EPIC & Energy Star: It’s time for Heroes in the Fight against Climate Change

Tweet
Share

Ironman, The Avengers, how about Mary Katherine or maybe you and your kids…who are our real heroes today, and who is going to save the world?

As summer approaches and we look forward to enjoying family activities like camping, hiking, walks on the beach, fishing, swimming and biking – all of which nature helps make more magnificent – our families are also confront by new and daunting challenges that nature is angrily throwing our way: extreme weather, floods, droughts, forest fires, allergies on “steroids,” and super storms. What’s making these weather events worse and how can we “fight back” against these new challenges? Where and who are the heroes that will help us?

At ClimateMama we try to help you “connect the dots” between what we are doing that exacerbates weather events and accelerates climate change – things like the way we produce our energy and food and the burning of fossil fuels – and learn to create positive actions that we each can take as individuals, as a family, collectively and as a community to change our current course and bring runaway climate change under control. We need to learn to live and adapt to changes we have already put in motion, but at the same time mitigate the causes and move towards solutions that help us veer from the climate cliff in front of us. How can we, as Ghandi so eloquently stated, “BE the change we wish to see in the world?”

One easy and fun way this summer is to join us and our friends at The Big Green Purse who have teamed up with PTO Today, LG Electronics USA, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program to promote Team ENERGY STAR, an exciting initiative developed to engage and educate American kids and their families about saving energy in the home. Team ENERGY STAR empowers kids to help protect the climate through easy-to-implement, money-saving actions and provides them an outlet for sharing their passion for preserving our environment.

This year ENERGY STAR has brought in some heroic characters from the new movie EPIC to help out. EPIC is a 3D adventure comedy that reveals a fantastical world unlike any other to help kids learn about the importance of saving energy while having fun at the same time. And in case you were wondering, Mary Katherine, or MK is the heroine in EPIC.

In the movie, MK finds herself magically transported into this secret universe where she teams up with an elite band of warriors and a crew of comical, larger-than-life figures, to save their world…and ours. From the creators of ICE AGE and RIO, EPIC tells the story of an ongoing battle between the forces of good, which keep the natural world alive, and the forces of evil, which wish to destroy it. Energy Star is hoping that your kids (and you) will relate to some of the characters in this band of heroes, and that like them, your kids will see that EACH of us do matter and CAN make a difference in our world. So grab the kid in your life and join the Energy Star team today.

Being part of the team involves the following 4 simple steps:

• Taking action to reduce your energy use at home
• Helping your family and friends save energy
• Encouraging your family and friends to take the ENERGY STAR Pledge
• Inspiring others by sharing your story

Help your kids join Team ENERGY STAR where they will get easy-to-download educational and interactive materials, such as a comprehensive Action Kit with the ENERGY STAR Home Check-Up, an EPIC-themed activity booklet, and a Professor Bomba’s Binoculars kit to help kids see the world in a whole new way. Kids are also encouraged to come back and share their stories about protecting the environment by saving energy to inspire others.

Participants even have a chance to win cool prizes. Stories will be showcased on ENERGY STAR’s social media pages and the top stories will be featured on LG’s electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square. So grab the kids in your life and have them join in!

I don’t know about you, but I OFTEN feel that I am fighting this EPIC battle right here in the “real world” of the United States of America. As I learn more and more about extreme forms of fossil fuel extraction, I feel it is “my job” as a mother to speak out, act out, and if necessary take the battle to extremes in order to help people wake up and see that we all need to be part of the solution as we work to protect our natural world. Sadly, there are many, many active forces of evil, trying to keep us addicted to fossil fuels and from veering off of the path in front of us which is leading towards the climate cliff. We need to be surging forward, towards a new path, one that is energy efficient and paved with clean, renewable energy!

Help your kids lead the way as they become our heroes of today and tomorrow…

It’s Do Something Wednesday, so DO SOMETHING: grab the kids in your life and Join the Energy Star Team Today!

Yours,

Climate Mama

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am writing about Team ENERGY STAR because I support the program and because I believe it is important to educate the public about energy efficiency and climate change. I have received a modest “thank you” reward from LG, an ENERGY STAR partner, in appreciation for my post. That gift in no way influenced my belief that saving energy is important and necessary.