I almost didn't go
because of the rain. Then there was a break in it, and I thought "why
not?" When I left home it was drizzling again, but it stopped soon
after. I got there at about the same time as this "busycle", the
nearest thing to a large pedal powered machine I've ever seen.
Not long after that
the Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto of Palo Alto greeted us. She explained that
the day serves
two purposes, a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Mitchell Park,
and Step It Up 2007.
The crowd wasn't as big as it would have been on a sunny day, but it
was still a good scene.
The electric scooter
dealer was giving people rides around the parking lot after the weather
cleared up a bit. There was also an electric bike dealer.
The prepared Step It
Up event was
kicked off by this Ohlone Elder, who thanked mother earth for being
there, and for the rain because we need it. She also thanked all of us
for coming to the event. The woman that introduced her worked the crowd
with a bundle of smoldering aromatic sage, offering all who wanted it a
whiff of the smoke. The net effect of it all was to make us feel
much more connected.
The next speaker was this Stanford Professor Terry Root, who has been
studying the
effects of global warming on the ecosystem for years. She explained
that the easiest place for gardeners to see the impact is in their
daffodils, which bloom noticeably earlier than they used to. As a
scientist she has seen lots of verifiable evidence that global warming
is good for some species and bad for others. She explained that even
if we stop using fossil fuels RIGHT NOW, there is still going to be at
least one more degree of warming. She urged all of us to do what we can
to cut further fossil fuel energy consumption.
This guy was working with cool cities to get city governments on the
peninsula to buy into doing something about their energy consumption.
Click
here for more information.
Assembly Member Ira
Ruskin made a few gracious comments before telling us about five of the
bills he has before the State Assembly. One is a revenue neutral bill
that would add a tax to gas guzzling cars and use the money to give
people incentives to buy fuel efficient vehicles, "so the marketplace
will send the right kind of signal." Another is a bill to
make Cal EPA collect the statistics for California companies the Bush
Administration is stopping the EPA in Washington from collecting
nationally. People gave him a good hand when he thanked us for our
attention.
Debbie Mytels said that Acterra is starting a green@home program to
help the rest of the community be part of the solution. Green teams
would visit peoples homes to do energy audits, and make small changes
that could improve energy consumption. Things like installing three
compact florescent light bulbs, a programmable thermostat, and flow
restrictors in faucets and shower heads if people want them. The
program
would start after the rally with precinct walking in midtown Palo Alto
to get the word out on it. She finished her speech by asking us all to
help out.
Click here for
more information.
Bruce Karney told me
that the Mountain View Solar Buyers Club has now gotten enough members
that they are qualified for the highest discount that the solar panel
dealers offer.
Click
here for more info.
The last people to
take the stage were the Raging Grannies, who lead us in song. Click
their picture to see the songs we sang.
These water bottles
were on the Acterra table. They were there there to show in a relative
way how much energy is used to get these bottles to a point of sale
counter in Palo Alto. The Calistoga water uses the least energy because
it comes the shortest distance, from somewhere else in California. The
waters from New Zealand and France use much more because of the
shipping. The Trinity water from Idaho contained the most energy
expense because it was trucked from Idaho, which uses much more energy
than ocean shipping.
As the last of the
crowd trickled away, I helped pedal the busycle back to it's parking
place in the driveway of the owner. Along the way Carol talked about
the buttons on her hat. The green alien was from a Russian event she
had
gone to more than a decade before. It had been so inspiring that she
had started her Bio-intensive for Russia thing after that.
Click here
for more info.