On October 24, over 150 students, faculty, staff and community members gathered at the Ecumenical Center to call for action…together with millions of others across the globe. On this International Climate Action Day, people in 180 countries organized over 5,200 events in order to send a powerful message to the United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen. Photographs from all events were displayed in Times Square in New York City and were sent to the United Nations.

350 Ringing in Change Rally aimed at calling people to care for the creation. The issue is not climate change. The issue is a broken system in which we consume more than we can sustain. We all agree that we did not create the planet, rather, we have been given the responsibility to care for creation, to be good stewards of our Earth.

In this light, everyone who attended an event, was a part of one voice with others to call for action, and after the event, everyone in attendance had an opportunity to go inside the Ecumenical Center and learn specific ways in which each one of us can lower our footprint by making small modifications to our behavior.

We also offered cookies baked at 390 degrees, versus the ones baked at the lower degree. Can you guess which ones people liked more?

If you are passionate about creation care let us know.

Ringing in Change at the Ecumenical Center 2009

Facts from the International Event

• This was the largest-ever coordinated global rally of any kind, according to the Foreign Policy Magazine
• 5,281 events at the 2009 International Day of Climate Action
• 181 countries participated in the 350 Rally
• 25,712 photos collected from 350 events around the world. If you looked at each photo for 3 seconds, it would take 21 hours to view them all
• 112 countries have officially endorsed 350ppm (the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere)
• 392.39 is current concentration of CO2, in “parts per million” in the atmosphere

For more videos and photos on what people are doing around the world to join in the 350 cause, please visit www.350.org