Calling all young environmentalists! Beyond Green: Waking the Frog wants you!

Calling all young environmentalists! Beyond Green: Waking the Frog wants you!

Does dinner with your climate-denying uncle leave you speechless with frustration? Ever yelled at the television when pundits decry climate change as a scam, or shake the paper when journalists dismiss calls for action?

If you’re concerned about climate disruption and want to learn how to make the business case for implementing solutions to people of influence in your community, then we have just the thing for you!

Check out Waking the Frog, a new youth climate initiative driven by MaRS Cleantech, Studio Y and Earth Day Canada’s Beyond Green program that provides you with the tools you need to make your case and demand action on climate disruption.

Based on the subject of my latest book, Waking the Frog: Solutions to our Climate Change Paralysis, the initiative brings the book’s core ideas to life—not just on the web, but in the minds and actions of young environmental leaders like you, right across Canada. It covers a lot of material that young people sometimes find a bit daunting: economics, finance, technology and psychology.

Here’s how it works.

First: We’ll make you fluent in climate speak

From the climate basics to the more technical details of economics, you’ll learn everything you need to make your case for change through a series of four free webinars:

  1. The psychology of climate denial—why is it so difficult for so many people to accept what’s happening?
  2. How markets work—can a free market economy solve this problem? If not, what’s the best way to use the market?
  3. Climate-based economic models—how do we decide how much we should spend to solve the problem? Why do so many people seem to think it’ll cost too much to even try?
  4. How do we choose a clean energy future? Can clean energy really keep the lights on and the factories humming?

It’s not as hard as you think to grasp these ideas! Soon you’ll be talking discount rates, carbon pricing and smart grids with leaders in your own community.

Next up: The real fun begins!

After you’ve finished the webinars and have the lingo down, we challenge you to take it to the next level: book a meeting with a person of influence in your community on or around Earth Day (which takes place on April 22) to share both your new-found knowledge and your business case for acting on climate disruption today (we’ll even give you free copies of Waking the Frog to share with your person of influence when you’ve booked your first meeting).

We need your brains

At MaRS Cleantech, we work with amazing entrepreneurs who are bringing lots of great technologies to market: next-generation solar panels, energy storage innovations, smart-grid analytics and biofuels. But that’s only one piece of our climate solution—the technical piece.

A real climate solution takes more than just technology—it needs smart, empowered young people to make the case for action. It needs you.

Register for Beyond Green’s Waking the Frog campaign today. The first webinar is on January 28!

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