2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2008 7A
EcoMan
Spring brings green efforts
Easter Sunday, March 23rd, was the first holiday to fall at the outset of spring 2008. I celebrated that brisk, sunny day with a bicycle ride from New Canaan to an unnamed neighborhood south of Chinatown, south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Easter Sunday: the unofficial start of the cycling season.
My destination was Broadway East, where I would feast on what turned out to be an unquestionably un-Easter Sunday-like dinner.
After bicycling down Old Stamford Road I traversed a subdued U.S. 1 to New Rochelle. There I turned left on Echo Road and right on Pelham Road. That allowed me to ride through Pelham Bay Park and down Westchester Avenue. I entered Manhattan on the Third Avenue Bridge, which led me on a fast ride down Second Avenue.
Broadway East is a bright, new, upscale eatery (it opened April 7) with a palate that is decidedly low on the food chain. Our server, Annabelle, was a twenty-something who sheepishly revealed she was from Fairfield County (Greenwich, Darien and Wilton) and had boarded at Westminster School in Simsbury. Annabelle, who traveled in Africa and beyond, while pursuing pre-med at University of Edinburgh, shared with us the restaurant’s philosophy and her favorite dishes on the menu.
After dinner I bicycled back to Grand Central Terminal and with my bicycle boarded the train back to New Canaan. Fortunately, Easter Sunday isn’t one of the ten holidays each year in which Metro-North policies prohibit bicycles on trains.
The downside of those arbitrary restrictions (especially prohibiting boarding bicycles at peak hours) came to the attention of outgoing Metro-North President Peter Cannito on March 26 at the annual President’s Forum. That evening nearly a dozen cyclists expressed their outrage at Metro-North’s recent announcement to continue its current restrictive policies toward bicycles and not include bicycle parking on 300 new M-8 cars even though cyclists had been repeatedly assured that parking would be provided. A 40 percent increase in the New Haven Line fleet (380 MNR M-8 cars plus critical systems replacement rehab of 132 M-2 cars), cyclists argue, is the perfect time to integrate bikes on to trains. Add climate change and potential future fuel shortages into the mix and agency-sanctioned bikes-on-trains-at-peak-hours certainly makes sense.
Of course, other issues arise regarding climate change.
New Canaan resident and longtime Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp posits solutions in "Earth: The Sequel – the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming," which he co-authored with Miriam Horn. Consider it to be a 21st Century update to "Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School Project," the 1979 energy strategy primer edited by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin (Mr. Yergin’s 1991 tome "The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" is a great read.) "Earth: The Sequel" opens with an easy-to-bite read into the research, resource and production challenges facing Silicon Valley entrepreneurs transitioning a solar future into the solar decade.
The 2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change (http://research.yale.edu/envirocenter/) will take place at Yale University. On Friday April 18th, Governors M. Jodi Rell. Jon Corzine, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Eduardo Bours (Sonora, Mexico), Martin Bursick (Czech Republic) and Premier Jean Charest (Quebec) will convene in a 10:30 a.m. plenary session open to the public at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street. At 1:30 p.m. a signing will take place and at 2:00 p.m. Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will give a public address.
The 2008 conferences serves as a centennial anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Conference of Governors, which is credited as launching the modern conservation movement.
Theodore Roosevelt, IV will pay tribute to his great-great grandfather’s legacy in a private ceremony on Thursday evening.
Gifford Pinchot, who in 1900 founded the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the centennial event host) and later himself served as Governor of Pennsylvania, organized the 1908 conference.
Thirty years have passed since Fred Krupp founded New Haven-based Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE.) On Sunday April 20th one of his protégés, Don Strait, CFE’s current Executive Director will address a Earth Ministries gathering at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The talk (a primer on past, present and future Connecticut Fund for the Environment initiatives) will take place in the church’s Library Room at 11:30 a.m. That will be preceded by an organic coffee, organic cookies hour in Morrill Hall at 11:00 a.m. Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Keep it green.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization and founder and director of Rail * Trains* Ecology * Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation
EcoMan
Spring brings green efforts
Easter Sunday, March 23rd, was the first holiday to fall at the outset of spring 2008. I celebrated that brisk, sunny day with a bicycle ride from New Canaan to an unnamed neighborhood south of Chinatown, south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Easter Sunday: the unofficial start of the cycling season.
My destination was Broadway East, where I would feast on what turned out to be an unquestionably un-Easter Sunday-like dinner.
After bicycling down Old Stamford Road I traversed a subdued U.S. 1 to New Rochelle. There I turned left on Echo Road and right on Pelham Road. That allowed me to ride through Pelham Bay Park and down Westchester Avenue. I entered Manhattan on the Third Avenue Bridge, which led me on a fast ride down Second Avenue.
Broadway East is a bright, new, upscale eatery (it opened April 7) with a palate that is decidedly low on the food chain. Our server, Annabelle, was a twenty-something who sheepishly revealed she was from Fairfield County (Greenwich, Darien and Wilton) and had boarded at Westminster School in Simsbury. Annabelle, who traveled in Africa and beyond, while pursuing pre-med at University of Edinburgh, shared with us the restaurant’s philosophy and her favorite dishes on the menu.
After dinner I bicycled back to Grand Central Terminal and with my bicycle boarded the train back to New Canaan. Fortunately, Easter Sunday isn’t one of the ten holidays each year in which Metro-North policies prohibit bicycles on trains.
The downside of those arbitrary restrictions (especially prohibiting boarding bicycles at peak hours) came to the attention of outgoing Metro-North President Peter Cannito on March 26 at the annual President’s Forum. That evening nearly a dozen cyclists expressed their outrage at Metro-North’s recent announcement to continue its current restrictive policies toward bicycles and not include bicycle parking on 300 new M-8 cars even though cyclists had been repeatedly assured that parking would be provided. A 40 percent increase in the New Haven Line fleet (380 MNR M-8 cars plus critical systems replacement rehab of 132 M-2 cars), cyclists argue, is the perfect time to integrate bikes on to trains. Add climate change and potential future fuel shortages into the mix and agency-sanctioned bikes-on-trains-at-peak-hours certainly makes sense.
Of course, other issues arise regarding climate change.
New Canaan resident and longtime Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp posits solutions in "Earth: The Sequel – the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming," which he co-authored with Miriam Horn. Consider it to be a 21st Century update to "Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School Project," the 1979 energy strategy primer edited by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin (Mr. Yergin’s 1991 tome "The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" is a great read.) "Earth: The Sequel" opens with an easy-to-bite read into the research, resource and production challenges facing Silicon Valley entrepreneurs transitioning a solar future into the solar decade.
The 2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change (http://research.yale.edu/envirocenter/) will take place at Yale University. On Friday April 18th, Governors M. Jodi Rell. Jon Corzine, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Eduardo Bours (Sonora, Mexico), Martin Bursick (Czech Republic) and Premier Jean Charest (Quebec) will convene in a 10:30 a.m. plenary session open to the public at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street. At 1:30 p.m. a signing will take place and at 2:00 p.m. Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will give a public address.
The 2008 conferences serves as a centennial anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Conference of Governors, which is credited as launching the modern conservation movement.
Theodore Roosevelt, IV will pay tribute to his great-great grandfather’s legacy in a private ceremony on Thursday evening.
Gifford Pinchot, who in 1900 founded the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the centennial event host) and later himself served as Governor of Pennsylvania, organized the 1908 conference.
Thirty years have passed since Fred Krupp founded New Haven-based Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE.) On Sunday April 20th one of his protégés, Don Strait, CFE’s current Executive Director will address a Earth Ministries gathering at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The talk (a primer on past, present and future Connecticut Fund for the Environment initiatives) will take place in the church’s Library Room at 11:30 a.m. That will be preceded by an organic coffee, organic cookies hour in Morrill Hall at 11:00 a.m. Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Keep it green.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization and founder and director of Rail * Trains* Ecology * Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation
Labels: bicycling, bikes-on-trains, climate change, energy
posted by Richard Stowe at 8:22 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home