Our Team's History

350.org was founded by U.S. author Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on global warming for the general public, and a team of university friends.

Together, they ran a campaign in 2007 called Step It Up that organized over 2,000 rallies at iconic places in all 50 of the United States. These creative actions - from skiers descending a melting glacier to divers hosting an underwater action - helped convince many political leaders, including then Senator Barack Obama, to adopt our common call to action: cutting carbon 80% by 2050.

Starting in 2008, 350.org has built upon Step It Up's model of creative activism and is making it global. Through 350.org, the team has expanded to include young people from all over the world. 

This global team has helped mobilize over 5200 actions in 181 countries on October 24th, 2009—check out the video below. CNN called it 'the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history:

The team took that message to the big UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December of 2009—a conference that fell apart because some nations weren't yet ready to start making serious cuts in their emissions.

So now we're building an even bigger and stronger movement. On 10/10/10 we hosted a Global Work Party, with over 7000 climate solutions projects in communities around the world:

And we experimented with more creative forms of activism with the 350 EARTH project--check out that video here:

Moving forward into 2011, the 350.org team is becoming more global, more cutting-edge, and more focused on building an unstoppable movement for climate solutions that will be impossible to ignore.

Stay tuned.