Siemans, Discovery Network and Educators believe they can.  How about you?

"A new environmental science competition for middle schoolers asks teams of 2-3 students, led by a teacher or mentor, to create sustainable, reproducible environmental improvements in their local communities.

Participants in the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge are encouraged to start right away.

Among the prizes for winning teams are $5,000 savings bonds, a "once-in-a-lifetime Discovery Adventure Trip" with a television personality, and an appearance on Discovery's Planet Green network.

Designed with low entry barriers, the Challenge provides the opportunity for students of all backgrounds and experiences to participate. Contest organizers recommend doing the projects over a 9-to-13-week period. Only 16 weeks, including the holiday season, remain before the March 15 deadline, so interested teams should start soon.

Competing teams will use a six-step scientific methodology: identification of issues, researching them, planning a solution, acting together to implement the plan, analyzing what was found, and sharing ways to replicate or expand the effort around the country.

The Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge is sponsored by The Siemens Foundation, Discovery Education, and the National Science Teachers Association."

Who will take the challenge?

Out of vegetable oil….

It sure doesn’t look that difficult.

Well, not too difficult.

Sort of….

http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/weeb/GrantProgram/GrantProgram.htm

Workers spray concrete on the walls of the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway, during the construction phase in August.

In announcing it would create a global seed bank on the Svalbard Islands,
Norway did not say exactly where but the archipelago includes a few
existing settlements like this one at Alesund

Have you ever wondered what would happen to the world's supply of seeds in case
of a global catastrophe? 

Something such as plant epidemics, natural disasters like flooding, the dreaded climate change, or war?

Are you aware of the  Svalbard Global Seed Vault  in Oslo, Norway? 

It is called the "Doomday Vault."

The vault is blasted into the permafrost of the Arctic, 300 miles from the mainland.  The temperature of the vault will be kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit.  It's like a safe-deposit box.  Each country owns what they deposit in the vault and can take it out at their own will 

The vault is due to open February 26, 2008.

"It's very satisfying to see the vault evolve from a bold concept to an impressive facility that has everything we need to protect crop biodiversity," said Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen.

Norway first proposed building what it called a "Noah's Ark" for the world's seeds in June 2005, and started construction a year later, blasting a nearly 400-foot (120-meter) tunnel into a frozen mountain and placing the vault for foil-wrapped seeds deep inside. Each sample holds about 500 seeds."


There already are about 14,000 seed banks in the world run by individual countries.  But some of these have already been wiped out, such as in the Philippines, destroyed by a typhoon, South Asia, destroyed by tsunami, or in Iraq (looters) and Afghanistan (by Taliban), destroyed by war.  The Svalbard vault is intended as a final backup for all other seed banks.  

"The vast collection is intended as a hedge against disaster so that food production can be restarted anywhere on the planet should it be threatened by a regional or global catastrophe."

Click on the icon below for information about the complete history of the Doomsday Vault, including frequently asked questions:

Were you aware we even had "seed banks" around the world? 

Do you think this is a cool idea?

Are you "unglued" when you realize the seed banks of some countries have already been destroyed and it took until 2008 to get a "Doomsday Vault?"  I mean, come on ....