Group rallies for global warming prevention

In conjunction with International Day of Action in Bali, Indonesia, activists demonstrated at the local level Saturday morning on Kirkwood Avenue to get people to urge Rep. Baron Hill and other lawmakers to take prompt action against the perceived threats of climate change.\nThe activists carried seven-foot rectangular posters displaying messages from south-central Indiana’s farming unions and distributing pamphlets, hoping to “educate and mobilize the public” on the reality of global warming, and “to show support and put pressure on Congress,” to take action.\nThe group has already passed through 13 districts and plans to reach up to 50 by next year, said Edyta Sitko, Greenpeace Field Organizer.\nThe demonstration coincided with the International Day of Action, when 55 nations convened to discuss how to curb global climate change.\nFarmers from the Local Growers Guild “are feeling the effects of droughts and severe heat waves” that inflate the costs of growing and irrigating crops, Sitko said. This situation also creates conditions in which insects and diseases can thrive. \n“Farming is already not a high-income profession,” she added, arguing that this is a demographic crucial to the region’s health and stability, and it is experiencing both environmental and societal burdens. \n“Representative Hill has called upon the entire Indiana delegation to get the United States Department of Agriculture o sign (energy legislation) for all 20 counties in the 9th District,” Sitko said. \nBut the group insists more can be done.\nH.R. 6, the energy bill that passed the House in December with Hill’s support, was “a really good first step,” Sitko said. The bill outlines new incentives for renewable resources, invalidates tax breaks for “big oil” and gas corporations and sets fuel efficiency standards higher than any since the 1970s. \nIU senior and Greenpeace member Chiffone Puckett also credited Hill, but nonetheless believes he “should go even further” in setting limits for carbon emissions, saving people’s money and ending decades of dependence on foreign oil. \n“We have the power, the technology and the means to do it,” Puckett said. But Puckett mainly thinks Hill should mount a more aggressive campaign because she fears the threat of filibusters in Congress.\nIU senior Harry Luton said he is even more concerned about national leaders’ inclination to ignore and resist acting on the problem. \n“It’d be stupid for Bush to veto it,” he said of H.R. 6. If Bush does veto the bill, as activists anticipate he will, Luton believes it will still send a clear signal to those in power. As soon as a new president is inaugurated in January 2009, he or she “has to be more helpful than Bush has been, just by comparison,” Luton said.\nThe U.S. remains the only industrialized nation whose leaders have not signed the U.N. Kyoto protocol mandating 36 countries to substantively reduce their carbon emissions by the target year 2012. On Dec. 3, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his country’s ratification of the treaty. Speaking for Greenpeace, Sitko said the U.S. should commit to slashing 80 percent of its 1990-era emissions by 2050.