In a compelling new animated video released today, Climate Resolve, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit focused on climate solutions, has teamed up with science educator Bill Nye to shed light on an underutilized but powerful strategy to combat climate change: cool surfaces
The short explainer video highlights the global benefits of deploying cool surfaces––think reflective roofs, walls and pavements––to improve the Earth’s energy imbalance and offset global warming. Nye, who popularized science education through his landmark television show, “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” narrates the video with his trademark enthusiasm.
Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director of Climate Resolve, said the video makes complex climate science accessible and actionable. “We’ve known for a long time that cool surfaces are a cost-effective climate solution,” Parfrey said. “Bill Nye makes the solution comprehensible.”
Through colorful, engaging animation, the video illustrates how global warming occurs when more of the sun’s energy enters Earth’s system than exits, unbalancing Earth’s energy budget. Dark surfaces––like asphalt streets and tar roofs––convert sunlight into heat, worsening both local temperatures and the planet’s energy balance. In contrast, cool surfaces with higher reflectance––or albedo––reflect more sunlight back into space, cooling cities and reducing the amount of heat reradiated from the atmosphere back to Earth.
The video describes the immense unlocked potential of cool surfaces to fight climate change. “If we replaced 80% of roofs and pavements in U.S. cities with cool materials,” Nye narrates in the video, “it would offset the global warming produced by up to 12 years of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
The video is available to watch at climateresolve.org/shine-on-initiative and across the organization’s social media channels.
