Muse Video is proud to present an animated video project 5 months in the making, The Wake Up Call: Time to ACT on Climate Change.
Our MetWest High School student interns have been hard at work designing scenes and character sketches for the piece and bringing them to life through animation.
We hope that this project will be eye-opening for other young people and inspire them to act on this critical issue. Check out our video below:
In our video, we give ways to decrease your carbon footprint, but it is also important to join the social movement and learn about other things that you can do to help save the planet!
There are a lot of ways to get involved and there are plenty of organizations that are doing great things here in the Bay Area. Here are some groups that inspire us:
Alliance for Climate Education
“ACE is the national leader in high school climate science education.
We’re an award-winning national nonprofit dedicated to educating America’s high school students about the science behind climate change and inspiring them to do something about it—while having fun along the way. We’re based in Oakland, California, with educator teams in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Atlanta, New England, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.” – ACE
From the beginning of this project, ACE and their amazing multimedia presentation have been a huge inspiration for us. We had ACE presenter Ashel Eldridge come to MetWest High School to educate us and our classmates about climate change. Their work inspired us to act and make our own video on the issue. Go to their website and tell your teachers and principals that you want to bring ACE to your school! The first step to creating change is to educate the people around us on the issue.
http://www.acespace.org/teachers/book
+350.org
350 plays a key role in organizing what’s quickly becoming the biggest social movement in a generation, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world. One of the biggest campaigns going on right now is the fight to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline from being completed, which would be a huge blow for reducing our climate emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels. Go to their website NOW to sign their pledge and support the campaign against Keystone XL.
http://act.350.org/letter/a_million_strong_against_keystone/
Global Footprint Network
Another local organization here in the Bay Area, GFN has a great online game where you can find out your own carbon footprint. Check it out!
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/
Facts to Think About
If we want to change the world, first we have to know where we’re at and just how dire the situation is. Here are some facts to keep in mind:
- The Earth should be nearing the bottom of a several-thousand year cool-off. Instead, temperatures are rising rapidly, at unprecedented rates.
- Scientists have shown that this global warming is directly linked to human activity. In the past century, humans have started to burn massive amounts of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas, releasing carbon doxide and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
-The climate change that results from all those greenhouse gases don’t just make things hotter– it causes the entire weather system to go haywire, making droughts and floods worse, storms like Superstorm Sandy to get more intense, and causes a huge loss of life for humans, animals and entire ecosystems.
-Montana’s Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later. All this melting ice is happening all over the world, and will cause sea levels across the entire world to rise, wiping out coastal cities and ecosystems.
- The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
-The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Sea level increases up to 59 cm. According to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report between 2000 and 2004, average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average.
-Highly sensitive coral reefs around the world have been suffering from climate change too, bleaching and dying off in response to the stress from water temperature changes. These situations will increase drastically in the next 50 years as the sea temperatures rise.
So what do we do?
Share this video and website with your friends, educate the people around you and join the already huge movement to reverse our path and end our reliance on fossil fuels!
