If you’ve ever set foot on U.K. soil, you’re likely familiar with its balmy, temperate and ever-precipitous climate, not to mention the thick tapestry of plant life carpeting the landscape. In this heavily populated landmass, toting an umbrella is simply just common sense, because Mother Nature is quite fond of keeping it nice and moist.

And yet things have been changing slowly but steadily for the last several decades. As with so many other regions around the world, Great Britain has experienced the bizarre effects of global warming firsthand with everything from extreme winter and summer temperature swings, to prolonged droughts and random wildfires, the latter of which was formerly unheard of in a country normally prone to such regular precipitation.

It’s understandable that the government has a keen interest in forging a more sustainable future for its residents, and one of the best ways to do so is to appeal to the younger generation. Why? Because they’re more likely to embrace eco-positive lifestyle changes by perceiving them as globally beneficial rather than personally sacrificial. An even better way to inspire the younger generation to “go green” throughout their lifetime is to demonstrate that they are worth investing in.

Close to seven years ago, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his team launched a unique and admittedly ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan that strived to do precisely that. Called Building Schools for the Future, the 2004 initiative was meant to sustainably revamp every secondary school in England throughout a 20-year period so each learning institution reflected a more modern appearance while also delivering a cutting-edge 21st-century education.

Sounds great! Except, how does one go about figuring out which of the nation’s 21,400 school buildings are most deserving of the eco-facelift? That, in and of itself, presented its fair share of logistical, budgetary and scheduling issues.

While the project did, in fact, tackle upgrades on roughly 500 learning institutions (many of which achieved a “very good” sustainability rating from an environmental assessment organization called BREEAM), challenges along the way, coupled with a new governmental administration and a re-evaluation of funds, resulted in current Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove cancelling it all together. Finito. No more eco- or educational upgrades for the kiddies.

This development echoes the fate of an equally commendable, eco-inspired program that also ended up on the chopping block thanks to budgetary limitations. Clear Skies was a proposed £10-million renewable energy grant designed to fund wind turbines throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland, specifically for schools, hospitals and other nonprofit organizations. Clean green energy at no cost — seems like a match made in heaven for educational facilities cultivating impressionable minds.

Given how the global economy has suffered in recent years, Great Britain certainly hasn’t been immune to the belt-tightening effects. Alas, money doesn’t grow on trees, and as practical as it seems (at least on paper) to pour funds into learning institutions (even with good eco-intentions), it ultimately becomes hard to justify when there are so many other fiscal issues to contend with.

What is truly unfortunate is that this isn’t an isolated occurrence. It’s a common conundrum experienced every single day around the world. In a depressed economy, which do we deem more important: making eco-friendly lifestyle decisions (that may cost more upfront but reap long-term rewards) or saving money, no matter the future consequences? The answer might become more apparent by taking a gander at the latest weather global phenomenon rearing its ugly head.

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Thompson is the Executive Director of Buckminster Fuller Challenge program, which awards a $100,000 prize annually to a proposal for a likely solution to a major global issue. The program is unique in that it presents a large-scale award annually without specifically denoting a given issue that needs solving.

Applicants for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge must demonstrate a compelling argument that the problem they are addressing is a major leverage point in our global systems. Issues span the gamut of social and environmental change, from restoring the world’s soils and investing in women’s income, to designing new urban transportation systems and more.

“In other words,” Thompson explains, “if this particular problem is solved in a comprehensive way, it will have the effect of solving many other symptomatic issues at the same time. It’s a comprehensive approach — solving multiple problems simultaneously — that we’re really championing. We’re not interested in solving the symptoms, we’re interested in solving the root causes.”

For more information, see challenge.bfi.org.

George Black

George Black is the Executive Editor of the NRDC’s OnEarth magazine, a quarterly publication that examines critical environmental issues worldwide. Paramount in the magazine’s focus is climate change and its globe-spanning implications.

Black claims that climate change perceptions are different throughout the world, with some countries — including the U.S. — still burdened with climate deniers, while other, advanced countries are far along in employing renewable technologies.

“We’re at an interesting moment right now where we’ve done a great deal to convey the severity of the human drama of how people are impacted [by climate change],” Black says. “I think we’re now necessarily moving toward the [next] stage, which is to take the best initiatives that are underway, and say, ‘How can you bring them up to scale?’ In other words, how can you harvest the best ideas and bring them to a mass market?”

For more information, see onearth.org.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (48.1MB)

Distinguished broadcaster Jon Snow provides the voice over for the witty animation, which shows an ordinary kid developing increasingly extraordinary body parts to cope with experts’ predictions of prolonged periods of intense sunshine, freak floods, cyclones, droughts and food shortage.

The Climate Kid video highlights the urgent need to start building our resilience to climate change in order to ensure children can survive and thrive, in addition to highlighting UNICEF’s need for more support to help vulnerable communities adapt to their changing environment.

The Climate Kid

The campaign, which will run for twelve weeks, will be supported by online advertising on key sites such as Spotify, and Facebook and a status hijack will encourage users to change their status to “I’ll need… ” and share what evolutionary enhancement they will need to continue to do something that they love.

Additionally, a Twitter competition will give tweeters the chance to win an original artwork by illustrators who have developed their own interpretation of what Climate Kid — a child who has evolved to adapt to extreme climate change — will look like in the future.

Lucy Stone, UNICEF UK’s Climate Change Specialist said: “The ‘Climate Kid’ campaign is an exciting new way for us to address the devastating impact of climate change, which is forcing millions of children to struggle without food, shelter or an education. If we can help these children become more resilient to their changing environment, we really can help them to take control of their lives and thrive. We can all play a positive role to help put this right and Climate Kid is a new, inspiring, way for us to get this important message across.”

Naresh ramchandani from do the Green Thing said “We wanted to make the concept of climate adaptation as interesting for as many people as possible. It struck us that everyone is fascinated by the distortion of the human body — think of the popularity of the Fat Booth app. So we created Climate Kid, a way of showing how a child’s body would have to evolve to adapt to climate change if we don’t act now.”

The Climate Kid campaign forms part of UNICEF’s Carbon Positive initiative, which aims to raise awareness and funds for UNICEF’s Carbon Positive projects around the world, and is part of Do The Green Thing’s mission to use great creativity to tackle climate change. UNICEF’s Carbon Positive initiative offers individuals a unique and positive way to tackle climate change by making the link between their own carbon lifestyle and the affect it is having on children around the world by encouraging them to take action and make a donation to help those communities adapt as the climate changes.

All monies raised through Climate Kid will go towards supporting UNICEF’s Carbon Positive projects, which include; ensuring children can access clean water and food, go to school and keep healthy despite the increasing risk of diseases, floods and droughts. For more information please visit unicef.org.uk/carbonpositive.

For further information about UNICEF please contact Liz Jones on lizj@unicef.org.uk.

For more information about Do The Green Thing please contact Katee Hui on katee@dothegreenthing.com.

To visit Do The Green Thing online please point your browser at dothegreenthing.com or twitter.com/dothegreenthing.

What if society took pollution and plastics more seriously decades ago? The words quoted above sum up a feature article in Rolling Stone — an article that probably would not have needed to be written had society curbed its wasteful practices with plastic. The article is talking, of course, about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling stew of bits of trash that is harming wildlife, polluting the water and growing by the day.

It is alarming that such a mind-boggling phenomenon of unimaginable proportion is now featured in a rock ‘n roll magazine instead of a standard scientific publication like Scientific American, as one would expect. But, it is true: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is real. This worrisome reality is clearly depicted in down-to-earth terms by Kitt Doucette in issue number 1090 of the world-famous music periodical. What if those bans on plastic grocery bags happened 10, 15 or 20 years ago? Would we still be dealing with such a destructive and worrisome phenomenon today?

Another source, Zimbio, tells us that, while a vision of swirling plastic grocery bags and Dasani bottles might be what captivates our imaginations when we hear about this epic garbage current, it is in fact tiny pieces of man-made plastics called “microplastics” that are causing terrible complications in the earth’s largest ocean:

“From seabirds all the way to larval fish, microplastic enters the marine food chain and as it does, it releases a variety of polluting chemicals as part of the process of breaking down — this breakdown we have come to call ‘biodegradable’ but plastic doesn’t really ever disappear; it simply continues to separate into smaller and smaller components, releasing chemicals into the water and into the tissues of many ocean species, many of which end up on our dinner table.”

Would it have been possible to develop plant-based, truly biodegradable plastics if we saw such complications coming? Regardless of the answer, today we are saddled with the alarming process of countless microplastic pieces breaking off from larger manufactured products and affecting the natural habitat from start to finish. Oh, and it gets better (well… worse).

It turns out there are signs of a Great Atlantic Ocean Patch as well. National Geographic delivered the news that researchers at the Woods Hole-based Sea Education Association have found a floating garbage stew on their side of the States as well, which seems fair for all of our East Coast friends. That article informs us that, “The exact size of the patch is unknown but the plastic is likely gathering for the same reason the garbage is in the Pacific: Because of gyres, or rotating ocean currents that trap the waste.”

So, now the United States sits in the middle of the world’s two largest oceans, both of which are infected by unfathomable toxins and tiny plastic pieces that are poisoning our world’s marine life — a complicated situation that continually leaves us asking, “What if?” What if we had developed better plastics that are truly eco-friendly? What if we had better practices where recycling and consumerism weren’t the laws of the land? What if we had better policies that set the standard for sustainable urban and rural lifestyles years ago? Unfortunately, no one knows.

The invention of plastic made countless lives easier and revolutionized many, if not all, sectors of the world in the past century. While current complications may have caused finger pointing, I-told-you-sos and a perpetual revisit to the almighty “what if,” a fix-all solution seems out of sight.

But, not all is lost! There are always ways to mitigate such issues without giving up some of the conveniences plastics allow. The ever-popular cloth grocery bags are a major way to keep polyethylene out of our oceans. Additionally, it seems that scientists are looking for ways to create truly biodegradable plastic. And, lastly, let’s not forget the benefits of recycling! This means that we can truly and endlessly reuse a set amount of potentially harmful material without causing offensive complications to our natural habitat… and that writers at Rolling Stone can get back to covering the music industry.

It can be as simple as switching to Energy Star-rated CFLs, purchasing energy-efficient appliances, programming your thermostat or powering down your computer when you aren’t using it. There is always something you can do to consciously conserve energy and the EPA, which has teamed up with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Parent Teacher Organizations Today, wants to show you how.

The campaign aims to fight global warming starting at home. Energy Star estimates that if every U.S. household joined the cause, we could prevent enough greenhouse gases each year that are the equivalent to the carbon emissions of 18 million cars, proving that every little change does make a difference. To date, the campaign has involved more than 2.3 million participants making eco-conscious choices, which has saved 6.37 billion pounds of carbon emissions from our environment, and 3.98 kWh since 2005.

The “Change the World, Start with Energy Star” campaign includes a traveling multimedia tour of the Energy Star Exhibit House, which shows off energy-efficient practices to get children and families across the country excited about cutting their energy use — and costs. Cities on the tour list are Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston. You can also take an online room-by-room tour of the Energy Star home to learn how you can save energy in your home through small changes every day.

Some of those useful, energy-saving tips from Energy Star include:

• Programmable thermostat (cost savings: $180/year)
• Energy-efficient light bulbs (cost savings: $70/year)
• Energy Star-qualified heating and cooling appliances (cost savings: $200/year)
• Properly sealed leaks and insulation (cost savings: $200/year)

To learn more about the campaign and how you can take the pledge to fight against global warming, please visit here.