Help SkyDay show world leaders how many of us care about climate and sky by posting your vision of the sky to Sky Day Project. Then work to help make a difference in your community and move culture forward.
Help a local species struggling with climate change
Climate change isn’t coming. It’s already here and already damaging the habitats of beautiful species near you. So this Sky Day contact your local US Fish and Wildlife Service or your local Nature Conservancy to find out which animals and plants are struggling in your area and how you can help. You’ll be helping all of us humans too because everything on planet earth is inter-connected.
Calling All Artists
It is the job of the artist to move culture forward and the job of the citizen artist to serve community by engaging people on the issues that matter the most. So use your talent, your vision, your creativity to engage your community on the crucial issues of climate change and ecological citizenship. For inspiration, listen to Umesh Bajagain (Nepal), Celia Berrell (Australia) and Dan Simpson (England) share their work for Sky Day on WBEZ Chicago’s Worldview.
How do we know it’s us
warming the world
(and not something else?)
An important question that deserves an honest answer. We now know a great deal about the ‘climate forcing agents’ that have changed earth’s climate in the distant past and are doing so now. Have your students study this interactive graph published in Bloomberg Businessweek. It uses findings from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to show how much different factors, natural and industrial, have contributed to global warming between 1880 and 2014. Then open things up for discussion. Did anything surprise anyone?
Talk to Family and Friends
Did you know that one of the best ways to help with climate change is just to talk to parents, friends and family about it? Are you curious about what they think? And why? What have they heard? Are they concerned? Share with them what you know and what your concerns are.
Our advice - be respectful and a good listener. Consider sharing what you learn with others. Did the conversation surprise you in any way?
Hold a Sky Concert
Unclouded Day, The New Trier Concert Choir
CO2, Jim and the Povolos
Nothing moves us like music. Use your talents - your voice - to reconnect us to our magnificent sky and celebrate the way it connects us all as one global family. You will have done your community a great service for we only protect the things we care about and only care about the things we are connected to.
Calculate your carbon footprint and offset your impact on the environment.
What's your carbon footprint? Add up the carbon emissions from your lifestyle choices, from the transportation you use, your diet and more using this new carbon footprint calculator from conservation .org. Then you will know the impact you are having on the environment and make smart choices, like offset your emissions by donating to worthy conservation efforts.
Host a Sky Show and help with climate change
This idea from teachers Diane and Stephanie. Their students saw the sky photos sent in to Sky Day Project by a school in Puerto Rico just before they were hit by Hurricane Maria. They wanted to help so they painted sky paintings, exhibited them and then sold them to family and friends to raise money for that school. To which we say - Bravo! Why not do something similar yourself and donate the funds you raise to a worthy climate helping cause like donating to a carbon offsetting charity? The sky’s the limit to what you can do to help!
Plant a Tree
(Better yet, plant two)
It sounds so simple doesn’t it? And maybe you’ve hear it before? But the fact remains, if you really want to help counter the effects of all that carbon dioxide in the air then plant a tree or two for Sky Day. Trees can remove as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Learn more.
Switch to a more
Climate Friendly Diet
Write a Poem and Share it
While a poem cannot scrub away the pollution in our atmosphere, no-one should underestimate the power of the written word. Sky-ku are inspired by haiku and are a beautiful way to express your thoughts and feelings about our amazing shared sky. Learn more
Take a Hike
We live increasingly disconnected from our environment. So leave the phone behind and re-connect to your planet and sky. And while you walk, notice how every day is a unique symphony of light and atmosphere unfolding right above our heads. Take some time to reflect on how much we rely on our thin atmosphere functioning naturally every day. Doesn’t it only stand to reason we should take care of it for each other?
Tell Your Story
A friend was driving to her father’s funeral through a very heavy rain storm with a very heavy heart. She remembers the clouds and the eerie darkness. It felt to her as if the sky grieved with her. And then, all of a sudden, there was a break in the clouds and she saw a magnificent rainbow. The sight of it filled her heart with a new sense of inner peace. It hadn’t replaced her grief, of course, but something had changed within her and she has never forgotten that moment.
Is there a time in your life when the sky has impacted you in a personal and memorable way? Let us know @skydayproject (Twitter, Instagram)
