Dear colleagues,
Over the last several weeks the Climate Ark and other Ecological Internet web site have been moved to a massive new server with over four times the capacity of its former host. This was necessary as on recent high-volume traffic days, such as the release of the UNFCCC first summary report, the server had been crashing due to too many users. The whole exercise of moving the content and getting everything working took somewhat longer than we expected - it really involved recreating something I had created over 8 years. But we are now in a position where the blog volume will be increasing, news tracking will be more regular, and our search capabilities expanded to include blog entries. We are very excited about the server hardware upgrade which essentially gives us the computing power of a small bank. The update was largely personally funded so I look forward to recouping some costs in our mid-year fund-raiser. But surely the climate change issue is not going away quickly, the Climate Ark is clearly filling an important niche, and this was an essential investment for biocentric climate change solutions. We are very proud to be your climate change portal service provider. Let us know if you find areas that are not fully restored yet. Thank you for your continued support.
Dr. Glen Barry, President, Ecological Internet

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (4) | More on climate change Climate Ark

http://www.stepitup2007.org/ on April 14, 2007

A Letter from Bill McKibben and Dr. Glen Barry

Dear Friends,

This is an invitation to help start a movement--to take one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Those of us who know that climate change is the greatest threat civilization now faces have science on our side; we have economists and policy specialists, courageous mayors and governors, engineers with cool new technology.

But we don't have a movement -- the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people. If we're going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn't enough.

So pitch in. A few of us are trying to organize a nationwide day of hundreds and hundreds of rallies on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every state, and in many of America's most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West.

We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines in our coastal cities, in cornfields and forests and on statehouse steps.

Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises-the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate.

As people gather, we'll link pictures of the protests together electronically via the web-before the weekend is out, we'll have the largest protest the country has ever seen, not in numbers but in extent. From every corner of the nation we'll start to shake things up.

By its very nature, this action needs all kinds of people to help out. We can't make it happen-it has to assemble itself.

Sign up to host an action. We'll coordinate the responses, introducing you to others from your area, and give you everything you need to be a leader, from banners to press releases.

You don't have to have ever done anything like this-you're not organizing a March on Washington, just a gathering of scores or hundreds in your town or neighborhood.

We need creativity, good humor, commitment. If you are active in a campus group or a church or a local environmental group or a garden society or a bike club-or if you just saw Al Gore's movie and want to do something-then we need you now.

And by now, we mean now.

The best science tells us we have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy and lead the world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA's Jim Hansen, we will face a "totally different planet," one infinitely sadder and less flourishing.

The recent elections have given us an opening, and polling shows most Americans know there's a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality.

Please join us.

Bill McKibben and Dr. Glen Barry

http://www.stepitup2007.org/
http://www.climateark.org/

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (7) | More on climate change action