This a.m, planning for May 5 Climate Impacts Day, on climate change & extreme weather - connect the dots

We were hugely fortunate to have Bill McKibben come here last week (Tue 17th) and speak to a packed house about global warming, and about the "global weirding" of weather that we've seen over the last several years. (If you haven't seen the talk, an edited-down version will air on NCTV, on the Occupy Nevada County program.) His most trenchant statement was essentially this:

Working to green your local community is important; just don't make the mistake of ONLY working on those things - because this won't be nearly enough to tackle the scale of the problem.

He also spoke a lot about "global weirding", the spate of wild weather that's hit our world over the last few years - record U.S. heat in March, "the French heat wave, the Chicago heat wave, the Australia heat wave, the Russian heat wave, the Texas drought"; the Pakistan and Phillipine floods...

A quick summary of 2011 [New England] weather highlights would read approximately like this:  Devastating snowstorm, devastating snowstorm, blizzard, heat wave, heat wave, torrential rains, hurricane (more torrential rains), floods, hurricane remnants (even more torrential rains), worse floods, even more devastating snowstorm—and that only takes you through October.  (link)

 The climate group that McKibben and seven Middlebury College students started, 350.org, is holding a worldwide action May 5 to stand in solidarity with communities and workers (including Vermont small farmers) impacted by this wild weather - and we in Nevada County will participate.  Our planning meeting is at 8:30 a.m. this (Sat.) morning at Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters; and the event itself will be next Saturday afternoon, 3pm.  Stay tuned...