GET READY!

A fitness dance class inspired by the science of climate impacts

What? A fitness dance video in a humanitarian website?

Here’s the story:

A recent report, entitled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability , offers  rigorous and very concerning scientific knowledge by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As you can see in our cartoon-infused summary, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre has distilled those findings into eight humanitarian insights from the latest IPCC report.

Our conclusion: We need to re-energize humanitarian work in a changing climate

How to get that re-energization started?  Creatively!!  

To help us all confront the deflating, exhausting threats of changing climate risks, we have partnered with choreographer A.J. O’Neill, filmmaker Nico Cassinelli, and volunteer dancers from around the world, to bring you this short and fun fitness dance video to accompany our other, more serious communication endeavors linking science to humanitarian work. 

Do you want to join in?

Please do, dance, get fit, and have serious fun!  Please be safe.

If you want, film yourself and upload everywhere. #ClimateFitnessDance

Through words, dance moves, and IPCC graphs, the core messages of this class are:

• “It’s gonna get TOO HOT”
• “Get Ready!”
• “Re-energize” 

The music becomes faster and faster to signal that we’ll have more intense work ahead, as the planet gets hotter. Will we be able to keep up?

Remember: The unprecedented is the new normal. Many different things will likely go wrong at once – including but not limited to climate shocks and stresses.

This is just the beginning of the era of consequences. We see that too many of our colleagues can’t keep up. Physical, cognitive, emotional and financial exhaustion are creeping into the day-to-day life of Red Cross and Red Crescent staff, volunteers and partners dealing with rising needs for disaster response, preparedness, risk reduction and so much more. It’s going to get too hot, too tough, too fast. So it’s time now to re-energize the humanitarian system, and become fit for the future. It’s time to get ready.