Pedal to the Metal

Another week has closed here in New England, and Mass. Climate Summer has passed the half-way mark with nearly 20 students soldering on, biking from town to town building the movement. While this has been an exciting and dramatic week for climate action; from L'Aquila to Washington and Mt. Rushmore, Massachusetts Power Shift continues to focus our energy on building a powerful movement capable of working for bold, science based solutions. And of course we've had a bit of fun in the process.

To date we have visited over 25 towns, found over 3,000 people eager to Repower America with 100% clean electricity in the next decade, presented sustainability workshops in 12 communities, recruited dozens of organizers ready to work towards a powerful show of force on October 24th and scored over a dozen media hits from small-town papers to the Boston Globe and NPR. But we haven't stopped there. This week our teams' creativity was on full display...

On Thursday July 2nd, the Cape Cod team worked with our partners at Greenpeace and Clean Power Now to showcase exactly how global warming and sea level rise will bring destruction to Massachusetts. Several weeks ago extreme high tides washed away several cottages on Cape Cod, and last week as the remainder of the cottages were being dismantled by cranes, our team went to point out that “Global Warming Looks Like This.” Heather Bulis, a senior at Westfield State College said, “it was awesome to get out there and see what global warming actually looks like and collaborate with other organizations. We were out there when they were demolishing the houses, it was pretty powerful.”

Over the holiday weekend the Cape Cod team was at it again, riding their bikes in the Hyannis July 4th parade towing giant cardboard wind turbines on their trailers, passing out buttons and carrying a “Repower America” banner. They followed the next day with a beach party in downtown Hyannis called "Rising Waters, Raising Awareness,” that playfully showed where the beach might one day be with runaway global warming.

This Thursday the Cambridge team hit one out of the park. With “Christmas in July” quickly approaching, Santa and his elves paid a visit to Senator John Kerry's office in Boston to deliver “coal” in the form of recycled incandescent bulbs. They let the Senator, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, know that when he comes back from Copenhagen in December he needs to bring a treaty that will save Santa and his workshop, and reach a stable 350ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if he doesn't want to get any coal in his stocking. Sally Sharrow, a junior at Tufts University explained, “the idea is that as the polar ice caps melt, Santa will become the world’s most celebrated climate refugee. But ultimately, climate change impacts us all. We’re conveying that message in an unusual way – even though it’s a very serious issue – because we’re young, and this is an issue that the youth of this state care passionately about.”

“It's incredible to be working with the local chapters of the Mass. Climate Action Network, it really jumps out how committed people are to going green and taking action. It's clear that we're ready for change and are already building a sustainable new world. All we're waiting for is our politicians to catch up,” says Sam Rubin, events coordinator for the Western Mass team. Having logged 300 miles in 30 days, the Western Mass team has finally settled into a slower migration in the outermost suburbs of Boston. This coming week, the team is working with local chapters of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network (MCAN) in Sudbury and Maynard to host the “Awakening the Dreamer Symposium.”

While these are some highlights, the daily work of knocking on doors, talking with local faith and community leaders are the nuts and bolts or good organizing. We're grateful that others recognize this and have lent their support; from Filter For Good who has provided the bulk of our funding to the Massachusetts Council of Churches which is working to house our teams, and the myriad of committed environmentalists across the state. Everywhere we go we find people who recognize this enormous problem and want to know what to do about it. They have changed their light bulbs, worked with their towns to make their communities greener, and they are looking to make a difference in what must be a national and international solution. Our job is to knit them together, give them a sense of their own power, and provide a plausible strategy for them to make a difference. That's what builds a movement, brick by brick.