Eco-website builds global following to fight climate change
Relevant offers
A Kiwi-inspired start-up company is building a global following of people keen to fight climate change.
Celsias.com has up to 300,000 regular users in 120 countries and its web traffic grew 65 per cent a month during its first 14 months of operation.
The website, whose founding directors include former Christchurch mayor Vicki Buck and environmental entrepreneur Nick Gerritsen, was launched in November 2006 as a blog, but was last week relaunched to encourage people to register actions against climate change.
It has also been named one of the world's top five eco-websites by The Times online newspaper in Britain.
Celsias chief executive Nick Lewis said the site now enabled people not only to read about global warming, but also to commit to doing something about it and then to take action.
"We have to change behaviour. Talking about it and reading about it is not enough."
Since the new site was launched the average number of pages viewed during each visit has more than doubled from 1.3 pages to 3.3 pages a visit.
Celsias was also making a renewed bid to get companies to register their green credentials. "If companies do not do their bit to reduce global warming our efforts will not amount to much."
Lewis said research showed companies were frustrated they could not shout about what they were doing for the climate because people were sceptical of their motives.
Celsias provided those businesses with an avenue to talk about their actions and have others comment on them. It would also help to increase the company's profile and could encourage eco-conscious staff to work for them, Lewis said.
Two multinational companies have signed up so far and another six are coming on stream. Lewis would like to have 12 in the next six months.
Getting companies on the site was how Celsias planned to generate an income because those businesses would pay a fee.
Celsias, which has had more than $500,000 invested in it, was expected to break even early next year. It employed four full-time staff in Wellington, but people often thought it was based in the United States.
A not-for-profit foundation would also be set up in the next six months to help fund projects registered on the site.
One hundred projects are registered, from saving the Wairau River in Marlborough to tree planting in Malaysia. One corporation had already committed funds to the foundation.
- © Fairfax NZ News
Sponsored links
Newest First
Oldest First
It is great to see so many more sensible people who know weather warms and cools on its own and has done for billions of years, without our input.
What does "fight climate change " mean anyway? It is an absurd emotional statement used to hide the fact that this scam has no basis in scientific fact.
Watch The Great Global Warming Swindle here: http://darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/05/great-global-warming-swindle.html then tell me the polar bears are running for cover.
What we should all be spending our time worrying about is how to make CO2 lighter. The existing CO2 is heavier than air and very water soluble, so 99.9999% of it goes straight into the ocean. This can make it difficult to present a convincing argument that it all rises to the top of the air to work as a glasshouse. If we can make CO2 lighter, we can fix this minor problem before the idiots who haven???t realized how serious this problem is wake up!
No wonder global warmign is such a big issue for business, after all, global issues have global marketing reach! Where's the website for tracking the remediation/mitigation of local environmental problems that won't get jumped on by big business?
http://virtuphill.blogspot.com/2008/06/local-local-local.html
What on earth is wrong with being environmentally aware? Who cares if the global warming hypothesis is real or not, anthopogenic or not: this is our only planet: let's look after it!
Man made global warming is a scam, yes the world has warmed, but only from 1970 to 2002 before that it cooled for ~35 years and before that it warmed for ~35 years. Currently we are in another cooling phase. The link between warming/cooling cycles has been made, and its the sun, plots of the length of sloar cycles versus temperature correspond very closely. The sun is dead at the moment, no sunspot activity, the last time this happened was before the Maunder minimum. During which the Thames river in England froze over. Websites like these are doing more harm than good, promoting Al Gore fiction.
Can't we just accept that global warming is a myth and was created to cause mass hysteria just like genetic modification. The 'Global warming' theory is to create a problem when there is not one.
Dear readers. The planet (according to the latest figures) is NOT heating up. In fact, for the last 10 years the temperature has steadily dropped, even as C02 levels have continued to escalate. I found a newspaper a few days ago. It was dated 1st of January, 2000. Can anyone out there stab a guess at what was dominating the headlines back then? Y2K. And we put up with years of media hype, scientific babble, spent millions of dollars and wasted countless hours, all for...a big fat NOTHING. Global warming, climate change, inconvenient this or that. In a few years, it will all be forgotten. Ho humm. What's new.
You all have it wrong. This has been the longest coldest winter on record since the last longest coldest winter on record which equals "global cooling".
Daren is right.
"Getting companies on the site was how Celsias planned to generate an income because those businesses would pay a fee."
Yup, its all about the environment. What a load of bollocks.
If a site like this didn't exist, companies would still make gestures of being green. Just because website tells you to do something doesn't drive corporate strategy.
Its pure marketing. Corporations spend all this money on planting a tree so people can't complain when they pump toxic waste into our water supply.
Fonterra being a classic example (8500 cumecs of waste PER SECOND into a river and the resource consent was renewed? WTF?)
Lively spends Valentine's with dad
World happier place than in 2007
Experience beats romantic gifts
Aniston reveals exercise, diet plan
Gardener's paradise planned for Chch
Celebrity chef puts skills up for auction
Hollywood couple rely on date nights
Your Valentine's Day dinner sorted
Reese plans Valentine's Day surprise
Search for missing Huntly teen scaled down
Man critically injured in Hauraki crash
Pop music star Whitney Houston dies
Gay pride parade may return to Auckland
Phoenix lose game and second place to Roar
Piri Weepu stakes his claim for No 10
Kiwis land big Aussie contract
Ryan Nelsen debuts in Tottenham win
England fight back to edge Italy in Six Nations
Suarez a 'disgrace to Liverpool' in loss to United
Police arrest five at Murdoch's Sun newspaper
Oceania, Fifa roles end in disgrace
Pop music star Whitney Houston dies
Wellington woman found safe in motel
Kiwis land big Aussie contract
Piri Weepu stakes his claim for No 10
Pop music star Whitney Houston dies
Facebook can alienate people further - study
Lydia Ko blitzes amateurs at Australian Open
Roll on 2050 - New Zealand economy to rise
Uzbek admits plot to kill Obama
Are you going on a New Year detox?
Related story: Booze-free month 'waste of time' - expert
im in 8th grade and well as much as i believe global warming is real with an economy like ours its only going to get worse