English
As I write this, Blog Action Day 2009 is about to sunset over the Pacific, with the last part of the globe reaching 11:59pm on October 15th. For the past day bloggers in 155 countries across six continents have written about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned BAD09 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.
Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by about 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today’s event across the web and around the world.
There are too many updates to include in a single blog post, but here’s an overview of today’s highlights to get us started:
We are about to hit 27,000 32,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17 million people today. We are also about to exceed 12,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven’t yet registered into the final count.
We count at least three major world governments as active participants in this year’s event. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight this morning, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama’s White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.
Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence today as well. Check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for an extensive list, which includes The Official Google Blog’s green tour of the company’s campus, Mashable’s post asking what you’re doing to reverse climate change, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s suggestions for “Five apps to help save the world.”
Many of our nonprofit partners, leading organizations from around the world, were actively involved in making the event a success. TckTckTck released a beautiful new video, Greenpeace and WWF bloggers from around the world added their voices, Oxfam helped emphasize the human side of the climate crisis, 1Sky wrote about the front lines of political activism in the US, and The Nature Conservancy helped us understand the science of climate change. We’ll provide an entire list of all nonprofit posts as soon as we gather all the links.
In addition to all of these great bloggers we’d particularly like to thank several blogs for devoting the whole day to Blog Action Day. The travel blog Gadling posted a number of great pieces on green travel. The always-insightful bloggers at NRDC’s Switchboard wrote throughout the day. The World Resources Institute provided updates throughout the day with facts and information. Global Voices has posts from around the world in many languages. Co2nsequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.
Finally, we’d like to recognize the efforts of our partners at Current Green who have not only been posting, but also featuring the best writing and art from Blog Action Day bloggers everywhere.
We should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort, and for many of you, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, many of which are listed in our Take Action section. We will continue providing updates and information about the success of today’s event and ongoing opportunities for involvement here in the coming days and weeks ahead, and hope you’ll stay with us.
Robin
Ben
Judith
Danny
Mark
Matt
Easton
Mike
Stefano Ricciardi
October 16th, 2009
It’s been an honour to be part of this. Well done everyone!
T1 Rex
October 16th, 2009
Notice that a measurable percentage (nearly half a percent) of all blogs were supporting Blog Action Day this year. Perhaps next year this could rise to several percent as awareness increases.
Tom
October 16th, 2009
What an amazing achievement. Well done to everyone who organised the event and for all who took part.
great to have been a part of it!
Larry Nocella
October 16th, 2009
Thanks for hosting this, BAD09 and thanks to all who took part. This is such a clever and simple idea. Let’s see more info about the impact. Can’t wait for next year!
Larry Nocella
author of the novel, Where Did This Come From?
Lisa Devaney
October 16th, 2009
It makes so much sense to organize collective thinking around a single issue important to the whole wide world such as climate change. Blog Action Day is a powerful example of the positive good that digital activism can inspire. Here’s hoping it really made a difference!
kwesi acquah
October 16th, 2009
Good job guys, keep up the good work
Alison Ramer
October 16th, 2009
I got such positive feedback about my Top 10 Climate Change Videos post–it was a pleasure. It really felt like an exciting day with so much momentum coming from bloggers, tweeters etc!
Thanks for organizing and I look forward to participating again next year.
ReadySetDC
October 16th, 2009
This was a wonderful global event! Let’s make this even bigger next year!
rahul banerjee
October 16th, 2009
Euphoria should be followed by continuous hard action on the ground for mitigation of climate change.
sandy price
October 16th, 2009
Thanks for the opportunity to actually FEEL like part of a movement, and not just a lone voice pounding the cyber-pavement on issues of environment, sustainability and climate change.
Loraine Alkire
October 16th, 2009
I was proud to write this article. My goal was to encourage people who may or may not believe in global climate change to at least clean up their act. We humans pollute at an alarming rate, so whether a person believes that the change is by nature or human hands– it’s evident from the smog, landfills and limited renewable resources that we need to clean up our act. My enticement? Almost everything you can think of that is eco-friendly, is also money saving. We at LAhipChic think conserving energy and saving money is very, very fashionable; hip even.
Thanks for allowing me to be a part of something so BIG and BAD09.
Ben
October 16th, 2009
Pulled off with flair!
How about adding a page on Wikipedia for Blog Action Day?
Jim Scott
October 16th, 2009
I like Gandhi’s dictum: “Let us live a simple life so that others can safely live”.
Jim Scott
October 16th, 2009
Got it wrong. It should be: “Let us live a simple life so that others can simply live”. Curious slip! Never mind.
Dorotea
October 16th, 2009
Congratulations for the efficient but non molest invitations to participate. On BAD I read many interesting posts, got nice comments on mine and somehow find myself now much closer to the subject than before,
Count on me next year.
Deviprasad
October 16th, 2009
My Subtle Query to all the Good World Citizens –
Today, Our World has so much to offer, still poverty- malnutrition-hunger do persists – But Why?… Why?… Why?…
CALL THEM HUMAN, NOT POOR. POVERTY AND CLIMATE ARE RELATED,
TAKE THEM WITH YOU TO ADDRESS THE ISSUES …
Global climate change is a test of our time and a great challenge to our ability to address it with alacrity. Today, sense of direction and sense of ownership are the two very important concepts. Who’s World is it, who is to save it, why and for what gain?… These are the subtle questions internally composed, externally not yet voiced by those whom you call ‘poor’. So long you call them poor, poverty is not going to end. Now is the time to change our perspective, recognize that ‘Creation is One Family’, call and treat poor – the toiling mass as human beings, not ‘poor’ and save them from the drudgery of personal branding by stamping them with a wrong terminology and that of poverty. Who is poor in this World? … Nobody is born poor in this World of Abundance. A person is made poor, or termed as poor by off beam thinking of others. It’s a pity. One’s poor thinking sure to produce a poor outcome. A poor is a victim of a poor unaided structure. A government may be poor to adept, for example, incapable to mobilize its available resources, fail to plan, seek to ignore human industry, allow wastages, adopt bad policies and practices, and increase unemployment – mass frustration – sabotage – result is a destructive role of human – global climate change’. One is intrinsically related with the other.
The World Development Report 2010 came up with an Action Agenda: Act now, Act together, Act differently. Why don’t we change our mindset, try to develop an understanding being close with those we blame, create a congenial environment to build an open and inclusive human society of ‘oneness’ (as The Earth Charter puts it) and then initiate a dialogue to address critical issues of ‘global climate change’? Why don’t we give a critical thinking on various dud Models and go for an open and participatory process and people’s actions, some kind of a People’s Model of Climate Change Adoption? To address the abject poverty (so goes the conventional term), why don’t we approach poverty as a management problem while opening up the choices and amenities for all?
No seed get germinated in an unhealthy soil. What about preparing soil in people for the seeds of sustainable development to germinate. Can’t we prepare them, take them with us for a war that we are to fight with the nature, and make this fight be natural. Only human intelligence has the answer to the cause, not the artificial intelligence. Therefore, it should not sound as all conclusive although, let me remind the Good World Citizens over and over again: Call them human, not poor. Call them Our People, make them a party to it. For global climate change let them act decisively with ‘an universal essence’, individually – group wise – locally – regionally – globally. Let the human industry take charge with an informed choice and do the needful.
Here, as a backgrounder – as tagged in the Website – I relate some context dated Oct. 2008 and some photographs of Zainul Abedin (1914-1946) from Bangladesh: as provided by my daughter Bhaswati (now at UofT, Canada)while working with a Blog [URL: standagainstpoverty.org]on this very day. (Unedited text)
Happy Diwali to everybody,
Regards,
Deviprasad.
H4mm3r
October 16th, 2009
Let’s continue the fight till Copenhagen!
Tanner
October 16th, 2009
I’m glad that this year was so successful. Well done everyone and keep it up!
Dana
October 16th, 2009
It was such a pleasure to take part in Blog Action Day! I learned an incredible amount from all participants – from easy ways to help stop emissions to the hard road ahead for all of us.
Great job everyone!
Solilo
October 16th, 2009
I felt great supporting BAD 09 and writing a post on Climate Change. Hope our efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions continue.
I support Ben’s opinion.
dollculture
October 16th, 2009
many characters, many nuances, one issue. Feeling BAD.
Mel
October 16th, 2009
It was such an honor to participate! I thought it was going to be hard to write on the topic because it felt almost like an essay, once I got started I just went with the feeling. It’s hard not feeling pasionately about such a worthy ’cause.
Can’t wait to see what we do next year!
suz
October 16th, 2009
I’d like to see a map which breaks down posts by country and state.
Joe Peterson
October 16th, 2009
FYI – you guys also got a mention on the US Coast Guard Commandant’s blog.
http://www.uscg.mil/comdt/blog/2009/10/maritime-shipping-and-climate-change.asp
MegaTech
October 16th, 2009
Small or big everybody did there efforts and this became huge, I hope more bloggers join the initiative and get involved next year.
Thanks
- Shalini
ELM
October 16th, 2009
A 500% increase in climate change posts, wow! BAD is such a great concept. I’m new to blogging and don’t have many readers yet, but I was still happy to be able to take part in a collective action like this, especially on a topic I care deeply about. Keep it up!
BenTrein
October 16th, 2009
Between the thousands of serious posts, I hope I’ve put some people in a lighter mood. For whatever will be, will be…
I had fun doing this!
erdmel satsatin
October 16th, 2009
Great to be a part of this monumental event. Keep it up. as i’ve said to my blog.
One small step from a toy collector(blogger), One giant step for the Environment.
Leo
October 17th, 2009
Impressive effort by all and well organised. Nice work.
Gameli
October 17th, 2009
Great job, check out my post here: http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/10/5-voices-on-climate-change.html
Adam
October 17th, 2009
Congrats. Happy to have been part of it.
retskedonilep
October 17th, 2009
Wow, this is an amazing news!
I’m so thankful that I am a part of this great cause. All of our efforts have paid off. Job well done to all of those people who worked and participated on this year’s Blog Action Day. I hope that next year, we would bear greater results.
Gayle Pescud
October 17th, 2009
Brilliant stuff. Great to be a part of it and see this thing come together.
Ramya Rajan
October 17th, 2009
Hats off to the entire team. Loved the way the entire thing was organized- right down to providing bloggers with reading resources!
Looking forward to next year.
J.N.
October 17th, 2009
More power to the organizers of Blog Action Day 2009 and to the different voices who shared all their ideas about climate change.
Precious Water
October 17th, 2009
SO many people particiapting, and a 500% increase in climate change posts, yet such a small percentage of bloggers joined it – only 0.5%? I think we need to keep posting to let more people know climate change is their issue, too.
I’m so pleased BAD09 was run, that I got to be part of it and that it is had apositive infleunce so far. Together, and individually, we CAN make a difference!
Eri Hariono
October 18th, 2009
This BAD09 is very a cool idea, I’d like to know is there any deadline to post an article to our blogs in participating this event? Or is it only valid to post it particularly on 15 Oct 2009? If bloggers can still join this BAD09, please inform the deadline of posting article submission.
Yavhe Alexander
October 18th, 2009
From the Estudio Otra Realidad:
Well done guys!
See ya next year!
ruth coocoonhome
October 19th, 2009
It was a pleasure to participate in french and English. It’s a multitude of small actions by individuals put together that can change our future.
You can count on Coocoonhome for next year.
Gilz
October 19th, 2009
It was great to be part of something so successful. Looking forward to more topics to write about.
Giulia
October 19th, 2009
Hi everyone! Good work!
I’m now writing a post about results of that important day and about other ways to get involved and communicate people what to do by themselves to change our planet! I’m at your disposal for any other type of communication on my italian corporate blog!
Jan Lindström
October 19th, 2009
It´s so sad to see all this people wasting time on a ghost. There is not one single evidence that anthropogenic CO2 has any significant influence on the climate on a global level. It´s all in the models. Test youself: are you a religious fanatic or self aware thinker? :Fact: Antarctica ice extension has reached all time high for several yeras in row. Your reaction: “I didn´t know this why has I not been told?” or ” You´re lying! You´re bought by Exxaon”. Nr 2 is the religious one. You really need to go through all the facts. There are other things than the climate at stake here.
Easton Ellsworth
October 19th, 2009
You can still participate Eri, it’s the thought that counts! Just register your blog here: http://blogactionday.org/en/blogs/new
Elizabeth
October 19th, 2009
better late than never: http://etherwork.net/blog/?p=942
Craigsnedeker
October 21st, 2009
GLOBAL WARMING is a joke. IT does not exist. The past few years have been cooling down, not getting warmer. Global Warming was created (man made) so the major country could start a global goverment (bad). So, whats to worry about global warming?
Craigsnedeker
October 27th, 2009
Read all about it here: http://craigps.webs.com/apps/blog/show/1974314-the-truth-behind-global-warming