On Sunday, the 10/10/10 event - called the “Global Work Party”, which coalesced online through Web sites and social networking - kicked off in Australia and New Zealand; and subsequently spun its way across the globe, with the occasion being marked by over 7,000 community events in 188 countries.

With the organizers aiming at making 10/10/10 the world’s biggest day for creating awareness about climate change, environmental campaigners enthusiastically took part in activities like planting trees, collecting garbage, and coming together against pollution on Sunday.

Terming the 10/10/10 event as “the most widespread day of civic engagement on any issue ever in the planet's history,” Bill McKibben, the co-founder of the 350. org campaign, said: “The only countries that aren't taking part, we think, are Equatorial Guinea, San Marino, North Korea, so it's clearly the most widespread day of environmental action.”

With the day of climate-change activism coming at a time when long-running United Nations efforts to negotiate a worldwide agreement for dealing with global warming have stalled, McKibben said while the organizers were apprehensive that people would be disillusioned by the event, their overwhelming participation proved otherwise.

Noting that though people are discouraged, they are apparently taking out their frustrations in action, McKibben told AFP by telephone from Washington that people apparently “have decided that we are going to have to show our leaders what leadership looks like.”