The 1000 Cities Campaign: Saving the World, One City at a Time
This Is Not a Drill
Storms. Wildfires. Flooding. Heatwaves. The list goes on and on. Far from being some distant, theoretical threat, climate change is changing not only how we plan for the future, but how we live right now, this very second. With time running out to make a change, we cannot wait for the leaders to lead. It’s up to us.
Luckily, we’re not alone. The organizers of the upcoming Pathway to Paris concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on November 5 are doing all they can to help lead the world to a clean-energy future. Their 1000 Cities Campaign, which will be launched that night, is an ambitious new grassroots effort that could do just that—but for it to succeed, we need your help.
We Hope We’ll Always Have Paris
We know that Pathway to Paris will be an unforgettable night of music and community, but the launch of 1000 Cities makes it much more than that. This Carnegie Hall concert is the latest in a series of events meant to ensure that the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement become a reality. And the 1000 Cities Campaign is a big part of making that happen. It aims to get (at least!) 1000 cities around the world to commit to using 100% renewable energy by 2040. After all, cities produce 70% of the earth's greenhouse gas emissions, while taking up just 2% of its land area.
Yes, the Paris accord has set the nations of the world on a path to keeping the rise in global temperature below 2˚C, allowing humanity to avert the worst-case scenarios of an overcooked planet. It’s an amazing and hopeful thing. But the agreement’s success is by no means assured. That’s why we all need to come together, right now.
We ❤ Local
On our social-media feeds, on TV, wherever it is we get our news, we hear all the time about formal high-level climate conferences, like the one in Paris two years ago and the one in Bonn, Germany, coming up. We hear about nations and governments and what they’re doing or not doing to deal with the issue. We worry about President Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement. All that talk of faraway committees, study groups, executive orders, and global gatherings can be enough to make ordinary people think there’s not much we can do to make a difference.
The good news is that a lot of change takes place on the local level. The 1000 Cities Campaign is looking to harness that energy.
People-Powered Energy
1000 Cities is the kind of campaign that works from the ground up, not the top down. Citizens in cities everywhere will be given the tools to encourage and help push their local governments to implement climate action plans and go 100% renewable. Here’s how it’ll work:
- Citizens, via 350.org’s website, will be able to create campaigns for their cities.
- Over the next 10 years, Pathway to Paris’ technical team will develop 100 climate action plans a year (target: 1000 plans by 2030), making sure to connect with citizens on those plans every step along the way. The first 10 pilot cities will be announced on November 5 at the Pathway to Paris concert.
- Each year, as plans are developed, Pathway to Paris will help link these cities with strong partnerships to find the investment needed to move the plans into implementation.
- There will be a Pathway to Paris concert tied to the annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, highlighting the success of 1000 Cities and inspiring more action to help push the world to become free of fossil fuels.
- Pathway to Paris’ website, along with a new 1000 Cities site, will track the progress of each city that has made the commitment of becoming 100% renewable by 2040, provide updates about the movement, and much more.
Let’s Get to Work!
We don’t need to wait for somebody else to make change happen—somebody more powerful, more connected, more whatever. No: we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for, and the time to lead is now.
Join us in the climate movement, start thinking about how your city could go carbon-free, and then… let’s go change the world.
