Launch a Low Carbon Movement on Your Campus

[Nathan Jones]

***Please forward to people from colleges, high schools, nonprofits, and businesses that engage youth in environmental action***

You are invited to kick off a solution to climate change in your community by hosting a Cool Community Corps launch telecast on Oct 20, 2010, 1 to 2:30 pm ET - hosted by the New York Times Knowledge Network and Society for Community and University Planning with live streaming nation-wide.  

To launch the Cool Community Corps campaign, David Gershon, author of Low Carbon Diet, Social Change 2.0 and founder of the Cool Community movement will offer a talk: “Empowering a Low Carbon Movement on Your Campus.”  Click here to learn more and register.

As a follow-up to this event, in early 2011 an invitational 2.5 day Cool Community Corps capacity building training will take place led by David Gershon and hosted by Central Connecticut State University. To learn more contact Nathan Jones at nat...@thenice.org.

The Corps training provides students the opportunity to build and hone valuable transformative change leadership, empowerment and community organizing skills – what we call social change 2.0 – which they can use for the rest of their lives.

Becoming a Cool Community enables a city or town to enjoy the immediate practical benefits of more livable neighborhoods, greater environmental sustainability, and economic development. Furthermore, it creates a robust long-term carbon reduction capability by building the community leadership, carbon-literate citizenry, and political will necessary to sustain this type of change over time.

“What we do in the next few years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” - Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change.

Climate change is a challenge that vexes all generations, existing and yet to come.  In response to this challenge, people around the world are rallying like never before to find real solutions.  In America,

• 1,017 cities (28% of the U.S. population) have signed the US Conference of Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement

• Over 700 college and universities, representing 5.6 million students, have signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.  

• 17 states have GHG reduction targets in place

• 12,000 youth attended the Power Shift ’09 climate change event in Washington D.C organized by the Energy Action Coalition.  

With a strong desire and need to address climate change coming from so many quarters of our society here and now, what can we do?  Is there a leverage point for driving change with national legislation frozen and Earth’s clock ticking?  The large-scale solutions many are pinning their hope upon — renewable energy and new technologies — will take decades to scale up. Much more time than scientists tell us we have.

Fortunately, tools are already in place to help America’s communities empower citizens to reduce their carbon footprint.  The Empowerment Institute, a leader in community-based behavior change, has developed a strategy and set of carbon-reduction tools, through 25 years of research, to empower Americans to reduce their carbon footprint household-by-household, community-by-community nationwide.  This initiative addresses the 50 percent of America’s carbon footprint and up to 90 percent of a community’s footprint generated by our individual lifestyle choices.  It has helped over 20,000 people in over 300 America communities reduce their environmental footprint by 25% and trained dozens of communities to implement this methodology.

Youth have the passion and moral authority to lead this charge and the Cool Community Corps provides a set of tools to help them succeed.  The Cool Community Corps is an opportunity for students to have a real and measurable impact on global warming while gaining valuable leadership and community organizing skills.  In employing a proven community behavior-change program, the space is created for students to become a powerful force for change.

The Cool Community Corps provides students the tools and strategies to implement a Cool Community campaign.  They use these tools to empower local government, community groups, businesses, and individual citizens to start EcoTeams who go through the Low Carbon Diet program.  They can do this either as a student-driven initiative or as part of an already existing campaign, if one exists.  Their participation can either be part of a service-learning program associated with a high school or university where students receive credit or as a voluntary effort.

Participating in the Cool Community Corps is a powerful way for colleges, universities and high schools to engage students in community service. It also enables these schools to be on the cutting edge of positive concrete action to abate climate change.  Campuses can become centers of innovation and youth can drive the change outward as they engage with their communities.  Collectively the youth of the world will shape the future through empowering each other, and our communities, to grow into the world we seek.  

For More Information Visit:

www.empowermentinstitute.net

www.socialchange2.com

--
NICE Program Development Facilitator
thenice.org

Be the solution: http://grandaspirations.org/summer.html

"Every changed circumstance contains opportunities, which accrue to the first people to recognize them. Since circumstances are in constant flux, there is a steady stream of opportunities. Learn to spot them and make them your own."  ~Charles Potts