The Cool Effect 30-second public service announcement begins with our eyes on six snowmen, wearing green, blue, and red scarves, moving along in a queue. A pickup truck drives by them, tossing dust against the parched green field backdrop. In the next scene, two more snowmen travel left to right on a sidewalk in front of a small town diner’s picture window. Then a solitary snowman crosses through a sod field with a towering green barn ahead. In the final scene, a snowman melts into the grass of a fenced-in yard. A male voice narrates, “Their habitat is threatened. Their hope is dwindling. Our hearts are melting. Join the fight again warming temperatures.” The final image is an invitation to “See the film at Save Our Snowmen.org.”
Amusing? Yes. Cute? Uh huh. Kinda hits home about our need to take action against climate change? Oh, yeah.
The mockumentary is the latest product of Cool Effect, a community of individuals dedicated to saving the planet through projects that verifiably reduce carbon pollution in our atmosphere. Their belief is that small actions ignite planet-sized change; the video project is one in a long list of others that offers a platform to bring people together to support the world’s best carbon emission reduction projects and create a massive, cumulative effect toward cooling the earth. Here’s the full-length version of the PSA:
These projects are scientifically proven to reduce carbon, provide full transparency in pricing and product detail, and are 100% additional. “Additionality” means that every one of Cool Effect’s projects removes additional carbon from our atmosphere — that is, additional to what might have been done if the project had not been created. If a carbon removal project is a profitable venture without the added income from the sale of carbon credits, or can survive for any other reason — such as regulation, common practice, or government funding — it cannot be additional.
In other words, Cool Effect projects only exist because of the value created by consumer purchase of carbon credits.
There are over 10,000 projects around the world working to reduce global warming. Cool Effects calls its promise Carbon Done Correctly. It performs a deep analysis on both the scientific and business structure of projects that claim to remove carbon from the atmosphere. To decide what projects are worthy of being endorsed, the Cool Effect staff works with a team of climate scientists who analyze existing documentation and verification reports according to United Nations requirements. They want to make sure a project verifiably reduces greenhouse gases, and documentation of their findings is available on each project page.
The climate scientists conduct an initial review to verify the substantive public documentation each project must submit to meet its certification standard (Gold Standard Foundation, Verified Carbon Standard, Climate Action Reserve, among others). Then they conduct additional due diligence to verify that the issued credits could not have been produced without income from the sale of carbon and ensure full pricing, financial transparency, and sound management. Cool Effect follows up with site visits whenever possible or hires others to visit the projects in their place.
When you become part of Cool Effect, you can see clearly how your funding will be used and how it will impact the project and the planet. Transparency is very important at Cool Effect. 90.13% of the funds goes directly to their project partners. The remainder, 9.87%, is devoted to unavoidable credit card costs of 2-4%, the cost of the registry to retire the credit (where applicable), a research fee of 1.5%, and about 5% to cover a portion of the Cool Effect administration costs.
Cool Effect founders Dee and Richard Lawrence feel confident about sharing their passion for excellent emission reduction projects while making it easy for each and every one of us to participate in helping those projects reduce more CO2.