Sep 29 2019
OPINION: Piedmonters Can Participate in Climate Challenge
City, Piedmont Connect launch Piedmont Climate Challenge
As demonstrators of all ages took to the streets around the world last week to call for action on climate change, the city of Piedmont has launched a new tool to empower local residents to reduce their own impact on the planet.
The Piedmont Climate Challenge uses a fun and simple website to create a friendly competition among residents to explore solutions, take actions and earn points for reducing their household’s greenhouse gas emissions. Households can share points with a team, neighborhood and community group to win prizes and bragging rights.
Nearly 40 households have already signed up for the Challenge since its launch at the Harvest Festival Sunday, Sept. 30. The Challenge will run now through March, followed by an awards celebration in April to recognize the teams who took the most action and earned the most points. So far, the top-performing community group is Beach Elementary School.The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can start racking up points!The Challenge is easy to join. Visit www.
piedmontclimatechallenge.org. It takes about 15 minutes to create an account for your household, join your neighborhood and complete your profile. Once you have a profile, you can visit your dashboard to start or join a team (10 or fewer friends or neighbors) or join a community group. You’ll earn extra points by starting a team and recruiting friends and neighbors. Hosting a casual party is a great way to get started, and Piedmont Connect can arrange for a volunteer Ambassador to join you to demo the Challenge site and features.
Sign up today at www.piedmontclimatechallenge.org! Starting in the next week or two, be on the lookout for student Green Club members from Piedmont and Millennium High School who will be canvassing their neighborhoods to sign up households for the Challenge. Over the next month, they will be joined by students in the AP Environmental Science class and members of the Piedmont Community Service Crew. The Piedmont Middle School Green Team will join the effort by educating and motivating Tri-School elementary students at assemblies to introduce the Challenge site to their families.
Marjorie Blackwell, Piedmont Resident
What a terrific opportunity for Piedmont to make significant progress.
Thank you, Piedmont Connect, PUSD Green Teams and City Council for initiating this effort towards a safe and sustainable environment for all!
http://www.piedmontclimatechallenge.org
The Piedmont Climate Challenge Group will host a viewing tonight of the movie “Ice on Fire”. I watched that movie on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgAflG6MW1c), and it does encourage people to take individual actions to diminish their consumption of energy and be as green as possible.
However it does include a number of “errors” or “exaggerations” that I believe diminish its impact. Due to the movie recent release (May 2019) there are very few reviews on the web. I expect to post my views on the movie on this media soon.
As a reference, it might be useful for the PiedmontCivic readers to review the a 2007 UK Court judgment on the Al Gore Movie: “An Inconvenient Truth”: http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html&query=title+%28+dimmock+%29&method=boolean
The judgment notes 9 errors in the movie, the worth one being:
1) Sea level rise of up to 20 feet (7 metres) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.
=>Judgment: This is distinctly alarmist. The melting would only happen over millenia, and insofar as the film suggests that this will happen in the immediate future, it is not in line with scientific consensus.
As far as I now, this statement is today still in error.
Bernard Pech