Citizen Scientist Sandi

I am so excited to be a citizen scientist with the Climate Stakeholders! It is an incredible luxury to spend a week in the woods collecting data that will be used to examine climate change in our area. I have been at this for three days now and I'm beginning to see how doing this work increases my perspective to what is actually at stake here. I don't allow myself much time for reflection on what it is I value about the environment. Being in the forest and working with other stakeholders seems to demand my attention to detail regarding what is in the forest - in the treetops, on the trunks, on the ground, below the ground - there is a lot going on! It goes back to the luxury and leisure to have the time to be deeply involved in the forest. The added bonus is the energy I receive from the other members of the team. This whole thing makes me believe that we can make a difference in climate change - YES WE CAN!!

Sandi

Yeay, we've chosen a President! Now, let's get to work on critical issues!

Day two of this week has come to a close after some great time outdoors (and in the rain!), contributing to an important long-term forest research project. We are a very tired, but very happy HSBC Climate Partnership team, especially now that we've enjoyed watching the incredibly inspiring, emotional and visionary speech just given by our President-elect, Barack Obama. He himself stated that we have a "planet in peril," and that it will be up to us, following his new leadership, to envision and meet the challenges we'll face in the next one hundred years, alongside our friends in the world.


Those of us participating in this fellowship not only believe in the strength of our individual passion and efforts to reduce the impact of climate change and protect the environment, but more importantly we believe in what we can accomplish as a team, community, nation and world. With that in mind, I've offered to list a few of the ideas that have already been tossed around as potential projects or campaigns that we can develop which might shape the future of our respective communities as we meet the challenges of climate change and its effects on our world.

Community Project Ideas

· Identify Climate Champions, local and national leaders who can call/inspire people to action-oriented solutions to the climate change problem.

· People think technology is the magic bullet – it’ll solve everything. What project can we create to identify/support new technologies, but make sure that other options and behavior is also on the table?

· There are at least three types of people: those who are ignorant about the issues, those who are on board and agree that climate change is a problem and have a desire to make a change, but need direction/help in how to make a change, and those who are full-force climate champions/leaders who can get people moving and lead/inspire all the others.

· As the Climate Team, we should address ourselves first and reduce our own footprint, dig down deep and really spend the time to walk the talk as part of going out into the rest of the company.

· Create a national campaign to place little images/numbers on energy-consuming products that will compare one hour of usage with the amount of gas/coal/non-renewable resources it literally consumes in that amount of time. Connect people back to the environment and our natural resources, especially how/where we get them. Connect peoples’ behavior back to the natural resources being used to produce the energy being consumed.

· According to the World Resources Institute, Electricity and Heat-related activities take up 24.8% of the global greenhouse gases globally, and specifically, residential electricity/heat usage makes up 9.9% of the GHG emissions (see other points on reduction of electricity/energy usage).

· Create a local/national/federal level incentive and educational program to build recycling into our daily activities. Connect with corporate partners/champions and manufacturers. Get kids involved and influence them.

· Create a policy or tax break for methane harvesting by small businesses and/or cities so that their dumps can be put to better use. Encourage and support better technologies for harvesting methane to help self-sustain a business/county/city.

· Create more formal, federally supported life-cycle assessments of major appliances and energy-consuming products. Create cradle-to-cradle relationships with major corporations as part of a national strategy to recycle and/or repurpose old appliances.

· Use the GHG World Emissions map to create an online interactive tool that will adjust the changes in habit and energy and land usage to show the output in CO2 in comparison.

· Reduce the impact of urban heat islands. Work with local cities and their builders and existing smart/urban growth groups to push for green roofs, LEED buildings, more bike lanes, walkable communities, etc. to reduce the heat island effect, as well as our output of CO2 emissions and over consumption of goods.

· Each one of us needs to identify three organizations to which we’ll present a modified PowerPoint presentation about climate change science, cultural perceptions and our experiences in the field to create awareness about climate change and its solutions, based on the CD we’ll be given at the end of the week.

· Brainstorm the idea of creating a Geotourism MapGuide specific to the region, with a special section/emphasis on reducing our impact on the environment and consumption of non-renewable resources.

· Legislative activism to reduce CO2 emissions nationally in a more comprehensive way (through technological ingenuity – a grant encouraging technological advancement?), if not just locally.

· Promote staycations, less consumption, acting locally, thinking globally.

· Help establish some sore of a carbon tax based on your household’s carbon footprint.

· How do we get kids involved in reducing CO2 output? The public first needs to understand where those CO2 and other GHG emissions come from.

· Changing transportation behavior: biking, carpooling, other types of driving, public transportation, flexible work options, etc.

· Push for use of automatic shutoff of buildings’ energy output and unnecessary energy vampires. Promote new surge protectors with a visual wattage count built in that will help people visualize the energy that they use on a regular basis – push to make that a part of their in-home systems, e.g. a requirement of all newly built homes?

· Push national home builders’ organizations to focus on creating sustainable homes with efficient (and less) appliances.

· Push for solar power in our communities – tax breaks, education and awareness, self-installation, building solar power into new condominium and other developments, plus building investment in solar into existing condo boards for future installation. Must work with energy companies to ensure they are friendly to such efforts.

· Create a few specific social marketing tools to implement in conjunction with any of the above projects as a way of inspiring members of the public to become Climate Change Stakeholders in their own right.

Tomorrow truly is another day!

Danielle Williams

It Starts With a Question: “How Will Climate Change Impact the Next Four (or Five) Years?"

November 3, 2008

I think it’s safe to say that most people living in the United States can agree that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But perhaps what we really need to agree upon is a reduction in our consumption of energy, especially nonrenewable energy that contributes an inordinate amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, thereby contributing to global warming. Either way you look at it, there is going to be a diverse group of people gathering this week from the DC-MD-VA area who want to play a part in finding solutions to the climate crisis, and I am proud to be one of them.

Over the next week, I’ll be participating in the HSBC/Earthwatch Institute Climate Change Fellowship as part of a five-year project going on in five countries. Along with ten other participants from all walks of life, I’ll be given an opportunity to get out of my desk chair (wohoo!) and get dirty, learning and experiencing first hand some of the field techniques and quantitative scientific approaches being used to monitor the effect that our changing climate and human-related activities have on temperate and tropical forests. The project itself is entitled: “Sustainable Forest Management in a Changing Climate.”

Our particular field site is located at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, a forested area around Edgewater, Maryland, right in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The other forest field sites being studied as part of this global project are located in Brazil, India, England and China. Beyond tasting a piece of the science behind our changing climate, this week we’ll also discuss several themes surrounding it, including the cultural perceptions of climate change, its socio-economic impact and meeting the challenges of the future.

It may be a week in the woods, but this is no ordinary week. Getting to experience real fieldwork and brainstorm solutions that may help mitigate the effects of climate change on our planet is one thing. Getting to experience it in the middle of a presidential election is quite another. Many scientists and other climate change experts agree that our window of opportunity to change our current course for the better is very narrow, and considering that the United States’ portion of global Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions is quite large as a whole (let alone per capita), it’s going to take great leadership at the helm to ensure that we find a myriad of alternatives to the status quo – and encourage other world leaders to do the same. Our entire week will be framed by the results of this historic presidential election, and it will be exciting to see how those results add fuel to our discussions.

Each member of our team has his or her own stake in what happens to our warming planet – whether for personal or professional reasons – and we each want to do something about it. I am representing The National Geographic Society, in part, because of my work as a member of our Green Initiative’s subcommittee on Employee Practices. Building upon our mission of increasing and diffusing geographic knowledge, National Geographic also seeks to inspire people to care about the planet. In order to speak to the public through our media on issues like climate change, it is necessary for our staff to embody that mission.

With the idea that our organization’s carbon footprint should continue to be refined and reduced, our Employee Practices subcommittee has decided to focus on how our employees get to work in the first place. As a result, we developed an event called ECOmmuting Awareness Day for National Geographic staff at our headquarters in Washington, DC. For the last two years, our ECOmmuting Awareness Day has been organized into four sections: Biking, Driving, Flexible Work Options and Public Transportation. In a fun forum, we’ve managed to create a successful and replicable event that has provided a plethora of transportation-related resources to our over 1400 staff, educating them about alternative ways to get to work with the goal of increasing their health and well-being and ultimately reducing our overall CO2 emissions.

For our efforts in implementing and marketing ECOmmuting Awareness Day to our staff, National Geographic received the Washington Council of Governments Commuter Connections Award in June 2008. This team-oriented and carbon-reducing approach is what I hope to bring to the discussions with my fellow climate change stakeholders this week as we share best practices from our respective organizations and communities.

Furthermore, we’re working from a blank canvas. As members of the North American (MD) team, we’ve been told that we'll be the first to get together and brainstorm ideas for community-level solutions to the climate crisis, projects that will connect our newfound understanding of the science behind climate change to the ways in which we can reduce our impact on it. As the team from the United States, we’re setting the precedent for this global five-year project, and the symbolism is not lost on me.

With so much at stake in this election and in our changing climate, I am eager and excited to start my week of scientific learning and collaboration. The next four (or five) years depends on it.

Danielle Williams