The organization “3 fürs Klima” pledges to convince one million people to participate in saving a total of one million tons of CO2 until the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.  Together with Compensators, the first symbolic climate pin was placed on the map at Berlin Central Station during the presentation of the campaign on September 16, 2020.

The Climate Bet starts

The supposedly largest climate bet around the world has been launched by the organization “3 fürs Klima” on September 16, 2020. Co-founder and speaker Dr. Michael Bilharz  explained that “Climate change action must not be postponed and can even be very effective from home”. Although the next UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow has been postponed until November 2021, he declared there would be no reason to wait. Correspondingly, the leading slogan of the Climate Bet reads “We’ll just do it now”. 

The campaign aims to convince one million people to save at least one ton of CO2. Individual actions like donations to climate protection projects and further personal measures should accumulate into a powerful movement for more ambitious climate change mitigation. Compensators is one of six selected climate protection projects, but the only one that counteracts CO2 emissions within Europe. 

A three-day train ride from Dessau to Paris marked the launch of the campaign, honoring the pledge of the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris. The campaign team stopped in 12 cities along the way to present the campaign, symbolically “planting” a climate pin in each place and canvassing for further participants. 

Ambitious climate protection requires ambitious targets

The initiators are aware of the ambitious character of their bet. However, the dynamic of exponential growth, of which we took rather negative notice during the COVID pandemic, should work in favour of the Climate Bet this time around. “If each participant convinces only two other friends, who in turn convince two friends and so on, we reach one million for better climate protection within only a few months”, explains Sandrine Hinrichs, psychologist and speaker of the organization. “If the climate movement managed to mobilize more than a million people on a single day in Germany last September, we can surely convince one millioen people to make a small, but meaningful contribution to climate protection”, she asserts. 

The Climate Bet can count on the support of prominence, having Prof. Dirk Messner, president of the German Federal Environmental Agency, as patron of the campaign. In addition, an advisory board including seven experienced sustainability experts supports the campaign not only in technical aspects, but also supervises the effective use of all donations in a fiduciary capacity. Beyond Compensators, The Climate Bet works together with other well-known compensation suppliers, green energy providers and sustainable banks. 

About the Climate Bet

The Climate Bet is carried out by the organization “3 fürs Klima”, which motivates and supports people to already reach the Paris Agreement on an individual level today. Members of the association pledge for a climate-neutral lifestyle and realize this goal through the implementation of the “climate traid”: a) reducing their own CO2 emissions, b) compensating the the remaining emissions and finally c) motivating others to join the movement toward a climate-neutral society, thereby increasing their personal handprint. The organization was founded by a group of committed sustainability experts across Germany, including Dr. Michael Bilharz, who is responsible for the CO2-calculator of the German Federal Environmental Agency. This online tool was used more than a million times last year.