Climate Change Communication Spring 2022

Olivia London                   I want to be in bed, not pulling fleece over my legs on a hot Saturday morning in Florida and carrying a neon green sign that says, “Please talk to me.” Just getting out of my car feels like shoving my body through a brick wall. God forbid someone actually sees this sign and starts talking to me. I could have proposed almost anything for my climate communication final project. I suddenly regret not choosing something that entailed comfortably writing in a café.            Weeks ago, when I had more energy and optimism – and, let’s be honest, I’m not known for thinking things through in advance – it sounded like a great idea to dress up as a polar bear, walk around downtown St. Pete, and talk to people about the local relevance of climate change. I’d say, “It’s not just a far-away polar bear’s problem!” and highlight some of the positive impacts we could all look forw...

       For my culminating action and communication project I worked with the non profit organization   Sailing Ships Maine to create a climate change experiential education curriculum. The class will be taught to high school students on board the schooner Harvey Gamage. The programs will be about two months long and take place on the East Coast of the US with 20 students on board. This fully accredited semester, students will receive up to 15 high school credits from Falmouth High School. Having worked on the schooner for about a year and a half, I had a solid connection and was able to get the curriculum implemented into their semester programs.       The curriculum frames the key concepts of climate change including greenhouse gases, positive and negative feedback loops, fossil fuels, etc. Being out on the ocean, I wanted to focus especially on sea level rise and ocean acidification, so these two concepts are a large focus of the ...

       For my final project, I chose to create an educational website revolving around the topic of green infrastructure or living shorelines. This project idea actually evolved from my long-term fascination with coral reefs and was inspired by the work conducted in two exceptionally influential courses I've taken here at Eckerd Coastal hazards and Environmental communication. This website was a continuation of my project produced in environmental education. Due to this, I decided to include this article on my website under the tab of additional resources. These factors all played a contributing role in my creation of this website and have caused me to become personally invested in advocating for the future of green infrastructure being at the forefront of coastal management efforts.  Creating a website was a creative choice I decided to endorse as it was an entirely foreign form of communication that I had never attempted before. I liked the idea of being able ...

  The City of St. Pete's Logo.   Our Idea - Solar Energy Meets Local Business in St. Pete By Anna Lynn Heine & Kelli Alford For our Culminating Action project, we sought to push renewable energy so that it will be a physical reality for businesses of St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg signed an agreement in 2016 to pursue 100% renewable energy by 2016, but last November, this goal was pushed back until 2050 (Newborn 2021). By pushing this deadline back we are noticing that the City is not progressing at the speed necessary to inhibit the effects of climate change. This lack of action is particularly visible in the commercial sectors of St. Petersburg. Florida is known as the Sunshine State, and with St. Petersburg branding themselves as the Sunshine City, solar energy is the most sought after source of renewable energy in this region. Solar Energy within the private sector has proven to be a challenge with energy companies having a hold on costs and incentives, yet there are...

          For my cumulating action final project, I decided to create a short story for children about renewable energy. The goal of this story was to show kids that renewable energy is cool and great for the environment! This story is about a boy named Timmy and his mom who travel across the country to look at examples of renewable energy like solar panels and off shore wind farms. This was written with the intention to be read to elementary school children, but I'm confident that any age would enjoy this story. The story had to be complex enough to show why renewable energy is better than using fossil fuels and how renewable energy works, yet simple enough for kids to comprehend. This story was not meant to scare children into thinking the world is going to end because we won't stop using fossil fuels. I wanted kids to feel excited about solar and wind energy and feel hopeful for their future after hearing this story.  I was fortunate enough to be able to...

  By: Isabelle Santoro and Haleigh Rogers      For our Climate Change Communication piece, we wanted to look directly at our College Campus and find ways in which we could make a direct impact. Initially, we were interested in the sea level rise plans for the future of Eckerd College, but we quickly concluded that the project was way bigger than we could do in our timeline. Thus, we decided to look into ways we can decrease our carbon footprint on campus.      We adopted the Meatless Monday campaign; founded by SId Lerner in 2003. Meatless Monday is a movement that is practiced all over the globe. It’s an encouragement for people to reduce meat in their diet for personal health benefits as well as plant health. By participating in Meatless Monday, an average meal without meat saves approximately 8llbs of carbon emissions. We wanted to implement these practices on Eckerd’s campus taking into account the number of people on campus, along with the d...

Original Plans  Our group project was originally writing a template letter to Governor DeSantis regarding the HB 741 Net Metering bill. Our goal of the original letter was to convince the governor to veto the bill so that it would not become a law.  Ellie Shea wrote the original project proposal as an independent project. However, Noah Kudish, Paige Knotts, and Abby Parker needed a project. Ellie Shea rewrote the project proposal and adjusted the project schedule, with minor edits from the other group members. This pushed our original schedule back a week.  Research on the bill was done by all group members. Ellie Shea emailed Dan Xie for additional information on the bill. Dan Xie is the PIRG Political Director, and gave a guest lecture in our Climate Change Communication Class which mentioned the bill, and gave Ellie the original idea for the project. In our research, we found a lot of information that we wanted to share with the public. This net metering bill was remov...