Well, your webmaster was out of the country for a few weeks, but now I'm back and I will be updating you on a few of the activities that occurred while I was gone, as well as upcoming events - and the planning needs going forward to ensure we meet our Bay Area Cool goals!
Our October 24 350.org Event
On October 24, which was an International Day of Action on climate change driven by the organization, Bay Area Cool and the Menlo Park Green Ribbon Citizens' Committee held a small event to kick off the Cool Roofs program, and to celebrate the first of 35 targeted new “cool roofs” in greater Menlo Park.
The "First" cool roof residence in Menlo Park, and site of our Kickoff Event
The location, a house in West Menlo Park (at right), recently had its roof converted from a traditional asphalt shingle roof – the kind that contributes to global warming – to a “cool roof,” which helps to mitigate global warming. The roof conversion of this single house is expected to have a global-warming prevention effect equivalent to eliminating the yearly greenhouse gas emissions of two to three cars. We want to acknowledge and express our gratitude to Alex Cannara for driving not only the painting of this roof, but the cool roofs concept itself.
The Raging Grannies ensured everyone had a great time!
More than 20 people were there, including a number of GRCC cool team members and about 6-7 Raging Grannies, singing songs with 350 & cool-roof themes. The roof painter, Rony Cifuentes, and his family were there, too. A couple of people (including one Grannie) expressed interest in having cool roofs on their own houses.
Some of the crowd may have been due to the article in the Menlo Park Almanac on Friday, October 23 entitled . Thanks to Mitch Slomiak for working with report Sean Howell to get this published!
Our Cool Roofs T-shirt design
As part of the Cool Roof program, we had some T-shirts and lawn signs designed to capture both the "350" concept (the need to get CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere down below 350 parts-per-million) and the "cool roofs" concept. (Thanks very much to Judy Horst for the quick turnaround on these designs!)
The Cool Roof lawn sign design
For those of you interested in helping to publicize the campaign (more on that in a future post) we have some 350 & Cool Roof promotional items: Cool Roof bumper stickers and small stickers that can be put on shirts, notebooks, etc.; yard or window signs for houses and businesses that have cool roofs; and 350-or-else T-shirts and a tote bag. Contact us (use the link at the top of the page) if you're interested.
Finally, I want to thank Kate Forrest for stepping in and doing a ton of organization to make sure this event happened, that people showed up, and that the story was told! And of course the usual MPGRCC suspects - Mitch Slomiak, Carol McClelland, and Christine Hertzog were also invaluable.