November 8th, 2009
Timothy Barrett
Climate Action and the Trial of the Century
350 parts per billion is the number that has come to symbolize the level of green house gasses that the Earth’s atmosphere can handle before triggering catastrophic climate change. Because of its symbolic nature, the number 350 has become a global rallying point for those who wish to fight against ozone depleting polluters. Inspired by the 350 global movement, People Power of Santa Cruz sponsored a city wide day of climate action. The action, which involved flag flying sail boats, parading bicyclists, and a mock trial of an automobile seemed to effectively cross established socio economic dividing lines to communicate global awareness messages to a significant cross section of Santa Cruz society.
The mock trial, which initially featured the participation of State Assembly Member Bill Monning as the court bailiff, and Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley as the presiding judge, was a spectacularly informative and entertaining event. The trial began with the parading of the prisoner car in shackles through the streets of Santa Cruz to the city’s Town Clock where a crowd gathered to watch prosecutors and corporate defense attorneys debate over the fate of the accused criminal car.
During an onsite CitizenNewscaster.com interview, Assembly Member Monning said, “[The] impact of today’s event is consciousness raising and empowering people to understand that we the people are the only party on this planet with the capacity and the will to reverse what we’ve created as human beings…It’s promoting a global movement.” Bill Monning called for peace between nations as being a necessary step toward cooperation on global climate change issues.
Fred Keeley characterized the event as “A very fun and lighted hearted way of dealing with a serious issue.” When asked by CitizenNewscaster.com whether society is giving enough thought to the environmental impacts of alternative fuels and conservation measures Fred Keeley responded, “We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Where we are on the spectrum now is on the dirtiest most polluting most damaging end of the spectrum. We can march our way across that spectrum to many much cleaner much better ways of illuminating using electricity, how it is we power vehicles and so on…If there’s a mercury challenge here and a disposal problem there, we should try to deal with those issues as we are managing our way towards the cleanest environment we can”.
As a way of promoting awareness regarding global climate change issues, the People Power sponsored climate action seems to have been an unqualified success. View the video above to see some highlights from the day’s action |
