Company Performance Metrics
- Blair Palese: Co-founder and CEO
- Will Bates: Global Campaigns Director and Co-Founder
350.org is building a global climate movement. Their online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are coordinated by a global network active in over 188 countries.
The number 350 means climate safety: to preserve a livable planet, scientists tell us they must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level
of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm.
They believe that a global grassroots movement can hold their leaders accountable to the realities of science and the principles of justice. That movement is rising from the bottom up all over the world, and is uniting to create the solutions that will ensure a better future for all.
350.org was founded by a group of university friends in the U.S. along with author Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on global warming for the general public.
When they started organizing in 2008, they saw climate change as the most important issue facing humanity — but climate action was mired in politics and all but stalled. They didn’t know how to fix things, but they knew that one missing ingredient was a climate movement that reflected the scale of the crisis.
So they started organizing coordinated days of action that linked activists and organizations around the world, including the International Day of Climate Action in 2009, the Global Work Party in 2010, Moving Planet in 2011, and Climate Impacts Day in 2012. They held the “world’s biggest art installation” and “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” They figured that if they were going to be a movement, then they had to start acting like one. Click here to watch videos of these global mobilisations.
Today, 350.org works in almost every country in the world on campaigns like fighting coal power plants in India, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S, and divesting public institutions everywhere from fossil fuels. All of their work leverages people power to dismantle the influence and infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry, and to develop people-centric solutions to the climate crisis.