An open fundraising appeal for Climate Ride

Photo by Richard Stowe
Taken on Sunday September 7, 2008 while riding Transportation Alternative's New York City Century.
Its time for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to be open to cyclists 365 days per year.

Dear cycling friends:

Thank you all of you have donated to Climate Ride to date. Donations have come in as recently as a few minutes ago. The following fundraising letter is to encourage those of you haven't donated yet to do so.

At this late date, the most ideal method to donate is via credit card online. The link to seamlessly do that is toward the end of this e-mail.

I hope to join bicyclists in the 320-mile (New York City to Washington D.C.) "Brita Climate Ride 2008” http://www.climateride.org from September 20-24. The challenge between now and then is for me to raise $2250, the minimum necessary contribution to qualify as a "climate rider." With your help I will be participating in that bicycle ride.

Climate Ride’s goal is to donate 60% of the money raised to two 501-c-3 non-profits: New Canaan-based "Clean Air-Cool Planet" and "Focus the Nation."

The purpose of “Brita Climate Ride 2008” is to encourage members of Congress to craft and pass legislation that addresses the ominous threat of climate collapse by reducing petroleum consumption and shrinking the supply of coal-fired electricity. Also needed is a sensible Federal energy policy driven by conservation, efficiency and investments in low-impact renewable energy.

‘Climate Ride’ participants will hear presentations from the following speakers: Betsy Talyon (President 1 Sky); Randy Swisher (Director, American Wind Energy Association); Michael Eckhart (president American Council on Renewable Energy); Wood Turner (Executive Director, Climate Counts.org, & PointCarbon); Janet Larsen (Director of Research, Earth Policy Institute); Mike Tidwell (Executive Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network); Keith Laughlin, (President, Rails to Trails Conservancy.)

At the end of the "climate ride" from New York City to Washington D.C. we will have the opportunity to meet with members of Congress such as Senator Maria Cantwell (WA), Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN), Rep. Jerry McNerney (CA) & Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR).

Please let me know if there is any message you would like me to forward to our elected officials.

While in Washington D.C., I will make every effort to speak to members of Congress about climate collapse, peak oil, the need for investments in energy conservation and efficiency, low impact renewable energy, bicycling as transportation, commuter rail, rail freight and transcontinental high speed rail.

I hope you will contribute to my goal of raising $2250 so that I may become an official ‘climate rider.’ Your contribution to ‘Brita Climate Ride 2008’ will be tax-deductible.

It's very easy to donate via credit card online. Just go to this 'Donation Page' link:
https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=272731&lis=1&kntae272731=5A2A08454DDD486FB7B7985B4824B32B&supId=232014988

Please call me at (203) 594-9097 if you have questions, encounter difficulties, or would like to contribute via check.

Thank you,

Richard Stowe
http://ecoman.wordpress.com

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