Posted on 01/30/2008 9:42:24 AM PST by NormsRevenge
At the University of Rhode Island, students placed 300-pound blocks of ice around their campus and let them melt to symbolize how global warming is affecting polar ice caps.
At Missouri State University, students will pile 20 tons of coal on campus to show how much of this air-polluting fossil fuel is needed to power their school for an hour.
At UCSD, young conservationists are preparing a performance-art show that will feature a faux polar bear in an 8-foot-tall “electric” chair. It's a creative riff on the theme of climate change harming the bears.
The activities are part of the inaugural Focus the Nation, a four-day event designed to turn the nation's college students and others into global-warming activists.
Organizers of the grass-roots campaign, which ends tomorrow, bill it as the largest teach-in in U.S. history. They said about 1,700 colleges – including San Diego State and the University of California San Diego – churches, high schools and civic groups are participating.
“It's really important that this is happening nationwide,” said Michelle Kizner, a Focus the Nation organizer at UCSD, where she's majoring in ecology, behavior and evolution. “That makes it more powerful – just the solidarity of the movement and really seeing that people are committed everywhere.”
The main ideas are to educate and energize hundreds of thousands of young people, who will inherit Earth's fast-changing physical environment. Toward that goal, Focus the Nation's leaders are bringing dozens of politicians to campuses so students can share their environmental concerns and get a taste of civic engagement.
“We have got the youth who feel this huge sense of urgency, but they don't have power. We want to combine that with the experience, the knowledge and the influence of the older generation,” said Alex Tinker from Focus the Nation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group from Portland, Ore., that's coordinating this week's programs.
The organization's founder is Eban Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. He compares modern American attitudes about climate change to how people felt about civil rights in the early 1960s, saying that at the time, most Americans understood that segregation was wrong but figured that laws allowing it would never change.
“That is where we are now with (global warming),” Goodstein said. “Americans get that it is real and bad and wrong, but there is this sense of fatalism that we are somehow condemned to pass on to our children an impoverished planet.”
About two years ago, he started talking to professors and campus leaders at dozens of colleges nationwide who were sympathetic to the cause. Eventually, Goodstein created the Focus the Nation group and won financial support from Nike, Clif Bar and other organizations. The money enabled him to hire a staff and expand his teach-in concept, which led to this week's event.
The activities will include solutions-oriented discussions between students and elected lawmakers. Participants nationwide also have the chance to vote for various climate-change solutions at focusthenation.org, and the winning ideas will be announced in February.
“Young people get it,” Goodstein said. “They are sick of hearing that the world is coming to an end, and they want to be part of the solution.”
Focus the Nation builds not only on the civil rights movement but also on dynamics that inspired Earth Day, the ongoing climate-change campaign led by former Vice President Al Gore and a surge of support for anti-global-warming efforts by hundreds of mayors nationwide.
The call for action resonated at UCSD, home to cutting-edge climate science and a growing push to offer practical solutions for reducing energy use and curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, which hasten global warming.
Campus activities for Focus the Nation include a panel about careers in “environmentally conscious” industries, a display of eco-friendly vehicles and climate-themed lectures in dozens of classes.
Perhaps the most unusual event will be tomorrow's performance-art show with the giant “electric” chair. A student dressed in a polar-bear costume will be strapped into the chair and will hold a sign proclaiming, “You Have the Power.”
“We are helping people make the connection between their actions and those actions' impact on the environment,” said Kristin Blackler, a sustainability analyst at UCSD.
Yep, the 10-15-20' high snowbanks on my campus...the ones that sprang up before Thanksgiving and (hopefully) melted before everyone went on Summer Break...were a lot more impressive. Of course this was 15 years ago. No such thing as Global Warming back then, as AlGore was still perfecting the internet and hadn't had time to define it.
I suppose though, that if you hadn't seen snow before, a block of ice the size of an easy chair would be pretty impressive.
PS and BTW, I ran back home over Christmas and the same huge snowbanks are there this year. Maybe Global Warming skips a year. Sort of like intelligence can skip a generation.
WLS here in Chicago has been talking about the deep freeze of 83. It got to 20+ below at one point and it stayed below 0 for about three weeks. Now that was Global Warming!
Name the bear 'Mohammed' and see how far you get.
20 tons???
Hold on now...
20 tons of coal= 50,000 KWh, since one ton of coal produces 2,500 KWh.
http://www.uwsp.edu/CNR/wcee/keep/Mod1/Whatis/energyresourcetables.htm
Rhode Island’s average retail rate is about 14 cents per KWh
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/rhode_island.html
If it takes 50,000 KWh to power their school for one hour, then rudimentary math would put University of Rhode Island's electric bill at $7,000 dollars per hour.
I highly doubt that. But if it is, I’d say it’s well *past time* time to turn all the lights off. These idiots aren’t learning anything, anyway.
whoops,
I didn’t catch that was at University of Missourah.
-Their electric rate is 6.3 cents per KWh, so 50,000 KWh would only cost $3,150 per hour...much more affordable
;^)
BWAHHHHAAAAA!!!
Yea, but consider: those idiots are our *future*.
Kinda makes ya feel fuzzy {math}.
...all over. ;^)
If I remember right, it didn't go above 0 for the month of January back home (Maine). I remember it because Mom's rule was that I couldn't go outside and play until it hit 0.
No global warming back then. It hadn't been invented yet. I'm sure that Dad would have welcomed it when the heating bills came, though.
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