Home > MetNews

Climate Cats call for action
Group's upcoming rally, website to inform about carbon emissions
By Taylor Sullivan
tsulli21@mscd.edu

Two Auraria students are taking their concerns about the environment to the state capitol April 14, where they will demand that America take an active role in the reduction of carbon emissions and take responsibility for its global footprint.

“We just got tired of sitting around talking about how messed up things are getting,” said Shae Whitney, an environmental science student at Metro. “So we decided to do something.”

That something has turned into a multi-organization rally on the west steps of the capitol building to raise public awareness about America’s detrimental position toward the environment.

The Climate Cats, founded by Whitney and UCD student Duncan Dotterer, worked with the national environmental organization, Step It Up, to organize the rally that will be held on what Step It Up has declared to be 2007 Climate-Change Action Day. The focus of their demands is get Congress to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050.

For those who this as an overly ambitious goal, Whitney pointed out that Germany has promised a 40 percent decrease in its own emissions by 2020.

“Don’t be scared, get out of your car, get on your bike, get on a bus, figure out alternative ways to get around,” she said. “Calling Xcel Energy and changing my power to 100 percent wind energy took five minutes and cost next to nothing, like a drink at the bar.”

Surprised by the responses they received from their MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/climatecats, and connecting the rally to Step It Up’s efforts, Dotterer and Whitney said they realized how much people care but don’t have an outlet for action.

When they held their first meeting, “random citizens just started showing up. Duncan and I were just the idea, just the organizers,” Whitney said. “People wanted to give anything they could … People obviously care, and they’re getting worried.”

Aside from spreading their message, the Climate Cats also want to be a source of information about environmental issues – both local and global – and also what people can do to make a change. They say that change needs to start now.

“We are already seeing negative impacts like rising sea levels from melting ice, which leads to flooded coastal cities,” Whitney said. “More than half of the world’s population lives in threatened areas. That is a lot of environmental refugees.”

According to (?), Katrina alone forced 374,000 people into other parts of the country. The Climate Cats contend that if America – by far the world’s largest contributor of carbon emissions – doesn’t start shaping up, environmental conditions are going to get worse and worse. The world could continue to see more massive storms that will kill hundreds of thousands and displace millions, said (?).

“Once it happens on a big scale,” Whitney said, “we won’t be able to keep ignoring it.”

The Climate Cats represent a shift in the way America is thinking about climate change. The Supreme Court recently ruled that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant and that the Environmental Protection Agency has a responsibility to regulate it, something the agency has historically avoided. The Cats are also pushing individuals to take personal responsibility.

“On an individual level people can learn to live a more sustainable lifestyle, and that is definitely part of the solution, a lot of small changes” Whitney said. “If you don’t know what to do, ask us for help."