But, there is a young boy who wants to save our planet – with a green hero. Jonathan Lee, 13, from Mississippi, is the creator of a character called "Go Green Man"; a character he hopes will help motivate other children to care about climate change. Jonathan is also a dedicated young environmentalist, helping to establish a new environmental group for youth around the world called ICEY: International Cooperation of Environmental Youth. Their slogan is "HOPE" - Helping Our Polluted Earth.
His idea for "Go Green Man" came after he watched a program on the science Channel about climate change, global warming and the melting of icecaps. Spurred into action he created his own web site, with the help of his father, Kyoung Lee, on 3 March 2007. In the first month, he got more than 53,000 hits. And now, having started his environmental activism at just 10 years of age, he already has three years experience at enlightening kids and even grown-ups on how important it is to protect the earth and to prevent it from being destroyed.
I created GoGreenMan because I wanted to capture Dr. Pollution
Jonathan has been working on many green projects since he launched the Go Green Man website. But it all started out with his creation of a storybook about a hero, a Green man, who is, quite simply, against pollution. While there have been many excellent program telling people about what is happening to the earth due to climate change, Jonathan felt that there were not many actively encouraging kids to be interested in the environment. He wants kids to have fun while learning about the environment, so his concept is one that opens up kid's minds to being green and caring for the environment.
The story has many interesting and colourful characters like Roger Recycler, Waste Woman, Professor Fusionstein (his great-grandfather was Ine Shtine), Dr Pollution, Pol' Tick Al and Gas Goon! Each with their own set of skills and tools, such as solar sun shields, wind energizers, and a recyclonator! There are also some pretty amazing inventions – a favourite is the Bubble E. Factory: the compressor pushes air inside a water tank (a long tube) and when the bubbles go up, they push many turbines on the way up generating electricity for Greenville (where the story is set). It's a backup power source for when they don't have sun or wind.
Success with Go Green Man has further inspired Jonathan – whenever he sees something causing pollution, he always tries to come up with more ideas to solve the problem and then shares these new ideas with other kids by visiting schools around the world and uploading his videos to the Go Green Man website.
ICEY HOPE (say it out loud)
ICEY was launched in response to the various projects that Jonathan was initiating. The inspiration is that it would be better if everyone works together to protect the earth. It is an international environmental group, officially started in the U.S. on 18 September 2009 that provides educational activities for children and youth around the world.
Some of the ICEY projects Jonathan is involved in:
Children's Forestry Project
Jonathan has been visiting many schools all over the world as well as in USA, and giving a presentation about this project: One child; one tree; each year. If this happens, he believes one billion trees can be planted in an effort to help stop global warming. It's all about sharing ideas and encouraging kids to protect the earth by planting trees.
"The most important thing is planting trees. Every time you plant a tree it sucks a lot of CO2 that cars emit and it gives us our oxygen that we breathe. That's the main thing that I'm focusing on. …I go school to school to tell them that we can plant trees together. So each child can plant one tree per year."
Fast food recycling campaign
There are more than 30,000 fast food restaurants in the US alone. Piles of garbage is coming out of fast food restaurants every day all over the world. Jonathan noticed that recycling options are needed in these restaurants. He recently campaigned for 7 days in a row with signs promoting recycling in fast food restaurants and demanding they serve healthy foods. He has also been sending letters to CEOs of every major fast food restaurant in the world.
What an inspiration! Not only he is doing great job for the world, but also he is a great model for the current generation. Because even though we know early education about the environment is very important, nobody has been focussing on kids that much – until now!
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Written by Yeolu (Lewis) Sung
Editing by Suze Chalmers
Image: (from left) Professor Fusionstein, GoGreenMan, Dr Pollution by Jonathan Lee - GoGreen Man
