Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Climate Positive Design empowers designers, developers and municipalities of the exterior built environment to sequester more carbon than emitted through an app, challenge, and advocacy network. Its mission is to provide a significant contribution to the drawdown required to slow, stop, and reverse global warming. 

The initiative is grounded in four principles: leadership, education, empowerment, and collaboration. Learning how to reduce emissions and increase sequestration through live measurement and tracking creates a feedback loop that informs design and evolves practices. Information collected holistically informs setting new policies, education curriculum, communications and advocacy, contributing a lasting positive impacts on climate change.

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Climate Positive Design is a women-owned business and Pamela Conrad plays and active and prominent role in the architecture and engineering industry around climate change. Serving as a role-model, growing up on a farm in rural Missouri, and a first generation college graduate, Pamela is an inspiration to young girls growing up with limited resources, proving that they can have a voice and make a difference in climate change, no matter their socioeconomic background or gender. 

Due to Pamela‚ background, and belief in paying it forward to those that helped her along the way, she is committed to providing free, easy, and accessible tools, guidance and resources to all. By improving the barrier to entry into the complex conversation around carbon it is the goal of the initiative to influence the lives of as many people as possible around the world and inspire them to take action. 

Pamela believes that our youth is the key to solving the climate crisis. She has spoken at dozens of universities over the past year and has lined up dozens more for this spring. It is due to this open communication that 113 universities have used the Pathfinder app for studio projects as an educational resource over the past year. Climate Positive Design supports emerging professionals as research assistants and out of the 42 team members, 62% are women and 20% are people of color. 

Climate Positive Design supported the Youth Climate Strike in San Francisco in the fall of 2019 ‚ including the march and an advocacy native planting volunteer event to support a local non-profit, Literacy through Environmental Justice (LEJ). At the 2018 ASLA Student Climate Crisis Forum, Pamela served as a resource for the youth in navigating the climate conversation, which has now evolved into a practitioner and student Climate Action Committee. 

While Climate Positive Design strives to include as many voices as possible left underrepresented in the climate crisis, more can be done. It is through this proposal, and opportunity to take this project to the next level that Climate Positive Design will be able to extend its deep knowledge of community engagement into climate vulnerable populations such as those impacted by sea level rise or wildfire. The goal is that with additional support, this initiative can evolve and expand its impact beyond a conversation about carbon in the air and into the lives of everyday people.

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