The Kindness of Strangers

In our efforts to halt the heating of the planet and thereby avert the collapse of civlization, we are possessed of a secret weapon and that weapon is ice cream. I am in deadly earnest. Not only does this wondrous substance sustain us at the end of the week - by which time the scrupulous budgeting of our meals means we are all starving for sugar - but it also serves as the locus of community events; the main attraction, so to speak, for people who may be only peripherally interested in the topic under discussion. In Beverly, LT canvassed an especially enthusiastic woman; a woman eager to do something now and too impatient to wait until July 25th. I was waiting at the end of the street when LT arrived, beaming, to inform me that all seven of us had just been invited to an ice cream party. We were the guests of honor.

On the appointed night the team trooped over, bearing gifts of watermelon. We were greeted by Rachel, her husband Mack, and their sons Jake and Simon. The former would be entering Bates in the fall and had tons of questions for Kyle. The latter presented us with a fresh garlic plant which he'd picked earlier that day while working on one of the Food Project's local organic farms. Mack, who took his degree in forestry and works for the National Park Service, was recently returned from a trip to Jiuzhaigou Valley, where he had been contracted to scope out the possibilities for motor vehicles to approach closer to the lakes and waterfalls which constitute the region's major tourist destinations. Jiuzhaigou is a nature reserve in western China along the lines of Yellowstone National Park, though infinitely less accessible. (I speak from experience: To get there, I rode in a richety old tour bus for two days along unpaved roads carved into sheer cliffsides practically hanging over the river.) Mack expressed apprehension about the newly completed airport, which surely augurs an exponential increase in the volume of tourists visiting the valley, as well as a corresponding hike in the CO2 emitted by these same tourists as a function of their airborne journeys. Jiuzhaigou could potentially boast hotels, restaurants, seas of cement and resort sprawl to rival Disneyworld.

By a fortuitous coincidence, Rachel's neighbor Dennis turned out to be Boston University's new sustainability coordinator (the position has only recently come into existence). He was naturally interested to hear what Emily and LT had been doing as ecoreps of their respective schools, Pratt Institute and Clark University. We agreed that while inter-dorm competitions are great, it is irrational and counterproductive to focus on total volume of recycling, as this system tends to reward frat houses because they throw lots of parties and buy lots of beer bottles. At this point we could have used Leila's input, as the ecorep program is only a couple years old at Pratt, kicking off this fall at Clark, and (Sally reports) in hibernation at Tufts. If we are to keep the momentum of the climate movement going, it is important for its coordinators to have informal meetings like these, during which we share our aspirations and our strategies, what works and what doesn't.

Finally, Rachel shared with us an article detailing how 34 Nobel Prize winners have written the President in an open letter decrying Waxman-Markey's failure to support research and development for clean energy technologies. (Al Gore was not among them, presumably because you had to be a Nobel winner in the relevant sciences.) While the letter did not contain anything we had not heard before, the very fact that it had been written at all helped to end the party on the right note - a note of hope. As we were leaving LT inquired whom Rachel was planning to invite to her Christmas in July party, to which Rachel responded, "Didn't we just have one?" And she was right. The point of Christmas in July is not the Santa hats, nor the informative videos, nor even the oppressively muggy weather that is supposed to remind us what Christmas would feel like should anthropogenic climate change be allowed to continue unchecked. You could have a Christmas party in September as long as it served its primary purpose - to open up a space for dialogue, to inspire people to take action in preparation for the International Day of Climate Action. On both these counts I think our slightly premature party succeeded spectacularly.

Just when we thought we had exhausted the North Shore's veritable cauldron of hospitality in Beverly, we arrived in Gloucester to find that Health Department sanitation codes prevented us (or anyone else) from using the dishware and cutlery at the church where we were staying. (They regularly relied on paper plates during the weekly suppers for the homeless.) But not to worry. A friendly couple serving the special vegetarian dinner prepared in our honor offered without hesitation to house us in their beautiful three-story beachfront home. They had showers and beds to spare, too. It was the easiest unanimous decision the Cambridge/North Shore Team had ever made.

The moral of our story is twofold: Ice cream, not duct tape, is the force that binds the universe together. And the Lord shall provide, because the Lord, He sure does love His environmentalists.