Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

CARL solves two problems. First, businesses need time to transform and decarbonize. They are focused on top-down change, which requires planning, benchmarking, and goal-setting before any action is taken. Second, the majority of Americans are concerned about climate, but the advice for climate action is focused on political and consumer activities. There isn‚ t much advice for how to engage at work, where Americans spend a lot of their time. CARL will empower workers to use their roles and influence to reduce the environmental footprint of their day-to-day jobs. This will change businesses and industries from the bottom up, and help accelerate the economic transformation that we need. 

This project developed from knowledge-sharing conversations between CAT, 350BA, and other climate organizations. Both CAT and 350BA have separately created climate action guides for collective corporate action in the past. We both saw that there was a gap for individual action at work. With CAT's experience in functional climate action and community-building, and 350BA's experience in corporate climate action and reach across different industries, we joined forces to build CARL. We have been in conversation since early 2021. We spent many months brainstorming different approaches to the content and getting feedback from other climate groups. We officially defined the project during Columbia University‚ Hacking for Humanity, a weekend hackathon from September 10-12, 2021.

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CARL‚ content and community are focused on empowering workers of all types: from retail to education to healthcare workers. Corporate climate action guides are often speaking to executives and decision-makers. When they do address workers, they assume the reader is in a position to organize collective action, which can put the worker‚ employment at risk. CARL‚ climate action guides are for the average worker, supervisor and manager. 

The guides are created in partnership with workers. First, we provide tools for workers to evaluate the environmental impact of their jobs, find their levers of influence, and create a plan to take action. We then listen to and map out their experiences and ideas. We prioritize them together, to select situationally-relevant actions that can be implemented without putting their jobs at risk. The guides are then published, and we give credit to all content contributors. We also amplify their successes and innovations with their permission.

All races, genders, ethnicities and classes are welcome to participate in CARL. We will audit our community and content to make sure that traditionally underrepresented identities are included. 

We provide access to our resources and community to anyone who is able to access a website, free-of-charge. This creates a level platform for providing information to anyone who is interested in taking climate action, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, age, gender, or location. With additional funding, we will be able to meet higher accessibility and privacy standards.

The content on CARL is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0, which allows others to share and adapt the material so long as they give appropriate credit and distribute under the same license. Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to take climate action. We do not want to hinder climate solutions with paywalls or copyright restrictions.

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