Happy Blog Action Day!

 

It's the closest thing bloggers have to a national holiday (though we still have to work), happens every October 15th, and ties thousands of bloggers around the world together to write about a central theme. This year's theme is, somewhat appropriately I'd say, climate change.

 

You can swing over to the Blog Action Day to see a live list of Blog Action Day posts popping up around the blogosphere.

 

Here's a very cool video explaining the whole thing.

 

 

For my Blog Action Day contribution, I'm going to share a few important climate change stories that I have on my radar.

 

• Timberland was able to reduce its emissions 19% from 2007 to 2008. They were able to cut the emissions from transportation nearly in half from 2006 to 2008, mostly by switching more of their traffic from trucks to trains. They're pursuing a goal of having all their company owned facilities and travel CO2 neutral by 2010.

 

• Eliot Spitzer thinks the U.S. Chamber of Commerce needs to be stopped. He says they've been wrong on "virtually every major public-policy issue of the past decade: financial deregulation, tax and fiscal policy, global warming and environmental enforcement, consumer protection, health care reform" . The Chamber has lost a few big name members in the past month over their backwards stance on global warming and Spitzer wants to keep the exodus of fleeing members going strong.

 

• Derek Markham at Twilight Earth reminds us that it's up to us to solve the problems associated with climate change. We're all use energy, we all consume, building a sustainable world is going to require all of us to makes some changes in our lives.

 

• Speaking of doing something, the Nature Conservancy has some great suggestions for how you can take action to stop global warming.

 

• A professor at the University of Cambridge thinks that we could lose all of arctic ice within two decades.

 

• An End Mountaintop Removal Day of Action is being planned for October 30, 2009 to call upon the EPA (and government in general) to end the stupidly short sighted practice of chopping down mountains and filling in valleys to get at coal cheaper.

 

• The Farm Bureau is working to kill climate change legislation. Nevermind that rising temperatures will wreak havoc on farms.

 

• Marc Gunther (no relation, but he does have an awesome last name) writes about the greener conversion of Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers who is pushing hard to get climate change legislation passed by Congress.

 

• MNN's Siel Ju gets on the Blog Action Day train with her own post Blog Action Day 2009: Read green blogs.

 

May we live in interesting times.