From Asia to the Americas via Europe and the Middle East, activists around the planet on Saturday marched in an effort to mobilize public opinion against global warming 50 days ahead of a crucial UN climate summit.
Many of the thousands that gathered on the steps of Sydney’s Opera House to kick off the event waved placards bearing the logo 350, a figure scientists believe is the maximum parts per million of carbon dioxide that the atmosphere can bear to avoid runaway global warming.
The atmosphere currently reaches about 390ppm, according to research by NASA climate scientist James Hanse cited by 350.org.
Hundreds of events highlighted the number in different ways.
In what 350.org founder Bill McKibben called a global game of Scrabble, groups in Australia, Ecuador, India, the UK, the US and Denmark each spelled out one of the numbers in 350.
McKibben, an environmentalist and author of The End of Nature, said the day was unique because it emphasized the science behind a politically complicated topic.
“It was ordinary people rallying around a scientific data point,” he said. “Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
In New York’s Times Square, a crowd of demonstrators gathered as giant screens beamed in images from around the world. Organizers told the activists that events had taken place in “more than 180 countries” at 5,200 events.
Protesters who met in a central square in Paris had set their alarm clocks and mobile phones set to ring at 12:18pm in reference to the closing date of the UN summit in Copenhagen, which lasts from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
In Berlin, some 350 protesters wearing masks with the face of German Chancellor Angela Merkel came together in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
In London, more than 600 people gathered beneath the London Eye Ferris wheel by the River Thames to arrange themselves into the shape of the number five, said the organizers, Campaign against Climate Change. Across the Thames, some 100 musicians playing trumpets, trombones, saxophones and clarinets gathered outside parliament to play the same note — an F, made by the frequency of 350 hertz — for 350 seconds, organizers said.
In Venezuela, volunteers formed a human chain marking the number zero on the beach at Catia La Mar north of Caracas to mark the spot where they said the ocean would reach if global warming is not stopped.
In the Beirut hundreds of activists, many wearing snorkels, held demonstrations in key archeological sites. They gathered around the Roman ruins in central Beirut, in the ancient eastern city of Baalbek and along the coast, carrying placards bearing the 350 logo.
“It’s not the first time Beirut will have gone under water,” Wael Hmaidan of the IndyACT group organizing Beirut’s protests said, explaining the goggle-wearing, “but this time it’s going down because of climate change, and not earthquakes.”
Turkish environmental activists in Istanbul staged their protest in a boat, unfurling a banner reading “Sun, wind, right now!”
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