Team Marine

This Tuesday April 16, Team Marine captains Angelina, Edie and Ivan won 4^th place out of 24 entries in the senior division of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the California State Science Fair for their bag ban research project. The research focused on the consumer bag choices and how they were affected by the plastic bag ban and the age and gender of the patrons.

The Fair was held at the California Science Center, home to many great exhibitions, including a kelp forest, an exercise bike that shows light bulb energy efficiency and the Endeavour space shuttle! They got to check out these great exhibitions the day before, when they registered their project.

A revised version of the report will be published on our website soon. We are also conducting another month of observations this April (a year and seven months after the ban) and we plan on doing more surveys this coming September, two years after the ban.

Thank you again to Dr. Lisette Gold and Dr. Thomas Belin for their guidance on the project!

UPDATE: brianlouxpro at the Water Main blog has done a post on our research. Thank you!

http://thewatermain.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/santa-monica-high-school-does-environmental-econometrics-like-the-pros/

Last Sunday, Febrauary 17, Team Marine attended the “Forward on Climate” rally in downtown LA along with staff from the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), who organized the student coalition.  The team and several Marine Biology students joined over 1000 people in a march to City Hall to encourage President Obama to stop the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and move the United States away from polluting fossil fuels. We also got to meet actors Ed Begley, Jr. and Orlando Bloom as well as hear talks from Congressman Henry Waxman and NASA/JPL climate scientist, Josh Fischer, among others. As a bonus, team captain Edie was interviewed by FOX News and appeared on the 5pm news!

On Sunday January 20, 2013 Team Marine visited the Santa Monica library to view a screening of the movie “What is the Electric Car”. The movie highlighted consumer reluctance and opinion when real people were asked whether or not they would buy an electric car. The film then refuted the most common misconceptions associated with electric cars, such as cost and durability. It presented factual information in a way that kept the audience engaged and educated them at the same time. There was a variety of scientific research, consumer opinion, interviews from numerous car experts, celebrity eco-advocacy, real life accomplishments, and a fictional storyline which tied the film together and made it interesting. Overall, it was an educational and eye opening film that successfully teaches audiences about what an electric car really is and how it works.

By Candace Narvaez