York Town News
Climate rally is this Saturday
YORK - Every area resident concerned about the effects of global warming will have an opportunity to join tens of thousands of like-minded Americans who will gather this Saturday, April 14, in 1,315 locations in all 50 states as part of the National Day of Climate Action.Organizers have said it will be the largest grassroots action in many years.
Locally, participants will meet at 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the York-Ogunquit Methodist Church on Route 1, located next to the Lobster Barn. If it rains, the gathering will take place inside the church.
The national action was launched by Step It Up, a member of the Climate Crisis Coalition, which includes a wide number of well-known organizations including the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Council of Christian Churches.
"The rallies will provide a connection among Americans who are deeply troubled by the increasing effects of global warming and the scientific predictions of a catastrophic future," explained Jeremy Foss, a local resident and one of the organizers of the York-Ogunquit rally. "This awareness will be directed to members of Congress with the demand for new, strong Federal policies to slow down carbon emissions that are causing increasing climate change."
The effort follows the recent conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Committee on Climate Change, which state that global warming is real and will have increasingly devastating consequences, Foss explained.
"Congress will be asked to immediately enact legislation that will cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by mid-century. This amounts to a two percent reduction annually, achieved through the vigorous development of conservation techniques and the use of renewable energy," he noted.
A number of European countries - and the state of California - have already endorsed this reduction as a crucially necessary and achievable goal to avoid a planetary crisis of almost inconceivable magnitude, according to event organizers.
"The Climate Crisis Coalition maintains that the U.S. Government has fallen far behind in legislating action to combat accelerating global warming, a process that, if not halted, will strip away and transform everything we know, forever," Foss said.
Participants who attend the York rally will have access to printed material on climate change and will have an opportunity to receive free automobile tire air pressure checks, as higher inflation of tires can save as much as 20 pounds a gallon in carbon emissions.
At 1:30 p.m. a group photo will be taken, which will published with photographs from other nationwide rally sites on the internet and sent to Congress as evidence of the groundswell of public opinion demanding action to halt global warming.
To learn more about this and other area rally sites, visit www.stepitup2007.org.
