350.org… the right strategy?

The glaring problem with 350.org seems to be too much of a passive stance. If the point of 350.org is to create a global environmental movement to combat climate change it makes sense that recruiting individuals who are not inherently of like mind (already environmentalists) would be a priority. Unfortunately the site does not appear to carry the requisite excitement and interactivity to drive this type of recruitment. This lack of drive is especially prevalent with almost all of the ‘projects’ at 350.org being some form of petition. Accompany those petitions with a single global event which seems to get less and less global mainstream media attention with each passing year and it is difficult to see sustainable progress. Without driving excitement among all parties the same names will appear on each petition heavily reducing its effectiveness. Why not introduce a wider range of scheduled events like:

1. There are some high-quality and informative flyers available on the website, but they do little good sitting on the website waiting to be found. Why not promote a type of ‘Post a 350.org flyer somewhere in your town’ day where 350.org members post one of the flyer in their town in a public legal location which can create more attention for both the climate and the organization without relying on the internet.

2. A T-Shirt Design Contest to develop a wide variety of clever and interesting ways to further promote the organization and what needs to be done to address climate change. Sadly the available t-shirts for sale on 350.org are mediocre conversation starters/attention grabbers and do not convey any real message.

3. A once per week (or every two weeks) instruction video (including archive) visually documenting how to do some form of pro-environment action (like composting, proper inflation of tires, installing a low-flow aerator, how to effectively recycle electronics, etc.) One could argue that these resources already exist, for example on youtube. However, there is a question of quality (clearly everything on youtube is not optimized or even correct whereas on 350.org quality can be assured. Also forcing people to search through multiple search strings is clearly not practical for those that are not very committed to helping the environment in the first place.

4. A raffle filled with items that either help conversion to a low emission environment (solar panels, coupons for a free energy efficiency audit, etc.) or fun pro-environment events (celebrity tree planting, personal meeting with head of environmental group x, etc.)

If 350.org wants to reach its goal of establishing a living environment with a CO2 concentration of 350 ppm or less then it needs to be more assertive. There are a number of positive ideas out there, not simply those listed above, and yet 350.org seems to plod along only attempting a small amount of what is needed.