VISIONSHARE

10-10-10 WORK PARTY  in 
RIO BRANCO AC, BRAZIL 
and BEYOND

On October 10, 2010 people at more than 7347 events in 188 countries got to work to take on the climate crisis. Here's how the days events unfolded at Uninorte City University in Rio Branco AC, Brazil.

Vera Reis welcomed a group of about 75 people who turned up early on a Sunday morning. Vera and the students in her environmental studies class, conceived and organized the day's events.





Federal University of Acre ecology professor and Woods Hole Research Center scientist Foster Brown made an eloquent plea for citizen action to counter the trends in global warming, saying the time is running out.


 

After reviewing the current scientific understanding of climate change, he spoke of the 350.org movement and how it is making the abstractions of science and the invisible workings of the atmosphere visible to people around the world.




The audience watched with concern, wondering what might be done to alter the dangerous trajectory that humans have been taking on earth. How might real change begin? Here?



 
Foster told the inspiring story of Acre's own Frei Heitor who once imagined:

Imagine, he said, that he and Father Andre, another Italian missionary, convinced each other how to live in harmony with the earth and with each other. On the next day, Friar Heitor and Father Andre convinced two others. On the third day the four of them convinced four more, and so on for subsequent days. How many days would it take to convince the world’s population to live in harmony? Friar Heitor worked out this calculation during a canoe trip up the Acre River in April.

“Thirty-three days!” He exclaimed, banging his fist on my knee. “We can change the world, in a month, if we want to!”

Everyone headed outside to create a human 350 icon and show off the tree seedlings that they intend to plant, a performance leading to action.




Then Flavio Encarnação told the story of the fertile Amazon soils called Terra Preta de Índios and how modern day pyrolysis could make biochar from agricultural or organic wastes and be used to sequester carbon in the soil and increase plant productivity, offering partial solutions for both global warming and hunger.



Which led to further conversations with Marta about the possibility that biochar might be used to restore a forest on degraded land adjacent to the Chico Mendes Park, right here in Rio Branco.



 
And so it goes. First there's a good idea like the 350.org movement or the International Biochar Initiative. Then a conversation gets started. And then comes local action. It might not happen in the 33 days of Frei Heitor but surely this is how the world can be changed.

Here are some early highlights of how it is starting to happen around the world.



 
Many thanks to Vera, Foster, Flavio and all the other volunteers who made 10/10/10 DIA GLOBAL DE SOLUÇÕES CLIMÁTICS in Rio Branco a most successful day.