By David Taber

Pondering what the future held for her three-year-old son convinced Heather Heimark she had to take action. 

‚ÄúI was looking at him and thinking I want him to have all of the richness that we have in our world,‚Äù she said. 

Hearing about the Step It Up campaign on the radio is what gave her an outlet.  Heimark signed up at the national campaign‚Äôs Web site and was put in touch with a handful of other local residents.  The group has been organizing local Step It Up‚Äôs event for a national day of action on April 14. The Step It up Somerville Climate Rally will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Statue Park in Davis Square.  Close to 1,300 rallies will be occurring in all 50 states on the day with the goal of convincing Congress to mandate an 80 percent cut in greenhouse emissions by 2050.

This drastic reduction is not as radical a goal as it may seem, said Karl Thideman, spokesman for Step It Up in Somerville.  There are five bills before Congress proposing to regulate emissions.

Locally, rising sea levels due to climate change could have an impact on the geography of Somerville, Thiedeman said. 

‚ÄúParts of East Somerville are only six feet above sea-level,‚Äù he said.   

The reduction Step It Up is calling for may not be enough to avert significant lasting changes to the climate, he said. 

“Based on the evidence I have seen regarding the amount of carbon we have pumped into the atmosphere and the time it stays there, unless we develop sophisticated carbon sequestration technology, I think we are looking at centuries if not longer of the atmosphere repairing itself,” he said.

Founded in 2006 by Vermont-based environmental activist and author of The End of Nature Bill McKibben, Step It Up‚Äôs goal is to create a movement on the scale of the civil  rights or anti-war movements of the 1960s, Thideman said.

Step It Up Somerville organizers have received an extremely positive response from city government and local businesses, Thideman said. Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone is slated to speak at the rally, along with state senators Pat Jehlen and Jarret Barrios.  Local comedian Jimmy Tingle will host the proceedings and there will be performances by local entertainers, including The Revolutionary Snake Ensemblette brass band, and magician Fish the Magish.   

The group has also been granted access to half dozen public school classrooms across the city to discuss climate change with students and encourage them to participate in the rally, Thiedeman said. 

Last Thursday internationally renowned artist and educator Cindy Snodgrass visited Heimark‚Äôs son Michael‚Äôs classroom at the Full Circle pre-school to teach a lesson about water pollution and lead the students in the decoration of cardboard fish.      

The fish will be appearing at the Somerville rally but are primarily intended for the Boston Step It Up event, taking place later in the afternoon.  At the later rally, participants are being encouraged to dress in blue, the fish will be on display, and organizers are hoping to enlist the participation of the MIT swim team, all to symbolize that the Boston Common would be under water if the sea-level were to rise 70 feet.

Marc Breslow, director of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, which is co-sponsoring the Boston rally, said for the sea level to reach these new heights, the Greenland ice shelf would have to melt.  The ice sheet is already shrinking, but it is not predicted it will disappear for a number of decades, he said.          

In working with the pre-school students, Snodgrass did not get into the distressing implications of global climate change, she said.

‚ÄúWith a lot of these school groups we are trying not to make it scary,‚Äù she said.  Instead she tries to deliver an empowering message.  She discusses the water cycle and explains how water pollution can make fish sick and contaminate a human food source. 

She said she also focuses on recycling and non-point source pollution, encouraging kids to rinse out their paint brushes as infrequently as possible and allowing the water they use to evaporate rather than dumping it down the drain and introducing the chemicals in it to the water supply. 

With older elementary school students she goes more in depth into the issues, she said, but she still tries to keep it light. 

‚ÄúIt just seems to me that the whistle while you work approach is the one that works because it makes people more comfortable with the unknowns,‚Äù she said.