Tuesday, March 13, 2007

National Blackout Day in UK

Grassroots movement to stop climate change goes national.

Building on the success of last year’s Blackout London action, which was supported by amongst others London Mayor Ken Livingstone, people and organisations around the country including churches, are being asked to turn out their lights in a nationwide blackout.

The national blackout is scheduled to take place this Thursday March 15 at 8pm. Participants are being urged to switch off all non-essential electricity-using devices in a bid to tackle rising energy consumption and its fuelling of climate change.

The date and time will coincide with the launch of climate writer Mark Lynas’s terrifying new book on global warming, ‘Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet’, which shows that a mass extinction of most of life on earth is a real possibility if we don’t act soon to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.

Sharon Turley from Blackout Britain will be flicking the switch and blacking out the launch at the same time as participants all over the UK will be switching off their lights, turning down their heating by at least one degree and turning on their imaginations for a relaxing carbon-free evening.

“An average household spews out 5 tonnes of carbon emissions a year. This figure needs to be reduced by at least 80% if we’re to see a real change in the level of CO2 emissions the UK is responsible for,” said Sharon Turley, Blackout Britain co-ordinator.

Mark Lynas added: “Scientists in the IPCC say that temperatures could rise by more than six degrees if carbon emissions continue to rise. When this happened 251 million years ago, over 90% of life on earth was wiped out.”

With a chapter per degree of warming, Mark Lynas’s book outlines – degree by degree – the impacts on our water, food supplies, wildlife and society that are likely to arise as the temperature climbs. The blackout switch will be flicked when Lynas, during a talk and slideshow at the book launch, reaches the ultimate nightmare scenario of six degrees.

From Ekklesia

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