By USDR
The Environmental Protection Agency is co-sponsoring a “climate change video contest” that asks students, ages 11-14:” Why do you care about climate change?” And: “How are you reducing carbon pollution or preparing for the impacts of climate change?”
Students are advised to “be cool” and “be creative” in explaining “how climate change affects you, your family, friends, and community, now or in the future” — and what they are doing to “prepare for a changing climate.”
The Obama administration frequently uses video contests or “challenges” to advance its liberal viewpoint on a variety of issues, and this is no exception.
The climate-change videos may be up to two minutes long, and the top three winning entries will get prizes that can only be described as environmentally correct:
The first-place winner gets a solar-paneled backpack, which charges electronic devices; the second place prize is a “pulse jump rope” that generates enough energy to charge cell phones; and the third place prize is a “Soccket Soccer Ball,” which turns kinetic energy from play into electrical energy that can be used to power small devices.
The prizes were selected and purchased by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), which is co-sponsoring the video contest with the EPA.
NEEF says students should read its “facts” on climate change before getting started on their videos.
Those “facts” include the following statements:
— The signs of climate change are all around us (higher temperatures, wilder weather, rising sea level, more droughts, changing rain and snow patterns).
— The climate you will inherit as adults will be different from your parents’ and grandparents’ climate.
— Reducing carbon pollution, and preparing for the changes that are already underway, is key to solving climate change and reducing the risks we face in the future.
— A major way carbon pollution gets into the atmosphere is when people burn coal, oil, and natural gas for energy.
The tip page also recommends “small actions” students can take to reduce carbon pollution; “[W]alking to school, smart energy use, and smart water use, can add up to big reductions in carbon pollution over time,” it says.
Students are invited to determine their carbon footprint using NEEF’s online calculator. And, in a possible prelude to future activism, they’re urged to consider if their communities, cities, or states are taking action to reduce carbon pollution.
In a “note for teachers,” NEEF says, “This video contest would make a great project for your middle-school class.”
The National Environmental Education Foundation was chartered by Congress in 1990 to advance environmental knowledge. It describes itself as a “complementary organization” to the EPA, which leverages private support for EPA’s mission.
In the past five years, the Obama administration has sponsored dozens of contests and challenges.
One of the very first contests was sponsored by the Education Department, which asked students to submit a video titled, “I Am What I Learn.”
More recently, the Department of Health & Human Services co-sponsored a “Healthy Young America” video contest, described as an effort to mobilize young people to help educate and inform one another about the Affordable Care Act.
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