Living in Shanghai affords us with the opportunity to meet and interact with an extremely strong Green community. What we lack in quantity we definitely make up in our passion. There are meetings and efforts happening on a daily basis from the monthly Green Drinks Shanghai (http://greendrinks.org/index.php?country=China&city=Shanghai)
to GIGA (www.gigafoundation.org), the Eco Design Fair recently hosted at URBN’s fabulous carbon neutral hotel (http://www.ecodesignfair.cn/), and an International event with Shanghai presence, International 350 Awareness Day (www.350.org).
Some of these are off to a great start and have seen stronger support and the snowball is rolling. The next Green Drinks Shanghai will be December 10 from 6:30-8:30 PM at Lane 1252, Fuxing Mid Road (near Xiangyang Road), No.17.
Come for free drinks, free food, and Green discussions. I am always looking for future speakers or ways to improve the event. If you have ideas please email me at greendrinkssh@gmail.com I firmly believe that if we come together—no matter your background or current position—we can make a positive difference.
Being in China also puts some obstacles in the quickening Green movement. Shanghai’s 350 event was canceled after spending nearly 9 weeks organizing with a group of tremendous volunteers.
The bad news? The event I was organizing and other Shanghai events were shut down by the Shanghai government.
The good news? 181 countries and 5200 events took place. Check out www.350.org for some truly moving photos. My favorite is a picture of a woman bungee jumping towards 350 on the ground in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa.
You can still do your part to make a difference and take your own leap of faith. Tell your family, friends, colleagues, and anyone else what 350 means and how it’s the most important number
The short: 350 (parts per million) is the widely accepted level of CO2 that is needed in the environment for our world to maintain itself at current conditions. Currently the numbers are quickly approaching 400 and a change needs to occur. And quickly.
Is the whole 350 situation an enormous problem? You could look at it like that or you could view it as an immense opportunity where we can come together on this special day and push our governments, businesses, organizations, families, and ourselves to reduce the carbon in our atmosphere.
An easy way to start the change is to have your organization start offsetting your carbon. Just as guests and staff have begun doing at URBN Hotel, you can purchase trees from Roots & Shoots and help them in their goal of planting a million trees in China by 2014 http://mtpchina.org/ . I would be happy to send you a data sheet to keep track of how much carbon you are using and how many trees you should purchase.
Shanghai and the rest of the world are coming together but these will hopefully shape our leaders’ decisions this upcoming December at Copenhagen when leaders from all over the world are meeting to create an agreement on the future of the planet. http://en.cop15.dk/
If you have any connections to leaders or those attending COP15 then please reach out to them and tell them how important this is to you.
You can make a difference! Start by purchasing a few trees at http://www.jgi-shanghai.org/Content.aspx?ItemID=164 and staying up to date on the latest with 350 around the world at http://twitter.com/350 and http://www.youtube.com/user/350org
Slideshow for 350:
