Ireland gets the 'Cool Planet' experience
Article by Darcy Lonergan (Dormitory Coordinator at Union of Students in Ireland, Ireland)
The summer is a time when we can reflect back on the year passed, and plan ahead for the future year. As part of this we decided to get our Irish SAVES 2 ambassadors to come along to a new and exciting immersive experience called the ‘Cool Planet Experience’ that recently opened in Dublin.
The ‘Cool Planet Experience’ is an interactive climate change experience. Their website describes it as a place ‘ were one gets to discover the science behind climate change and how we can help create a healthy future planet’. However, one of our Ambassadors, Colm, describes it as “the entire experience is dressed in a futuristic Star Trek like environment and pushes you to be the change you want to see”. The experience focuses on three main topics, food, waste and of course ENERGY! Obviously, the Irish SAVES 2 Ambassadors had to go experience it.
Our first task was to answer questions that showed us our Carbon Footprint; the questions were based on our travel, food, energy and consumption such as buying clothes etc. This would later be used to ask us to take individual pledges to help cut our carbon footprint. There were seven different interactive rooms. In one room we stepped into an interactive session of video games, which not only brought out our competitive side but also thought us ways to combat issues like energy wastage. From there we turned into TV game show contestants. Here we had to work as a team to answer the questions to win the ultimate prize ‘a bag of crickets!’. Did you know 2 billion people eat insects? Well, we do now!!
Finally, we went into the ‘Star Trek’’ like room in which we were shown what the future could look like if we made positive changes. It was here we were asked to make a series of pledges; could you cycle to work instead of getting the bus, could you eat vegetarian two days a week, could you recommend friends to be more energy sustainable in their homes. These pledges were not easy to make but you were informed of how many trees you were saving by making these changes. One Ambassador pledged to cut down on meat consumption, another pledged to cut down on flights. Of course we were already doing all the energy saving activities!
It was a great way to introduce our Ambassadors into some of the topics we would be tackling this year and they really enjoyed it. Here is what they said:
Aisling “The Cool Planet not only reminds us that change is needed but educates us how to enact that change while too allowing us to visualise the future outcomes of a more energy efficient and sustainable way of living”
Lorna “The Cool Planet Experience was a real eye-opening activity. One line at the beginning stuck with me "We do not inherit our planet from our parents, we borrow it from our children".
Did we mention we also got to make Bee homes? The homes were left in a local park to give some insects and bees a much needed home.Stay tuned to find out if we out if we got any tenants!
