Michael Greenberg - Live at Town Hall on August 29th at 4:30 p.m.

New Canaan Advertiser Thursday, August 16th, 2007 Page 2A

Rally at Town Hall August 29th
Environmental Group to hold concert

The New Canaan Environmental Group is hosting an end-of-summer
concert and "clear skies" and "clean energy" rally on the steps of Town
Hall, 77 Main Street, at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday August 29th.

Michael Greenberg, a budding singer-songwriter, guitarist and
performing artist from East Haven, Connecticut will be making his second
appearance in New Canaan. Michael Greenberg previously performed at the New
Canaan Library at the Step It Up rally.

More information on Mr. Greenberg can be found at www.michaelgreenbergmusic.com.

Joining him on the steps of Town Hall will be two speakers.

Michael G. Kroposki of Ridgefield will alert the public as to the
inadequacies of the FAA Airspace Redesign Final EIS, with regard to noise,
safety and air quality impacts of the proposed increased flights over
New Canaan and neighboring communities. Mr. Kroposki is a graduate of
Brooklyn Law School and holds an advanced degree (LLM) from New York
University. He is a retired patent attorney.

?It has come to the attention of the Environmental Group that the FAA
has released its Airspace Redesign Final Environmental Impact Statement
without a venue for public comment with legal standing even though
substantive new material and revisions to the Draft Environmental Impact
Statement appear in the Final EIS. The FAA?s release of the Final EIS of
the Airspace Redesign without public comment appears to contravene the
intent of National Environmental Policy Act to encourage public
comment on the impacts of proposed projects. Furthermore, this action breaks
previous precedent set by the FAA when it held public hearings after
the completion of the Juneau, Alaska Final EIS. It is important to
bring these matters to light so that the public may pressure Federal and
State elected officials to open this process again. That way the public
can properly vet the adverse impacts that airspace redesign has on New
Canaan and lower Fairfield County,? said Richard Stowe, president of the
New Canaan Environmental Group

Bob Wall, of Fairfield, will speak about Clean Energy in Connecticut
and New Canaan. He will explain the "20 percent by 2010 campaign" and the
benefits New Canaan will accrue by joining that campaign. Neighboring
communities that have signed onto the campaign include Westport,
Weston, Stamford, Fairfield, and Ridgefield.

Shawn is fit - She even cuts her lawn with a push mower

Hartford Courant Sunday August 19, 2007 Page C4

A New Spin On An Old Standby
Pedal Power A Practical - And Fun - Alternative To Petroleum-Based Travel

By RICHARD STOWE

We now know that our seemingly insatiable appetite for petroleum is taking us down a dangerous road, one that leads to biodiversity collapse, climate change and geopolitical instability.

The solution often put forward to reduce petroleum use - increase the use of bio-fuels - comes with its own set of problems. A doubling of corn prices in the past year probably is related to an increasingly larger share of corn production diverted to making ethanol. Indonesia's push to use palm oil for bio-fuel could decimate habitat critical to Sumatran tigers, Asian elephants and other important species.

Here is the quintessential opportunity to think globally and act locally. We can lessen the threat to our food supply and animal habitats if we will just use our own bodies a little more. We should follow Shawn Liprie's example.

I bumped into Shawn recently at the Westport Farmers Market. A Westport resident and single mom with three children, she rolled up with a BOB trailer (http://www.bobtrailers.com/) - which carries up to 50 pounds - attached to her bicycle.

Shawn is fit - she plays quarterback in a women's football league, plays golf and tennis and kayaks. She even cuts her lawn with a manual push mower. A proud mother, she let me know that a Staples High School graduation ceremony photo of her daughter, Amber Coutermash, had just appeared on the front page of a Westport newspaper.

The trailer, she explained, enables her to shop at grocery stores or carry out many other errands by bicycle. That day, aside from going to the farmers market, she would bike to Fed Ex, the bank, a golf course to sign up for tee times and to a football game. Shawn even hopes to find or design a trailer to carry her kayak down to Long Island Sound by bicycle.

She said she started using the bike trailer for environmental reasons as well as fun and exercise. "I wish more people would try it and see how easy it is. Even my push mower for my lawn is fun and I don't have the hassles of oil, gas and mechanical breakdowns," she reports.

Shawn's car mostly sits in her driveway. That's quite a feat in Westport, the heart of the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury sprawlopolis, which ranked No.7 out of the 10 worst cases of urban sprawl in a 2002 report released by Smart Growth America, Rutgers University and Cornell University.

Another option for hauling goods by bicycle are the gonzo California-designed, Taiwan-built Xtracycle (http://www.xtracycle.com) Sport Utility Bicycle, which extends your conventional bicycle by 15 inches (frame extender, rack and panniers add only nine pounds to an existing bicycle, but enables cyclists to carry up to an extra 150 pounds and that may include a passenger). Another still is the made-in-Iowa Bikes at Work (http://www.bikesatwork.com) trailer available in three lengths, weighing between 27 and 43 pounds, which can carry bulky items, even refrigerators, up to 300 pounds.

Fifty-four percent of Americans live less than five miles from work. Many errands and activities are within that distance, too. At five miles or less, car engines are cold. Cold engines are fuel-thirsty and release considerably more pollutants on a per-mile basis than warm engines.

In terms of energy efficiency, bicycling is the clear winner over competing modes. The calories required for a 10-mile roundtrip by car is 18,600 (a half-gallon of gasoline); bus 9,200; train 8,850 and walking 1,000. By bicycle, it is 350 calories.

In terms of space requirements, or water consumption, bicycling is even more efficient: 12 bicycles fit in the space required by one car in a parking lot; 40 gallons of water are used to refine each gallon of gasoline a car burns.

So if more of us did what Shawn does, we'd save the earth from global warming and burn off some extra calories in the process.

Richard M. Stowe of New Canaan is founder and director of Rail * Trains * Ecology * Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation, and president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization.