DUSHANBE, October 11, 2010, Asia-Plus — Tajik ecology organizations conducted an environmental protection action, “350,” in Dushanbe on Sunday, Jamshed Qodirov, a spokesman for the Youth Ecology Center, said.
“The action was conducted on an initiative of the public ecology organizations and the Committee for Environmental Protection under the Government of Tajikistan,” Qodirov said, noting that a large number of people participated in the action aimed at addressing climate issues.
“They departed from the Children’s Park to bike and walk to the Puppet Theater, where they created a column in a form of figure of 350 and the column went as far as the end of the street,” the spokesman said.
The main objective of the action was in drawing attention of the municipal authorities to the transport problems and spreading the word about 350 parts-per-million of carbon in the atmosphere.
According to him, the action was part of a global day of work for climate action, staged by the 350.org organization.
The 350.org called on people to come together on 10/10/10 to improve their communities and neighborhoods with a project that will help heal the earth. From small projects, such as making a low carbon lunch, to larger projects, like outfitting a house, workplace or community center with solar panels, individuals are showing their commitment to finding climate solutions as soon as possible.
“The action is based on a simple idea: we can achieve reduction in emission of the greenhouse gases and make out world better,” Qodirov said.
350.org is an international environmental organization, headed by author Bill McKibben, with the goal of building a global grassroots movement to raise awareness of man-made climate change, to confront climate change denial, and to cut emissions of one of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide in order to slow the rate of global warming, the cause of current climate change. 350.org takes its name from the research of NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who posited in a 2007 paper that 350 parts-per-million (ppm
) of CO2 in the atmosphere is a safe upper limit to avoid a climate tipping point. The current record level is 392.04 ppm of CO2, an almost 40-percent increase from the pre-industrial revolution level of 278 ppm. In 1988 the Earth”s atmosphere surpassed the 350 ppm mark,
while global CO2 emissions per capita rose.
The group reports that they organized the world”s “most widespread day of political action” on Saturday October 24, 2009, reporting 5,245 actions in 181 countries.
