At the festival:
Learn about climate change and how to reduce your household carbon footprint.Have an electric vehicle tailgate party and see electric cars, bikes, motorcycles and trucks.Ride an electric bike.Learn about solar power.Hear good music and educational speakers.Sponsored by the Sierra Club, Cherokee Group; Drive Electric Chattanooga; Climate Chattanooga - Healthy Energy For Everyone; Tennessee Interfaith Power & Light; Tennessee Alliance for Progress; Chattanooga Citizens Climate Lobby
Only people can power real change, so rise for climate.
Today, all over the world - including Chattanooga - tens of thousands of people will take to the streets to say it's time to repower our communities with clean, renewable energy from the sun, earth, wind and water.
In Chattanooga, we're calling it the Climate 'Nooga Festival and People's March for 100 percent renewable energy. The festival starts at 10 a.m. on Station Street next to the Chattanooga Choo Choo and lasts until 3 p.m.
The Citizens March - to be kicked off by Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke - begins at 11 a.m. and goes to the TVA building in support of all renewable energy for the Tennessee Valley. The idea is to emphasize the need for governments, utilities, businesses and people everywhere to take actions to slow the rate of climate change. The march returns by noon to Station Street.
We can't keep powering our lives with oil, coal and gas from the last millennium. Aside from the fact that those fossil fuels are finite, we know they are fueling a worsening climate crisis.
"People are rising to say we want a fossil-free world that works for all of us," Dan Joranko, Chattanooga festival organizer, said in a statement. "It's time for our leaders to commit to 100 percent renewable energy. We are the generation that can solve the climate crisis."
No one should think Chattanooga - or anywhere - is immune to the negative impacts of climate change.
For instance, did you know that a research report by Climate Central and The Weather Channel in 2016 found that Chattanooga is the sixth fastest warming city in the country?
The hottest cities are pretty much where you would expect them to be - southern and largely coastal, think Florida, Texas and Arizona. On the other hand, the fastest-warming cities aren't clustered in any one region. In fact, the top 25 fastest-warming cities are scattered over 16 states.
To figure out which cities have been warming the fastest, researchers calculated how average annual temperatures have been changing since 1965. Of the 178 cities with sufficient data for analysis, all but three had seen their average temperatures warm overall in the past 50 years. The top 25 all saw temperatures climb by more than 0.6 degrees per decade - that's at least 3 degrees hotter over 50 years, according to Climate Central.
The analysis found that Chattanooga had warmed .82 degrees per decade.
Chattanooga also made the top 25 cities (ranking 20th) with the biggest increase in annual average days above 90 degrees since the 1970s.
And Chattanooga isn't alone. Currently, Tennessee averages 10 dangerous heat days a year. By 2050, the Volunteer State is projected to see 55 such days a year - more than a five-fold increase, according to Climate Central, an independent organization of leading scientists and journalists researching and reporting the facts about changing climate and its impact on the public.
These days, the weather is more than just a conversation starter. It's the future. It can be life and death.
In Chattanooga, bring the kids and let's join with thousands of other people around the world to stand up and show we know it's important to build a fossil fuel-free world.
To change everything, it takes everyone. Start the change with you.