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Cool the Earth
Cool the Earth is a pioneering non-profit based in the Bay Area offering a transformational climate change awareness program to schools and their communities. Our mission is to educate children and their families about climate change and motivate them right away to take simple, measurable actions to reduce their carbon emissions at home. Founded by a concerned parent, Cool the Earth is now running in over 100 schools (most in California) and has motivated over 40,000 kids and their families to take 70,000 actions to reduce CO2 by 50 million pounds. The program has already garnered environmental awards including a "Clean Air" Award from Breathe California, Jefferson Award from the institute for public service and an excellence award from the California Air Resources board. CTE is successful because it is optimistic, action-oriented, and has measurable results. With its website providing scalable access to the program, CTE is poised to become a model for grassroots climate change action throughout the country. The Cool the Earth program inspires children and their families to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The program was created by a concerned parent, Carleen Cullen, who was inspired to take action after seeing the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," and feeling compelled to make a difference. Cullen was so determined to enlist her community to join her cause, that she set about holding free screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth" for parents in her school district, and then held discussion groups afterwards to discuss what they could do together to make a positive impact. When she found that people could remain lethargic about changing their energy-consumption habits, even after being exposed to the realities of global warming, she set about to develop an awareness program called "Cool The Earth" which she hoped would motivate households to make carbon-reducing changes instantly—what she calls, and 'education through action'. After first launching her program "Cool the Earth," at her children's school--Bacich Elementary--in the spring of 2007, Carleen was able to galvanize local parents and leaders in the community to expand the program to twenty five Marin County schools within a matter of six months. The program is now reaching over 100 schools in California and throughout the country. The Cool the Earth program serves the entire student body population of each of the elementary schools running our program. Because implementation of the program extends from the students (K-8) school to the home with energy-saving materials, the program also reaches the parents, siblings and extended family members of these students, as well as teachers and school administrators. CTE is currently running the program in over 100 schools in the United States, with the majority of schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and 15 schools throughout the country including New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. The CTE program is implemented by volunteer program coordinators in schools, typically a motivated parent or teacher. The program launches with a school-wide assembly featuring an original, age-appropriate play to educate children about global warming. Students then go home with a coupon book that lists 20 no- or low-cost energy efficient actions; the coupons highlight the corresponding carbon savings of each action. These 20 action coupons include many of the same actions featured in a National Academy of Sciences Study about the most effective carbon reduction actions you can take to lower carbon emissions, such as powering down electronics when not in use, turning down your thermostat 2 degrees in winter, switching to energy-saving CFL bulbs, saving water by taking shorter showers and carpooling or walking to school, among others. To ensure that these environmental practices become part of participant's everyday living, the families and children aged 5-13 commit to taking actions over the entire school year. The coupons are completed and sent back to school, where they are tallied, tracked and displayed on a tracking banner to the entire school community. The banner illustrates to the school community that collectively their actions significantly impact climate change. They also track actions taken by the whole CTE community on their website to create a larger sense of community and spread the understanding that individual actions have a significant impact. In three years of operation CTE has had the following outcomes:
With continued growth, CTE hopes to become a national model for grass-roots community action throughout the country. For more information please visit http://cooltheearth.org
Torri J. Estrada |
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We conduct public engagement and behavior change research to improve climate change communication and social marketing programs. |