Today, October 15th, is Blog Action Day, a day when over 16,000 blogs on the internet will blog about the environment. Check out the video for more info, and then proceed to my blog post for today.

On PreviewCast #044 (which every blogger in the world should listen to), Lorelle VanFossen and I talked about the importance of blogging in our world, especially personal blogging. However, one thing that we talked a bit about in regards to the importance of personal blogging is that it becomes a journal, an archive, a place where you’re putting down information about yourself and your life so that the archaeologists of the future can go back and learn more about our world today. (That is, assuming that your website is kept alive and doesn’t disappear into cyberspace when your web host turns off your connection.)

But a personal blog can be a lot more about just your boring life. I mean, the archaeologists of the future may be interested in knowing that you got a new iPhone and that your work sucks and that you had to have that godawful oatmeal for breakfast this morning because there were no more Eggo Waffles in the freezer. But for the readers of today, you can turn your blog into more than just a journal of your boring life (Twitter is probably a better tool for recording your boring life, anyway), and actually use it to draw attention to things that you’re interested in, which means that the random reader who stumbles across your blog might also get interested in it as well. Anyone who’s read my blog for a long period of time knows that it redefines the meaning of potpourri.

But how does any of this help the environmental debate? Actually, blogging is probably one of the most powerful assets of the environmental movement today. In the last decade, as we have watched the media become more and more controlled by the corporate powers and less and less of a free press, we have at the same time and at practically the same rate watched the so-called ‘blogosphere’ grow. John C. Dvorak himself says that when a news item breaks, he doesn’t hit the news media first, he hits the blogs. What can the news media say? “Oh, um, yeah, so such and such happened, and it looks bad, and the President has responded to it by saying such and such and meeting these people, and the situation on the ground is still pretty bad, and we’re going to go to a commercial now, be right back.” But blogs can provide someone’s unique, first hand experience. When that guy from the University of Florida got tasered at the John Kerry event, the media was mostly speculatory people watching from afar. However, if you were to hit the blogs, you’d find bloggers who were other students at the event who could give their first-hand experience of what happened and be able to explain some things that didn’t exactly get caught on camera. This is the power of the blogging community and the internet. As the freedom of the press starts to fade away, the freedom of speech is becoming ever more emboldened by the revolution of the internet.

This past weekend, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The so-called “liberal” media went on the attack, questioning the award and what the heck peace has to do with the climate change. (And I could go on a whole justification for exactly what peace has to do with the climate change, but that’s not the point of this article for now.) However, it’s clear that Al Gore’s movie gets credit for really propelling awareness of the climate change. As Stephen Colbert has said, “Because of the success of Gore’s movie, I now believe that global warming is real because the market has said that it is real.” That may be considered a joke, but is not too far from the truth. The climate crisis has become a major global issue not because many people have taken the opportunity to see the film, but also because the film has touched people so much that they have dedicated themselves to blogging about the crisis and raising the awareness. The reason that so many people have done this is because the climate crisis really is a global issue. The climate crisis is responsible for the exceedingly active 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons which severely crippled Florida and the gulf coast and obliterated New Orleans. The climate crisis is responsible for the temperatures of over 90 degrees in Chicago which forced their annual marathon event to be shut down due to dehydrating runners. It’s responsible for the serious droughts in Darfur which is probably one of the causes of the genocide in that region. Everyone, globally, is affected by global warming, and that’s why so many someones are stepping up to raise awareness and advocate for a solution.

The true significance of what the blogging community can do to help the environmental debate has been made manifest by today’s Blog Action Day as bloggers all across the internet blog about the environment and help to raise awareness of the climate crisis. This event is one of the biggest ways that we can spread the word that our planet is turning in the wrong direction and for us, as bloggers and citizens of the world, to offer solutions so that we can overcome this challenge.

Do your part as a blogger and be a part of Blog Action Day today.

Tags: action, Al Gore, article, Blog Action Day, Blogging, Climate Crisis, environment, global warming, Nobel Peace Prize