"driving to the white house to install solar panels"--a message from Bill McKibben and his 10/10/10 "get to work" global endeavor

Dear Friends,

Well, I'm getting to work a few weeks ahead of 10-10-10, and wanted to send along the story to get you fired up for the big day.

I'm trying to type this as the biodiesel van I'm sitting in bumps down the highway from the state of Maine on the east coast of the USA. We left tiny Unity College yesterday morning, bound for the White House with stops in Boston and New York -- and we're carrying a piece of history with us.

It's one of the solar panels that the American president Jimmy Carter installed on the roof of the White House in 1979, 31 long years ago. Here's what Carter said that day: "A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."

Sadly, the panels were taken down a few years later during the Reagan administration. Not because they stopped working -- but because we stopped thinking carefully about the future. The folks at Unity College salvaged them from a government warehouse and put them on the roof of their school cafeteria, where they still work fine.

But now they've agreed to donate one solar panel back to the White House, in the hope that it will spur Obama to pick up where Carter left off.

Our great hope, of course, is that on 10-10-10 President Obama will be up there on the roof, helping to put the panels in place. Our friends at the solar company Sungevity have even offered to donate a massive, brand new solar array for free. (Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, has already taken them up on the offer -- he'll be up on his roof on 10-10-10 hammering in a new set of panels).

But so far, there's no definitive answer from the White House. They say they're "interested", but that it's "complicated".

Here's how you can tip the balance: in the next 24 hours, we're going to get back on the phone with the White House and work to convince them to commit to taking action on 10-10-10. It would greatly strengthen our hand to say that hundreds of people have registered new work parties since we last called.

Can you help by registering an event in your community or forwarding this email to friends encouraging them to Get to Work on 10/10/10?