Author: Howard Creel

Education and Climate Information

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Kids should be learning the fundamentals of the biggest existential threat they face in school. But they aren’t. A 2019 poll conducted showed that 2/3 of adults, when asked felt that “schools should teach about climate change and its impacts on our environment, economy and society”. The responses align with our generally held expectations of political demographics. But it is generally held that a majority of teachers and parents want schoolkids to be taught about climate change and its impacts.

Despite the support for teaching climate change in the classroom, when asked, 55% of teachers said they were not covering the subject. Despite the controversial and often contentious state of our school curricula, when the teachers were asked, they were unclear on who was actually responsible for teaching climate change, with 65% saying “not me”.

Teachers are, on average, busy, often under-resourced, overworked, and underpaid. They are also under the authority of school districts which are becoming increasingly polarized on “controversial” subjects like climate change and the targets for parents who are increasingly vocal when their kids are taught a subject they disagree with.

In the poll, almost a third of the teachers admit being worried about parent complaints.

Groups are forming to combat this and equip parents, kids, teachers and school boards to ensure and amplify climate change literacy. For instance, Schools for Climate Action is “a non-partisan, grassroots, youth-adult campaign with a mission to empower schools to speak up for climate action”. 

Their passion and focus is empowering school boards, and other groups to pass “resolutions declaring climate change a generational justice and equity issue, call on Congress to act, and celebrate and expand school district responses to the climate crisis”. Successful mainly in California, they supply templates and guidance for you to approach your local school districts for effective action.

So check in on your local school district. Maybe you have kids there and know what they are learning. Have discussions with your kids (only 45% of us do) and empower others to explore climate change with theirs.

And help teachers and school boards by: ensuring that schools are funded, and that teaching climate change is required. Given the broad nature of the subject, there should be professional development opportunities for teachers from multiple disciplines to adopt, adapt, and develop a curriculum emphasizing climate change.

And start with the US Government publication Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Science “that provides a framework and essential principles for formal and informal education about climate change”. NOAA offers resources including a toolkit for teaching climate change. You can encourage teachers you know to leverage these free, authoritative sources to adapt for their classrooms.

Next Up: Climate Action Day 92: Talk Climate Change With Your Kids

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Education and Climate Information

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

If we want to make a big impact on climate change we should do better in our schools. Over 100,000 school buildings, many of which are in disrepair and in need of upgrades. Over 480,000 buses, mostly diesel, an important target for conversion to to electric.

In the public sector, schools are large consumer of electricity which can make up a significant portion of a school district’s budget. And budgets are shrinking as publich support, especially for capital upgrades, has been degraded over decades – falling over 31% between 2008 and 2017.

To help address the deficiencies, the Department of Energy launched the Renew America’s Schools Program, a part of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to fund energy upgrades to lower energy costs and help the environment. Energy-efficiency improvement projects have been funded by the program “at over 90 school facilities across 22 states – directly benefitting about 74,000 students and 5,000 teachers”.

But we must do more. Adding renewable energy, electric school buses, energy efficiency, and upgraded HVAC systems for improved indoor air quality helps to address climate change in so many ways. You can support your local school boards (and watch out for anti-education, climate change denial candidates on the ballot).

Educate yourself on ballot issues and school referendums that support capital projects and become an advocate for their passage. Find like-minded folks in your community and lobby your elected officials. Search out Federal and state grants that may help your local school districts with upgrades and for purchasing electric school buses and help coordinate securing the funding.

The 2024 Renew America’s School Prize is open now, looking to award “$180 million to districts across the country engaging in strategic partnerships to build capacity and implement energy upgrades at K-12 schools, lowering energy use and costs, improving indoor air quality, and fostering healthier learning environments”.

Read the Fact Sheet on the 2024 Renew America’s Schools Prize

Next Up: Climate Action Day 91: Teach Climate Change in the Classroom

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Education and Climate Information

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Compared to their grandparents, the average six-year-old today will face roughly:

2X more wildfires
4X more river flooding
2.5X more crop failures
2X more droughts.

The inherent risks of climate change demands action with a sense of intergenerational equity. Every generation holds the Earth in common with members of the present generation and with other generations, past and future. This is the foundation of sustainable development which relies on a sense of fairness among generations in the use and conservation of the environment and its natural resources.

Climate change is already underway. If you are a baby boomer, average life expectancy dictates that you will be gone before it gets really bad under a “business as usual” scenario of warming of 3°C or more by the end of this century. Your grandchildren are saddled with the burden of the older generations – the essence of intergenerational inequality.

When you reflect on your legacy at the end of your life, will you be able to claim that you did everything possible to ensure the safety, security, and welfare of those that you leave behind?

Human are definitely “here and now” thinkers. Deciding to take action and make sacrifices for the good of the next generations takes thought and commitment. Climate change is underway and it will affect everyone. But the younger you are, the longer you live, the more danger you will face if nothing is done.

Advocate for change in your spheres of influence – whether with elected officials, faith leaders, or your own family members and friends – using your voice, concern, and expertise to ensure a safe future for all children.

Heidi Roop – The Climate Action Handbook

But we get to choose our future. We already understand the causes of climate change and what we need to do to mitigate its effects and adapt to the changes already underway. Heidi’s book is a roadmap to the actions that you can choose to take on behalf of future generations. The choice to do so it entirely up to you.

“What motivates you? Will you consider your impact on future generations when deciding what actions to take?”

Next Up: Climate Action Day 90: Seek Climate Solutions for Schools

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Interested in gaming the climate? Climate Interactive offers user-friendly climate simulators give you virtual access to international policy, climate and energy solutions, climate justice and other critical aspects spanning the complexity of climate change systems. You can immerse and challenge yourself to find solutions through online tools, interactive workshops, role-playing games and organized events hosted by their facilitators.

En-ROADS is a simulator that “allows users to explore the impact that dozens of policies—such as electrifying transport, pricing carbon, and improving agricultural practices—have on hundreds of factors like energy prices, temperature, air quality, and sea level rise”.

I have participated in the En-ROADS Climate Workshop. It is a visceral experience as you work as a group to control complex, interconnected policies such as carbon pricing, agricultural practices, and transportation infrastructure and watch critical factors like temperature, sea level rise, energy cost etc. respond as your team tries to avoid total climate disaster.

You can also “play” the Climate Action Simulation Game which is a “role-playing game premised on a fictitious climate summit organized by the United Nations Secretary-General to urgently address climate change”. You gather in groups and in a facilitated session, try to negotiate together to arrive at a plan to limit global warming below 2°C. Even in this simulated environment with nothing on the line, factions emerge that act against positive collective action.

You can get a feel for these types of simulation games by testing the C-ROADS Simulator on your own. You are in charge, and can change key emission and land-use variables in the system dynamics model in an effort to limit warming by the end of the century. You can find the assumptions for the climate policy model here. And a tutorial for using the model here.

Want something for the kids? Or for you that is a little less stressful without the system dynamics and with more appealing graphics? Check out the NASA’s Climate Kids site for games to play and useful lessons on weather and climate, water, energy, and the big questions that every kid needs to know about climate change.

Next Up: Climate Action Day 89: Act On Behalf of Children

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Whenever there is an extreme weather event, the media seems to wring its collective hands. Is event caused by global warming? Is this one particular event evidence of a changing climate? In the moment, and depending on the media company that owns them, they may or may not be able to comment on their opinion on attribution, or the process of establishing the most likely causes for a detected change with some defined level of confidence. This is the realm of the climate scientists, not the weather-guessers (what my father called the local TV weather personality).

Climate denial politicians like to make the “it’s the weather, stupid” argument. The Hill quotes Laura Ingraham telling Fox News viewers “It’s, hot, hot, hot, all right. After all, we’re in the middle of a season called ‘summer.’” Stronger hurricanes are “a fact of life in the Sunshine State,” declared Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it

Charles Dudley Warner, often misattributed to Mark Twain

Climate denial can only met with data driven arguments. Collecting and analyzing the data, and drawing firm attribution conclusions from it takes time, skill, and effort. True climate change attribution is only feasible with data collected over large areas and long times.

Meanwhile we walk out into a milder winter in Minnesota than anyone can remember and know, without data, that we are experiencing profound changes in weather patterns. These accumulated observations and impressions have value for climate scientists and increasingly those who are assembling the narrative of climate change and its impact on human society.

The informal information we accumulate as we move through the day is valuable and can add fine detail to the data driven climate models developed by experts. The incorporation of routine and reliable observations gathered from disparate “informal” sources often aid in identifying climate solutions.

And equally important accumulate weather anecdotes and narratives can help personalize the science of climate change to make it more accessible for those not yet ready to accept the reality, even if they experience the same weather events we do.

Some community science platforms that Heid recommends include ISeeChange, an app and site that allows you to take your experiences of weather climate, relay how it is affecting you, and contribute to a community record that you can access for insight and communication. Check out a story here.

Your local state climatology office may want you to become a weather data source or you can become a part of the The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network which is an exciting grassroots effort of citizens measuring precipitation right in their own backyards.

And the Thriving Earth Exchange “supports community science by helping communities find resources, project managers, and experts to address their pressing concerns”. They are particularly interested in your input if you are a community scientist willing to “offer their technical skills, expertise and networks to support communities in advancing their priorities through a community science project”.

Volunteering to observe and report your observations may be an easy action for you to take to help create a science-based climate narrative and enhance the efforts of networked climate scientists.

Next Up: Climate Action 88: Role-Play Climate Solutions

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

You should buy Heidi’s book just for this chapter. It is a beautiful and powerful statement of the potential power of the youth climate movement and our duty to help.

Michael Mann, in his book The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, elaborates on a key strategy to combat climate change – A Child Shall Lead Them. “The youngest generation is fighting tooth and nail to save their planet, and there is a moral authority and clarity in their message that none but the most jaded ears can fail to hear. They are the game-changers that climate advocates have been waiting for. We should model our actions after theirs and learn from their methods and their idealism.”

Watch young climate activists demand action and inspire hope at UNICEF.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has been a very visible leader in a movement to hold everyone accountable and demand change for the generations that will be most impacted by climate change. And there are many others already making their voices heard and taking decisive action. And millions more, inspired by the pioneers, are waking up to the dreadful future they face – a future not of their making – and harnessing their passion and focus (and social media savvy) to fight back.

Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve had thirty years of blah blah blah, and where has that led us?

Greta Thunberg, in a speech at the 2021 Youth4Climate Summit

Blah blah blah. That is what they hear. And that is what they are working to challenge. And they should challenge it. More than 50 percent of greenhouse gases causing global warming have been emitted since 1990 by adults with access to a full understanding of the causes and likely devastating effects of fossil fuel driven climate change.

And youth activists are standing up, raising their voices and making themselves heard. Especially against the generations who knew and did nothing. They are targeting those in charge with clear intent – Greta Thunberg has leveled this charge at the policymakers: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth”.

If you were born after 1990 you have a right to hold the older generations to account. And as for me and my generation who are among the “climate-concerned individuals and community members” (as Heidi calls us) we have no choice but to support them and champion their cause as they take the lead in response.

Not only that, we have a duty to knock down barriers using our accumulated wealth, knowledge, experience, and political power and take action with a focus on “honoring, supporting, and advancing the priorities and needs that the growing youth climate movement has articulated”.

What can and should we do to help a “child” lead? Start with an understanding of your role, capacity, and capability and how it fits into and supports the approach these youth activists are taking. Then do everything in your power to support them. Find a local group and share your wisdom, time, commitment, and financial support. Join them in their marches and support them during school strikes.

At a minimum, defend them against critics and those that would dismiss them.

You can find youth-led climate organizations – local, national, and international – if you search for them. Immerse yourself in the UN Voices of Change series that “looks at the determination and drive of young people mobilizing for climate justice”. The UN has a Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change that provides the Secretary-General with “practical and outcome-focused advice, diverse youth perspectives and concrete recommendations”.

The Sunrise Movement is a powerful group of “young people fighting to stop the climate crisis and win a green new deal”. They approach the problem by growing power through organizing activists in their communities, rooting themselves in what they’re fighting for, and committing themselves to a “journey to become better organizers, leaders, and people”.

Yet some in my generation may question the suggestion that a “child” is capable of leading them. Older adults may tend to be complacent or hopeful in the face of this on-going and looming disaster. It will be OK. It will all work out. OK. Sure. But if you are old enough, this is not your fight to fight. Or rather, the consequences of you losing the fight are not quite as dire for you compared to the youth that are gearing up to take the lead to fight it. If they lose, humanity loses.

Take Greta Thunberg, who at 17, knowing that her generation has been forced by older generations into a fight to save a planet, articulated the reality of youth climate activism – “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 87: Share Your Observations and Experiences

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. For the purposes of this post, let’s let Ben Franklin have this one (probably not, according to Doctor Buzzkill). The idea of collective action baked into the lore surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence to create a new nation. We all are in this together. One for all, all for one. It is the essence and critical foundation of climate action. The only way to muscle past the tragedy of the commons.

Many, if not most of the climate actions we have discussed in this series are focused on what you can do as an individual and how you can make your voice heard to positively influence others to take action. You still may not be convinced or may not be able to take action in a way that is aligned with your values and has also a hope of making a measurable impact.

Maybe you have money that you can put to work for you while you figure out what you can do. You can put your time and effort into researching groups worthy of support. Community and church groups, or local, regional, national, or global. You can decide the scale, the mission, and the impact and through your donation you can support others taking action.

You might be interested in enhancing greenhouse gas emissions, creating green spaces, watershed and flood management, mental health services, equity and social justice, disaster response and recovery. Anything we have talked about has champions who have come together as individuals to organize and make a difference.

Get started at Charity Navigator – here are (on this day) 443 groups that claim some connection to climate action. You can sort by rating, region, how they approach the problem: leadership and adaptability, impact and results, culture and community, etc. And don’t forget to reserve a little to support Charity Navigator for their good work.

Want your support to go directly to an individual? Search climate on GoFundMe and find individuals and organizations who need just a little funding to do good work. Unlike other charities, you will know who you are funding. For instance, check out Shoestring Climate Activist Needs Support or Heat Relief for Homeless Daytonians. With this kind of direct support, you can have the satisfaction of knowing exactly the impact you are making and amplify the efforts of those taking action.

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 86: Support Youth Climate Activism

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Does your community have a climate action plan? Enlightened communities recognize the risks before them and devote time and energy to understand the potential impacts of climate change on their infrastructure and residents, and methodically sets down a plan to prepare for the envisioned future.

Take a look at how the city of St. Paul, MN approaches climate action.

Like any plan, a legitimate climate action plan articulates a framework for response and decision making based on a frank assessment of the risk from climate change. It includes not only mitigation, reducing emissions from various sources within the framework, but also adaptation including a concern and focused on disadvantaged populations that may bear the brunt of a changing climate.

Check to see if your favorite city has a climate action plan.

Your city might be asking for your opinion and input. And in term you should be vigilant that the plan makes sense and, more importantly, that the city is actually taking action to execute the plan. A 2020 Brookings Institute study found that while many city have plans for greenhouse gas reduction, as majority are not meeting their own targets.

Your location does not have a climate action plan? It is time to make your voice heard, along with like-minded citizens, to your elected officials to motivate them to make the resources available to establish and execute a viable plan. After a brief search, it looks like I may need to do more in my hometown. The good news is that the State of Minnesota offers resources for communities to develop their plan.

Be aware that climate action plans can be politically charged. Viewed not as framework for action against a legitimate threat, but as a tool by liberals to consolidate power (mostly by conservative climate change deniers). In 2017, for instance, nearly all references to climate change moments after Donald Trump was sworn into office, including President Obama’s Climate Action Plan that proposed a reduction in carbon emissions. Climate change did not reappear, according to the US Government, until the Biden administration in 2021.

And believe it will happen again in 2025 if Donald Trump is elected as President. Please review climate action reversal plan and other scary actions proposed in Project 2025, an “agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country”. 

Conservatives already have a plan for Trump’s second term.

The plan includes eliminating critical DOE functions like the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, reducing the focus on energy equity, diversity and inclusion, and conducting a “whole-of-government assessment and consolidation of science”. The good news is that Donald Trump will unlikely not have a united Congress to reverse legislation. However he can do considerable damage to the Department of Energy and other critical agencies through executive action.

As a reminder, Vote in Every Election.

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 85: Contribute to Community Groups

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

The essence of polarization is disconnection. Your views are so radical to mine, and mine are so entrenched that the only path we can find to move forward is to disconnect and go our own ways. Conservatives stop listening to liberals, and liberals only listen in an echo chamber. Nothing gets done, no one listens, and and separately we stay where we are. We can’t afford that anymore – a warming planet is largely disinterested in your political views.

The biggest and potentially most dangerous disconnect is between what we want as an electorate and what our elected officials are willing to do on our behalf. It seems that among the reasons people run for office, public service is not always at the top of the list. The cynical among us may be convinced that politicians largely serve themselves and the interest of wealthy benefactors who work to put and keep them in office to serve their interests.

We vote for candidates and we expect them to work with our best interests in mind. Increasingly a majority of US adults express their views in polls that addressing climate change needs to be a critical priority for our government. A 2023 poll shows that a majority of US adults say that federal and state governments are not doing enough to “reduce climate change effects”. An even higher percentage feel that corporations are not doing enough.

Don’t wait until the next election to take action. Start preparing now to make your voice heard. What are you passionate about? Clean energy generation, building energy efficiency, land and wildlife conservation, climate adaptation and disaster preparedness – all of these need champions.

And we champions need to make our voices heard to those that have the position and the budget to act on our behalf. write a letter – most of elected officials have a portal seeking your views. Frequent town halls or stop by the office. Join a group for collective action. Make your voice heard in a way that is most natural for you.

If you don’t want to speak up for yourself, speak up for others. As the World Resources Institute puts it, “climate change poses the greatest threat to those least responsible for it, including low-income and disadvantaged populations, women, racial minorities, marginalized ethnic groups and the elderly.

Find your Federal and State elected officials

Find your mayor

Explore and contact your local government

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 84: Champion Climate Planning in Your Community

Howard Creel

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com

Civic and Community Engagement

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

I bet you already know who you are going to vote for in the 2024 election. For president, that is. Congressional races, likely. The Governor, for sure. Top of the ballot, races driven with endless advertising and analysis by the pundits.

But do you know whether your local school board is being targeted by a slate of science deniers? Will your mayoral race turn into a disaster when a climate change denier takes over and works with a like-minded city council to reverse all the changes their liberal predecessors made?

When you bring proposals to them to address energy equity, or to create cooling stations for heat waves, or restore wetlands, or improve energy efficiency for municipal buildings, will they care? Do you know? Will you be prepared when you stand in front of the ballot in November, ready to cast your vote for the leaders that may have the biggest impact on you, your family, and your community? Or will you just guess and hope for the best?

96% of elected officials take office locally. City councils, county commissioners, school boards and other officers make decisions on local services and programs valued at over $2 trillion annually. The impact or their daily decisions drives local economies, their influence is profound and their actions often not scrutinized by a disinterested electorate.

Except for a small block of largely white, affluent, and older voters, most of us – over 73% of eligible voters – do not cast a ballot in local elections. “This means people who are least likely to live through the worst of climate change are deciding and influencing both today’s and tomorrow’s priorities”.

Register. Research. Show up and vote. Minimum.

Want to do more? Knock on doors (according to MPR, Minnesotans apparently say Sure!). Become an election judge. Go to your city council meetings and get to know your elected officials to decide who to vote in or out. Take the time to research your local races. Maybe consider running for office yourself.

Do what you can. And what you can do is vote.

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 83: Engage Your Elected Officials

#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com