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Back in the spring when we were planning this campaign, I remember sitting around a table brainstorming the best way to engage people around the world in this new climate movement. We were wondering how all of our partners might collaborate on a single action to show that this movement is huge, diverse and that people around the world are ready.
We arrived at the concept of a pledge—a straightforward but measurable action that can be taken online or in the world. But this would be one of the world's first global, distributed pledges. Rather than enforcing a central pledge out on everyone, we would allow all our partners to do what they do best, and make sure all their engagement work was folded into a bigger story.
So for Greenpeace, their pledge might come from their dozens of national campaigns in countries like New Zealand, Argentina, France, or China. For Avaaz, it could represent participants in their Global Wake-up Call, or the many online pledge campaigns they run on climate globally. For Kiko Network in Japan, or CSM in India, and dozens of others, they would measure national pressure that pools into demands for a global deal.
The key point was, that everyone could contribute to something that made the movement much stronger and more diverse than any of us could standing alone.
Sitting around that table, we threw out some pie-in-the-sky numbers for success. We figured if the stars aligned and we got really lucky, we might be able to count 6 million people around the world by now.
Today, we're honoured, humbled and ecstatic to announce that our pledge count is now over 9.8 million people strong!
9.8 million. Real people. From nearly every country on earth. That's a lot of us demanding bold climate action now, and, if you've signed on, you should be proud to be part of building such a strong movement!
So why the big bump in our counter just today? This is mostly thanks to a few of new partners who recently joined, and some current partners who hadn't reported their numbers for a while. Here are a few of our favourites:
- 350.org's International Day of Action brought over one million people into the streets to call for swift, decisive action on climate change. This was the most widely distributed political action in history!
- One of our new partners, Stop Global Warming, founded by Laurie David (producer of Inconvenient Truth), brought us 1.3 million Americans who are demanding political solutions to climate change.
- Oxfam International has engaged over 1.5 million people in their climate hearings and related campaigns, most of these from India and the Global South, regions most impacted by climate change.
- And finally, Stand Up Against Poverty had another world record breaking successful event this year, the largest event on the planet. This year, they gave event organizers a chance to do their event in support of a strong climate deal in Copenhagen, and over 900,000 people stood up in their communities for this
With this kind of momentum, we're sure to break 10M by the time the COP-15 opens, as more partners join our ever-widening coalition, campaigns enter full swing, and the global media focuses its attention on Copenhagen and what is on the table.
Nearly 10 million. That's a big deal—a real milestone for this global climate movement that has clearly woken up this year. Your voice will be heard and it will make a difference to leaders in Copenhagen.
We'll keep you posted on our efforts to make sure world leaders see this number at the climate summit, and of course we'll keep adding to it via our next massive event, the December 12 World Wants a Real Deal global day of action. Great work everyone! Onwards to 20M!