We featured the Canary Project at EcoStreet a while ago. It’s a great project, using art to warn people about what’s happening to the earth. Their latest campaign “Increase your albedo” is a fashion-based campaign, all about making a statement against global warming.
To take part – wear white, and spread the word that everyone can do something about climate change. Wearing white – like Gandhi – will increase your own albedo. As Gandhi once famously said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
What is Albedo? Albedo is the scientific measure of reflectivity:
The higher the Earth’s albedo, the more solar radiation gets reflected. Reflecting the sun helps the Earth stay cool, just like wearing a white t-shirt on a hot day keeps you cooler than wearing a black one. Due to global warming, the highly reflective polar ice caps are melting rapidly into dark ocean water. This is creating one of many climate feedback loops that could soon reach a tipping point: the warmer it gets, the more ice and snow melt, decreasing albedo, making it even warmer, leading to more melting, etc. What effect will this have on our planet?
“A three-percent decrease [in albedo] would create a severe heating effect comparable to that
caused by a sixfold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, far greater than anything projected by
today’s climate models.”
— Scripps Institution of Oceanography, December 20, 20006