On April 14, Saturday, nearly 1,000 Boulder County residents gathered at Scott Carpenter Park as part of the National Day of Climate Action, an umbrella for the Bill McKibben-inspired national Step It Up 2007 campaign.

Almost 1,400 similar gatherings took place in all 50 states. There were 21 such events in Colorado, from Fort Collins to Durango. Clearly. The action? To tell Congress to Step It Up and start policy reforms to head off the dangers of global climate change. The United States' output of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas, has grown 20 percent since 1990, the year that the Kyoto agreement uses as a baseline target and the agreement the United States has avoided.

More than 1,300 events were planned across the country for what organizers billed as "a national day of climate action." The protesters are demanding that Congress pass a bill to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. "It's doable," said Bill McKibben, author of the global warming treatise, "The End of Nature," and an event organizer. "Two percent a year for the next 40 years, and we'll have some chance of getting out of this mess we're in." McKibben organized the event with six recent graduates of Middlebury College in Vermont. From the time they came up with the concept in January, they began spreading the word on the Internet, enlisting local organizers in towns in all 50 states.

The Step It Up 2007 events served to illustrate how hometowns across the country are getting involved in the climate debate. Organizers say the variety of events, ranging from pancake-eating in Vermont to skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyo., was meant to reflect the various consequences of global warming.