Overview

Organize a grassroots educational campaign to create local narratives around climate change impacts and solutions, while mobilizing citizen engagement and action. Kick the campaign off with a National Climate Week that would recur on an annual basis.

Recent posts | Participants | News | Objectives | Related Initiatives   

Recent posts

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News

Eban Goodstein, Project Director of Focus the Nation and Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, addresses Yale’s environment school on the subject of building a grassroots movement to plan and host on January 31, 2008, nation-wide discussions of climate change stabilization. See the presentation

Objectives

  • Convene educational leaders.To launch this effort, convene a major meeting of formal and informal educators, as well as other key leaders, to identify all appropriate formats, channels and tools. Channels could include zoos, schools, museums, and church and summer camps.
  • Emphasize informal activities. While schools would be a venue for some of the activities, this grassroots initiative would be distinct from Recommendation #28 in that it would rely not on formal adoption of curricula, but on informal activities in and around schools, especially more flexible, non-school venues where so-called “free choice” learning occurs (e.g., zoos). It could include a climate change project day in K-12 schools to harness youth interest and to get families talking.
  • Not just for kids.This campaign would have children as a key target audience, but would also reach out to adults, family units, and especially community leaders and “influentials.”
  • Hyper-local issues.To overcome the acknowledged challenges of teaching about a long-term, global issue, this campaign would be optimized to feature local or what some participants called “hyper-local” issues. It would identify local topics that local citizens are already engaged on, and link climate change to it in scientifically appropriate ways.
  • Mechanisms for national integration. The effort would mix these local elements with a coordinated national education strategy. All participating localities would be integrated into a nationally cohesive campaign using a variety of technology platforms, including a richly interactive webpage, group email lists, etc.
  • Ubiquity. The campaign would create and distribute innovative informational or awareness products and aim to achieve the kind of ubiquity that Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” bracelets or AOL startup disks did. Wearable, symbolic products should be considered, along with distilled information devices like pocket cards with climate change facts (e.g., 10 things everyone should know about climate change) or light switch stickers about energy use and climate change, etc.
  • National Climate Week. The National Climate Week kickoff could be held in September during hurricane season. The week would serve as a focal period of activity and would reduce the burden of top-down orchestration of the grassroots campaign, since all organizations could be urged to independently plan events during this week.
  • Hands-on engagement. Emphasize engaging, hands-on projects that employ verified methods for effective education. Identify local competitions to devise the best and most locally appropriate ideas for activities. Some possible projects:
    • Measure local watermarks and other indicators of coastline subsidence and sea-level rise; Chart snow frequency and snow lines;
    • Measure climate-sensitive ecosystem and biodiversity changes, as in local bird counts (see Operation Ruby Throat as an example, or the annual Christmas Audubon bird counts, which are submitted to and analyzed by qualified ornithologists);
    • Conduct mercury blood level tests (reflecting the cobenefits of controlling for greenhouse gases and mercury emissions from power plants and other sources);
    • Initiate carbon reduction challenges for all local community college campuses;
    • Map local points of climate change vulnerability and required adaptations;
    • Track local indicators of seasonal timing;
    • Create Boy Scout or Girl Scout merit badges that reflect applied knowledge and monitoring of climate change;
    • Undertake carbon footprint measurements at different levels: family footprint, city footprint, etc.
  • Find sponsors.Identify business or non-profit sponsors who could raise the profile and funding available to these projects, e.g., local utilities that could incorporate some of the energy-related actions into their demand-side management or social-benefit charge programs. Another potential sponsor is the various statewide Interfaith Power & Light organizations.
  • Keep winter cool. One example of a corporate-led effort is the Aspen Skiing Company’s Keep Winter Cool campaign for skiers, which relates climate change to both a customer/tourist and a local economic development concern.
  • Agile and topical. Ideally, this effort would be agile enough to respond to teachable moments presented by natural or political events, such as Hurricane Katrina. Participating educators should be flexible enough to harness not only traditional teachers, but also TV broadcasters, weather reporters and business leaders.

Related iniatives

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - Science education: An extensive and diverse suite of programs, both offline and online, addressing all levels from kindergarten through Ph.D., and targeting students, educators, administrators, policymakers, community leaders in sectors other than education, parents of K-12 students, and specific minority groups.
  • The Climate Project - The Climate Project is a movement to educate and challenge citizens, and governments into action against the growing crisis of global warming. As a non-profit group, we work to bring education, community information, research and citizen action programs to communities across the country. Our first initiative, sponsored by Participant Productions, is the training of 1,000 lecturers who will present the information delivered in An Inconvenient Truth to audiences across America.
  • Debating Science - To solve the toughest problems of the modern world we need to bring together people with all kinds of training and experience. At the same time, people find it harder and harder to communicate effectively due to intellectual specialization. Debating Science seeks to remedy this by teaching us all the skills of public discourse over issues in science and technology, by sharing ideas and methods among scientists, philosophers, and humanists.This year, we will explore the ethical, scientific, and social dimensions of global climate change, biotechnology, and nanotechnology with an intensive summer workshop in Missoula, Montana and a semester-long online discussion course in each of the three topic areas. The course is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and will offer participants travel support, board, and lodging for the workshop. The workshop features keynote lectures by outstanding leaders in the fields of the philosophy of technology, environmental economics, environmental philosophy and ethics, the policy history of global climate, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.
  • Energy Action, a network of college organizers, has been formed and is making impressive progress, so the recommendation should include a plan to evaluate this and other college-level initiatives, with an expectation that they may be augmented and further coordinated with one another in lieu of creating a new corps.
  • Faith in Place Faith in Place gives religious people the tools to become good stewards of the earth. We partner with religious congregations to promote clean energy & sustainable farming. Since 1999, Faith in Place has partnered with over 200 congregations in Illinois—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Baha’i and Unitarian.
  • Focus the Nation is a major educational initiative that is coordinating teams of faculty, students and staff at over a thousand colleges, universities and high schools in the United States, to collaboratively engage in a nationwide, interdisciplinary discussion centered around the theme of “Stabilizing the Climate in the 21st Century”.The project will culminate January 31, 2008, in the form of one-day, national symposia held simultaneously on campuses across the country.
  • Green House Network - The Green House Network, a Portland, Oregon-501(c)3 non-profit organization, is committed to creating the grassroots movement needed to stop global warming.
    The Green House Network has no paid staff, but hundreds of active members across the country.Green House Network global warming education programs multiply grassroots leadership supporting the clean energy revolution that we need to stop global warming.
  • International Action on Global Warming (IGLO) IGLO is a project of the Association of Science-Technology Centers, an international organization of science centers and museums dedicated to furthering the public understanding of science. The goals of IGLO are to: raise public awareness about the impact of global warming; position science centers globally as recognized leaders in public engagement with science; support the aims and objectives of the International Polar Year. IGLO’s activities will include: an International Science Teachers Symposium - science centers worldwide will demonstrate IGLO education materials to invited science teachers; a Citizens’ Debate Day - science centers will invite interested citizens, local people involved in global warming issues, and policymakers to a discussion and debate on climate issues; and a Citizens’ Science Day - local citizens participate in a common worldwide experiment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  • National Environmental Trust - The National Environmental Trust is a non-profit, non-partisan organization established in 1994 to inform citizens about environmental problems and how they affect our health and quality of life. NET’s public education campaigns use modern communication techniques and the latest scientific studies to translate complex environmental issues for citizens. Furthermore, NET works in states across the country to localize the impacts of national problems, as well as to highlight opportunities for Americans to engage in the policymaking process.
  • Yale Office of Sustainability

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