LiveSmart BC Community Feature
Athletes Issue Climate Change Challenge
B.C. Olympian Dave Calder is an athlete, and as such, he’s competitive.
“Athletes thrive on competition,” explained Calder, “so we are using the launch of Project Blue Sky to challenge VANOC and other Olympic partners and participants to a ‘race’ to the finish line on our respective climate goals: in VANOC’s case a further 190,000 tonnes of carbon offsets for the Games and in Blue Sky’s case 1 billion kilometres of carbon reductions.”
Project Blue Sky uses the latest in online digital tools to motivate individuals and groups to take steps in their personal lives to fight climate change through increased physical activity and sustainable travel. One of the tools, a widget that logs human power kilometres, can be shared across other social networks and web applications, aggregating every participant’s contributions in one place. Participants can even log their kilometres here on LiveSmart BC.
The technology behind the project was developed by students in the Masters of Digital Media program at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver.
“You can cut your carbon emissions by cycling, walking, taking public transit or by coming up with other physically ingenious ways to save energy,” said Calder, a silver medallist (Rowing) and a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Council (COC) that has spearheaded development of the project.
Leading the race for the Project Blue Sky team are some well known Canadian athletes and Olympians including silver medallist Calder, Olympic gold medallist Beckie Scott (Cross-Country Skiing), Paralympic gold medallist Stephanie Dixon (Swimming), professional trials rider Ryan Leech, and Sam Whittingham, a local cyclist with a global reputation for bike design and a multiple world-record holder on a recumbent bike.
Calder and his fellow COC athletes believe the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games represent an important opportunity to encourage more people to take action on climate change as well as draw attention to carbon saving initiatives already underway.
Andrew Larstone, member of British Columbia’s Northeast Citizens' Conservation Council on Climate Action, expressed enthusiasm for the initiative.
"The seven regional Citizens' Conservation Councils on Climate Action are proud to support this challenge. It's a great way for citizens throughout our province to take local action to reduce their personal carbon footprint as a way of demonstrating their support for the climate change goal of the Games. ”
The project is supported by Offsetters Clean Technology Inc., the official carbon offset supplier to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee.
For more information, visit Project Blue Sky.
