Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Climate Change Monitoring: How the Scientists Know our Climate is Changing!

Friday, January 13th, 2012


Share

Hey Climate Mamas and Papas, did you catch our “home slide show” of our visit to the top of the Mauna Loa volcano where we found out about C02 monitoring and climate science? We learned so much on this trip and we hope you did too.

Furthering our “education” (and yours) on climate change, grab the kids in your life and take 2 minutes to watch a Discovery Channel interview with a climate scientist from The Scripps Institute in San Diego. Dr. Keeling gives James Williams from the Discovery Channel a tour of his “lab” and helps all of us understand more about how some of the equipment he uses actually works! This equipment provides Dr. Keeling with data that shows him (and us) that WE humans are causing certain greenhouse gases in our atmosphere to increase. These “greenhouse gases” trap heat, causing our planet to “warm up” at an unnatural pace..something that is not healthy for us, our kids, or our planet!

By the way, this climate scientist, Ralph Keeling, is the son of another climate scientist Charles Keeling, who first set up the CO2 measuring data on the top of the Mauna Loa volcano. Interesting how parents can teach their kids ‘a thing or two…’

Best,

Climate Mama

Technology for Good: How Come Questions – Fill in the Blanks!

Monday, October 10th, 2011


Share
As busy parents, technology often seems a curse rather than a blessing. 24/7 connectivity, work, school, kids, sports, community events…trying to sift through, prioritize and find out what is important, often feels overwhelming.

So take a minute today, sit down with the kids in your life, and tune out all that “noise” and tune in to some ideas and questions being asked by individuals who are using technology to “do good” for the world. Listen as they ask some “how come” questions on ways we could be using Technology for Good. A great conversation starter with the teens in your life (and even with your younger ones, who may surprise you with their great insight and questions!)

Ericsson wants to hear from you too, as they look to “push the boundaries” of what a Networked Society should look like. Send your ideas to Ericsson today and be part of the solution as together we figure out how best to use technology for positive change in our world.

As we see it at ClimateMama, a Networked Society is key to moving forward as we learn how to adapt to and mitigate the consequences of human caused climate change.

Doing Good: Social Good Summit NYC and Much, Much More!

Monday, September 26th, 2011


Share
Our own Climate Mama, Harriet Shugarman attended the Social Good Summit in NYC, which was sponsored by the 92nd Street Y, The United Nations Foundation, Mashable and Ericsson. Harriet got to meet, talk to and hear from AMAZING individuals from around the world that are putting ideas into action to help make our world a better place!

I came away every day from the Summit inspired and hopeful, that our world is on a healing path; that people are looking out for each other, and that social entrepreneurship is a rising opportunity that offers hope for our future. Some of the many organizations and individuals that impressed me with their programs and actions, and inspired me with their words are listed below. Without going into detail at this point, we suggest you grab the kids in your life, particularly the older ones in high school and college that might be looking for companies and organizations to work with some day. Tell them to look closely at the following organizations, and ask them how they currently define success and if that view changes when they look at these successful companies, organizations and individuals that are “doing good” for our world at that same time they are “doing good” for themselves: Ericsson and in particular check out their Technology for Good program, Idealist.org, One Laptop Per Child Foundation, Charity Water, Do Something, Eli Wiesel, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media, Muhammad Yunus, Skype in the Classroom, and Global Health Corps, just to name a few!

So how can you “do good” today? Here are 4 things you can do right now with a “click” of your “mouse”:

1. Join the Million Mom Challenge, a partnership between ABC News and the UN Foundation. The Challenge is a call to action that will raise awareness and funds to help women and children everywhere survive and thrive! For the first 100,000 sign ups, Johnson and Johnson will donate $100,000 to several NGO’s helping Moms and Babies around the world. Tell your friends, share your story and take the challenge!

2. Our friends at The Balancing Act alerted us to a wonderful organization A Spring of Hope that is working to help moms and kids too, by building wells in rural African schools to improve community health conditions and to promote education at a grassroots level. Wells provide clean drinking water, the essential tool needed for a school’s self-sustainability and the students’ promising futures. This organization was started by a South Florida High School student, showing us again, the power of one! The organization is working with Chase Community Giving on a ONE WEEK fundraising campaign, running September 28-October 5th. If you are on facebook, please Like A Spring of Hope and find out more information about this giving opportunity!

3. Consider bidding on some of the amazing auction items in support of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. The Auction is open NOW, so check out some of the cool items up for bid!

A tour of Ed Begley, Jr.’s solar powered home and lunch with the man himself; Hang out with Jackson Browne at his show; Custom made retro western shirt by Linda Ronstadt: Signed guitar by Grammy-winner Ben Harper; Executive lunch with Archie Comics CEO

The Auction runs through October 5th, and will help raise funds and promote the good work of the Plastic Pollution Coalition including: ending our global dependence on disposable plastic and reducing the overall global plastic footprint for individuals, businesses and organizations.

4. Take the Gatorade pledge to support young athletes in their quest to BECOME the best athletes they can be. Gatorade will donate one dollar up to $10,000 to the Women’s Sports Foundation for every pledge received. While Gatorade is a company many of us and our children are certainly familiar with, you and your kids may not know as much about what Gatorade is doing to bring “social good” home!

3 Online Environmental Games to Engage and Empower Your Kids – Climate Change and Playing games

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Looking for fun and educational things to do with your kids this summer, or have them do on their own on “inside days?” Here are our 3 favorite web-based games that teach lessons on environmental awareness, climate change, activism and sustainability..! All of this “learning” happens while the kids in your life are having fun and playing a game that doesn’t involve shooting a weapon or capturing aliens! From elementary school kids and pre-teens through teens and grown ups, join us and test drive our favorite online climate change games!

Our Climate Mama Seal of Approval was recently awarded to MiniMonos (Little Monkey’s in Spanish!) an award winning international online game, from our friends in New Zealand.

MiniMonos is a virtual world for kids as young as 8 years old that love to play games and love the planet. According to the creators of MiniMonos: “ We created MiniMonos so that children could have a place of their own, a place that allows them to explore and grow without constant pressure to buy stuff. We also wanted them to have a place that embodies core values like sustainability and generosity, without turning those values into a boring lecture.”

Children create monkey avatars who live in tree houses. The monkeys need “caring,” their tree houses need decorating and the neighboring lagoons need to be kept clean! Children make friends with other players and also completes real life and virtual eco-projects, all in the name of fun! MiniMonos provides a safe social networking and gaming site, ala “Club Penguin” but works to integrate real world eco activities, like setting up a school recycling program, with activities in the “virtual world.” The site already boasts over 125,000 users in the “preteen set” from around the world.

Our next suggestion is for the older kids in your life – middle, high school and beyond. Climate Challenge comes to us via the United Kingdom. According to the BBC science and nature home page: The Game’s focus and aims are as follows:

Apart from the primary goal of creating a fun game, Climate Challenge’s producers aimed to:

• give an understanding of some of the causes of climate change, particularly those related to carbon dioxide emissions.
• give players an awareness of some of the policy options available to governments.
• give a sense of the challenges facing international climate change negotiators.

Players must respond to catastrophic events caused by climate change as well as natural and man made events, which may or may not be linked to climate change. This aspect of the game is meant to give some idea of what could happen as the Earth’s climate changes and also introduce the unpredictable nature of some natural events.

Let us know what you and (the kids in your life) think; the game is fun for anyone – you don’t need to be a European National to play!

Our 3rd suggestion is called E-mission, a Facebook game that lets the player “fight climate change” by protecting a costal habitat and reducing CO2 emissions in the real world. Players work to “keep their habitat clean,” earn points, get rewards, play with friends and help save the environment! The game has been created by DoSomething.org with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Star – the game reminds us of MiniMonos, but for older kids!

Test drive these games, check in with the kids in your life, let us know what you think!

What the Frack?! Grab Your Cimate Change Kids and Watch

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Love this video from from David Holmes and the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU – and so will the kids in your life! It is hard to imagine that a complicated subject like “Fracking” can be “fun.” But this video is fun, and helps us understand something that is happening around us, as our insatiable quest for energy has taken a wrong turn.

We need to care and demand safe practices, as the way that some companies are getting natural gas to us bypasses too many rules, and in many communities, this process is making people sick as local water supplies are becoming polluted. In the northeast, a huge gas find, called the Marcellus Shale, is making the California gold rush seems like a non event, as gas companies scramble to buy farm land to have access to this new “gold mine.”


Grab the kids, watch this video, and get informed!


Welcome to Climate Mama

welcome

You are a mother, a father, a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt, a teacher or a child at heart. When you hear the Native American saying, “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”, it makes you stop for a moment and think. You love nature, travel, adventure and believing in a world that is special and unique. Climate change and global warming are words that alarm you, that often seem too big to get your arms around. You care about what’s happening to the world and notice small changes in your own life that seem to point in the direction of a threatened environment. But you wonder if these changes are real, and if they are you can’t imagine what you can do to help change what is happening.

Read more

Climate Mamas and Papas

mama papa

Climate Change so often seems too big to get our hands around. We wonder where we can start and how we can actually make a difference. Each one of us has a different path that we will follow. Some of us cut a wider swath than others, but each of us has a role to play. We would like to introduce you to some amazing individuals, Climate Mamas and Papas who are making a difference, who are, through their daily lives, affecting the lives of all of us. They inspire us, empower us, and challenge us to reach for the stars, to strive to do the best we can to help change the crash course we are currently on with our environment. Lets meet some of these amazing people and find out what inspires them. Meet our featured Climate Mama, Janae Shields, today!

Read more

Featured Partner & Campaigns

Earth Day New York promotes environmental awareness and solutions, all year long, through partnerships with schools, community organizations, businesses, and government entities; educating public and private policymakers through conferences and publications; and involving the general public in annual Earth Day events.

Read more