For those of you who don’t know, today is Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15th where bloggers across the world unite to write about a single issue on a single day. The goal is to spark conversation on an issue of importance across the web.This year’s topic is climate change. So far, more than 8,000 bloggers from 144 countries are participating. Blog Action Day 2009 could be the largest social change event on the web and a demonstration of global concern about the climate crisis. Here are five things you can do right now to raise your awareness about climate change. Take a walk. Every day millions of us hop in our cars and drive to the grocery store or pharmacy to pick up a small item and return home. Instead of doing that, what if we walked to the store to complete those little errands? Assuming the store is a mile from home, if every driver in America substituted a walk for a drive once a week for a year, we could save ONE BILLION GALLONS of fuel. That’s a lot less carbon and other pollutants going into the air. And that’s just one country. What if the whole world did it?
Get inspired. Getting inspired by others always makes me more conscious of my influence on the world. One of the most inspiring things I’ve read recently is Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the class of 2009 at the University of Portland. If you haven’t read this yet, you should read it. Click here.
Read the paper. Here’s a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by U.S. Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham titled “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation).” Also, here’s a link to former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth. Both pieces have compelling things to say about climate change and what we can do about it.
Get the facts. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has a very interesting website with many facts and figures on climate change. You can learn more by clicking here.
Tell others what tolling is doing to be sustainable. Earlier this month, IBTTA collaborated with ITS America to host our first conference on Sustainability, Social Responsibility, Energy Conservation and Roadway Maintenance in St. Louis. It was an extraordinary meeting filled with high quality presentations and discussions on the ways tolling is striving to be more sustainable through technology, maintenance, administration, and public policy. You can learn more about the substance of this conference and view the presentations on our website.
Now you’ve read my ideas. Tell us what you think. What are you doing to be sustainable? What can you do to promote awareness of climate change? Please contribute to this discussion using the comment form below. Thanks.
-Pat Jones
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