By some twist of fate or poetry, the number of people who gathered in Winegarden Park Saturday, Oct. 24 for the International Day of Climate Action was only a handful shy of the number the crowd was trying to highlight: 350.
And 350, event organizer Denis Fafard said, may well be the most important number on the planet right now.
"Three hundred and fifty is for 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," he said. "And there's a broad consensus that that is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere that is tolerable, that would permit us to survive as a species as we are right now."
Right now, Fafard said, the planet has reached 386 parts per million of CO2. The rationale behind the event Saturday which was co-ordinated amongst more than 5,200 groups in more than 180 countries was to demand climate change action to lower carbon dioxide levels to the 350 threshold.
To this end, Saturday's crowd gathered in Lower Gibsons to take a photograph of themselves, massed in the shape of the number 350. All those photos from around the world, Fafard said, will send a simple pictorial message to world leaders.
"Climate change is so complicated there's the polar bears and there's the ice caps and there's drought and things like that," he said. "But this gives us a really focused and easy target: 350 is what we need. And it's important because we need to come together and put pressure and demand I think of our government leaders and then of course for [the December climate change talks in] Copenhagen that they take some serious action about climate change."
The event, he said, has struck a chord with many people around the world.
"It's really huge," he said. "It's something that I think has caught people's imagination because I do believe there's a desire on the part of many people to see something actually done, because people are beginning to understand we have to make some decisions now while we still have the time."
On a local level, he said, the Sunshine Coast is very invested in the cause.
"Gibsons just won a major [LivCom] award as the most liveable community [in the world for communities under 20,000], and I think that's a reflection of the will of this community," he said. "I really do believe that all throughout the Sunshine Coast, people are ready and want to see action taken and are willing to do that. And I think it's an exciting time."
