This round of talks in Copenhagen may prove to be among the most important international talks of all time, as key as Yalta and Versailles except that their effects will be measured in geological time. Here's why: when the Arctic melted in the summer of 2007, scientists began to realize they'd badly underestimated how fast global warming was occurring. The world's leading climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, and his team published a series of papers that finally set a bottom line for the planet. Anything more than 350 parts per million was more carbon dioxide than the planet's atmosphere could safely contain if we wished an earth "similar to the one on which civilization developed, and to which life on earth is adapted."

That's strong language, especially when you consider that we're already past it--at 389 ppm and rising. Which is why the Arctic is melting. And why the negotiating and legislating now underway is dramatically insufficient. What 350 really means is: global warming is in no way a future threat. It's happening right now. We don't need an insurance policy against it. We need a fire extinguisher. Which is why 350.org is organizing a giant day of action on Oct. 24. All over the world (maybe not North Korea) people will be figuring out ways to drive that number, and the dramatic meaning it bears, into public consciousness. Think of it as a giant branding campaign designed to reboot the conversation over global warming. Some of the people involved are traditional environmentalists. Many more are not.

The world's best mountaineers sent out a letter like this one not long ago urging their colleagues to get up high with banners on Oct. 24. The worlds foremost oceanographers have done likewise--there will be 350 scuba divers on the Great Barrier Reef that day in an underwater demonstration. Some of the gatherings will be big--huge city rallies across the global south, Europe, North America. Others will be small, and creative--designed to attract attention.

Thousands of churches will be ringing their bells 350 times; outside farmers markets, growers will be building pyramids of 350 pumpkins. Business needs to be involved. We know that many businesses really are taking bold steps, and really do endorse the kind of dramatic and urgent change implied by the number 350.

If you're tired of business as usual and ready for business as unusual, we hope you'll join us in doing something nifty on Oct. 24. (Or the 23rd, since the 24th is a Saturday!) So please think of something useful and beautiful to do. And please get in touch with Amanda (Amanda@350.org) to let us know that you're on board. She's helping coordinate businesses for the project, and will be able to give you all the info and resources you need.

Sincerely,

The 350.org Business Network