Project: HOWL (Help Our World Live)
Summary:
We currently lack consensus for one trusted source of climate emergency information. This has caused a prominence of untrustworthy information, complacency, and fragmented individual response.
To solve this, the public needs a real-time alert system for updates including climate change indicators and policy activities. It would connect events and personal impact in a clear way - feeding a pulse of urgency.
Similar to alert systems like AMBER, subscribers would receive succinct, factual messages depicting various climate emergency related events as they happen. When appropriate, subscribers can receive opt-in calls to actions.
This alert system solution could deeply impact lives, informing and activating people around present and pending danger through clear, unbiased messaging. It can be scaled to forward both global and local updates giving easy access to any cell phone owner. In future crisis scenarios, the infrastructure for unified neutral communication would already be in place with this alert system.
Sustainable Development Goals:
Partnerships for the Goals
Climate Action
Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
Skills & Resources Needed:
The following represent skills we need to tackle our problem statement. They are not all necessarily full-time needs:
Product development/Human Centered Design/User Research partner
Business and Marketing expert
Help securing funding
Systems/Infrastructure Architect, esp. lo-fi systems, text message, cell broadcast, etc.
Possibly legal support to guide partnership, relationship with sources, responsibility to users
Post-Capsule Goals:
Incubator Program
Accelerator Program
University Partnership or Collaboration
Entrepreneurial Program
Launching Startup
Project Motivation:
It’s no secret to us that the issue of climate change is an urgent issue that has already had severe impacts on the health of our planet and life on it, and the future of life as we know it is in severe danger. The only way forward is to work with nature, rather than against it, and for all of us to make this change together.
It has become apparent that perhaps this type of viewpoint has not been widely presented and adopted. As millennials, we are tired of observing blatant destructive policies and practices kept under the radar, thereby keeping a wide public unaware of their impacts. We are tired of policy lagging behind. Complacency and these malpractices endanger our earth and harm natural ecosystems, systems in which we - humans - are a part of. Quarantine in the time of Covid-19 has given us a larger wakeup call to action. As we currently battle the global pandemic, we are reminded of what it takes to inspire widespread responses and we wanted to build something that enables these same principles to be applied so that all people face the realities of climate change.
As we see it, collective action starts by being informed, having a sense of urgency, and knowing clear, digestible steps forward that individuals can take. It has become apparent that individuals of all race, creed, ability, generation, place, and class deserve to get the information they deserve to know in order to take individual responsibility accordingly. Information can bring about agency. We want to give information and therefore tools for people to take matters into their own hands.
Team Members:
Danielle Erickson, Project Lead