Blog Action Day –
Today is Blog Action Day, an event started started in 2007 by Change.org in partnership with Greenpeace, The Nature Conservancy, and WWF. The annual event asks bloggers from around the world to focus their efforts for one day on a specific issue, from the environment in 2007, to world poverty in 2008, and today on climate change.
As one surly and misguided commenter makes clear on the Blog Action Day You Tube Channel – “And all you people can do is pat yourselves on the back for attempting to change the freaking climate…with your blogs no less” – there will always be reactionary responses to progress based on fear and ignorance.
This is no time for anyone to “pat themselves on the back” and obviously no blogger participating in Blog Action Day is trying to change climate change with their blog. The idea is to change peoples awareness of the reality before us and how the consequences of the decisions we make right now, today, will resonate for generations to come. It is a call to action.
Whether we like it or not, whether it falls within our political, social, or religious spectrum, we have a choice to make: will this time in which we live be considered The Age of Stupid or the beginning of a New Enlightenment? No single voice, no one blog, will change anything on its own. It is the collection of voices coming together that can create true change and progress, as Robert Kennedy so eloquently said  decades ago in a speech in South Africa on their Day of Affirmation:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation…
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Bloggers on this day are not the courageous ones, but we call, with one voice, others to seek a path of action and courage. Te become the tiny ripple of hope that sweeps down the wall of apathy and idleness and builds up a New Enlightenment that leads to a sustainable future. The choice is ours right now to make.
Resources and further reading:
350.org International Day of Climate Action
100 Places to Remember (before they disappear)
COP15
Age of Stupid – the movie
