Today is 10/10/10 – October 10, 2010 or the Global Work Party—so some of the NRDC team that was in China for the climate negotiations thought we would do something for today’s event. Our action was more symbolic than many of the events being hosted around the world today. Key members of our international climate team and our China team had been working the last six days trying to move the world forward on global efforts to address climate change. So we took a trip to the Great Wall of China and decided to symbolically support the efforts of 10/10/10.
After all, the Global Work Party is to symbolize the fact that people are getting to work taking action on clean energy and climate change. It is meant to be a wake-up call to the policymakers around the world that the time for debate is over and the time for action is now. Of course we need more than symbols to address this challenge.
The NRDC team in China is doing just that. They are working every day to try to help China take concrete actions to reduce their global warming pollution and to raise awareness about the need to do more (as the China Program Director Barbara Finamore just discussed and this advertisement running in China shows). They are a fantastic team. I had a chance to interact with them this past week quite a bit and to learn more about what they are doing on the ground in China. I’m always amazed at how they are simply rolling up their sleeves and helping to implement real solutions to China’s environmental challenges.
Next week the NRDC team will continue working on climate and energy action in China. I’ll be going to Shanghai to visit one of our efforts to improve energy efficiency—the Boshan International Energy and Environment Park development site—and others in our team will be going to two more cities in China –Suzhou and Nanjing to work on similar efforts. Stay tuned as I’ll blog on that trip and other recent trips to see real implementation of clean energy in action in China.
The world and China needs everyone to take action on 10/10/10 and every day afterward. And we need to let our policymakers know that clean energy is for real, global warming is happening now, and we need to take real action this minute (not after we’ve completely agreed how to move forward).
So let’s all get to work. We need you in China and throughout the world.
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