In the words of Bill McKibben, “the time has come to get mad, and then to get busy."

On October 10th 2010 the planet is getting to work on climate change with over 2800 events in 150 countries. 350.org, founded by renowned author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, is calling for a 10/10/10 “Global Work Party” with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. “In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they’re putting up solar panels on the President’s office. In Kampala, Uganda, they're going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they’re installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.” (350.org)

We spent our final day on our Alaska tour in Fairbanks exploring solutions to climate change. We toured the Permafrost Tunnel, originally built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to store vehicles outside of the extreme cold temperatures that define the interior of Alaska. Now, the tunnel is used primarily by engineers and arctic scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to study permafrost. The tunnel temperature is consistently held at about zero and has a putrid smell from thousands of years of earth decomposing. Together with a group of about 16, including faith and environmental non-profit leaders from the Fairbanks community, we toured the tunnel and learned about the various layers of permafrost.