South Bay residents will parade through five beach cities on bikes next month. Thousands of trees will be planted in Uganda. Solar stoves will be installed in Bolivia for a carbon-neutral picnic. And the City of Manhattan Beach will host a Sustainability Summit and Eco-Fair to teach residents what they can do to help slow the degrading changes in our climate. All on the same day and all for the same reason.
“The goal is to get people together to talk about solutions for climate change,” said Sona Kalapura, Environmental Programs Manager for the City of Manhattan Beach. “We want to bring hard-to-understand global issues to people and discuss local actions that we can accomplish right here in our community.”
The worldwide effort is a 10/10/10 Global Work Party put on by 350.org, an international campaign to encourage citizens to reduce behaviors that emit greenhouse gases.
The city is one of more than 1,700 groups in 140 countries scheduled to hold simultaneous events on Sunday, Oct. 10 – 10/10/10 — aimed at reducing carbon footprints.
The event is the second of its kind put on by 350.org.
Last October, 1,300 South Bay residents gathered at the Manhattan Beach Pier to form a waving human tide line, while 2,000 students in New Zealand assembled themselves to spell out “350” — the number some scientists say is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
“It was the largest single day of political action in the history of the world,” said Torrance resident Joe Galliani, organizer of the South Bay 350 Climate Action Group.
The organization hoped the combined efforts would urge world leaders to accept a new climate change treaty at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference last December in Denmark.
The treaty — which outlined worldwide policies to limit climate change — was not adopted.
“Last year’s climate action day was meant to call to the attention of our leaders the impacts of climate change and get them to do something about it,” Galliani said. “It was not effective, in our opinion, because no climate treaty was negotiated. We didn’t move the needle. This year, we’re taking action into our own hands as citizens [participating in] over a thousand work parties in which people will effect change.”
The Sustainability Summit will feature discussions on sustainability, climate change and water conservation. Speakers will include Galliani, Mike Garcia of Redondo Beach-based landscape company Enviroscape, and Bob Perry, who has been dubbed the “father of California native landscaping.”
Following the summit, attendees can participate in a tour of the Manhattan Beach Botanical Gardens and a rainwater harvesting system. An Eco-Fair featuring local green businesses will also be held at Thirteenth Street and Morningside Drive throughout the day.
“It will have all the things residents need to go green in one place,” Kalapura said. “This year we wanted to do something again, but this time we want to really talk about solutions.”
The Sustainability Summit will be held October 10 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Manhattan Beach City Council chambers. See the Manhattan Beach About Town section for other 10-10-10 Global Work Party events occurring in the South Bay. For more information, visit www.citymb.info. To host an event, visit www.350.org. ER
