Youths Trekking Across State With Climate Change Message
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The group, one of three working with Massachusetts Climate Summer, a project of Massachusetts Power Shift, will be knocking on doors to talk about the goal of 100 percent clean electricity within the next decade, how the state can be a leader in the green movement and inviting residents to a presentation on Thursday evening at 5 at First Congregational Church.
The cyclists are working their way across the state, spending two to three days in each community and partnering with local groups, including members of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, which have been helping provide shelter and sustenance for the activists.
Samuel Rubin, 19, a Rhode Island native doing an internship as a grassroots organizer with Climate Summer, said the response so far has been very positive.
"We went canvassing in Pittsfield yesterday," said Rubin on Tuesday afternoon. "It was great. I think the issue of climate change is becoming a reality to people across political and economic lines."
The group met for a week of intensive training in Deerfield then hit the road for Great Barrington on June 12. Rubin said they expect to reach Boston in August. Meanwhile, the two other groups are working their way along the state's north and south shores. Nearly 20 youths in all are spreading the climate change message on two wheels.
Rubin's group will likely be preaching to the already converted in Williamstown. The town has taken a strong stand on energy conservation through the COOL (CO2 Lowering) Committee with the goal of reducing its carbon emissions to 10 percent below the 2000 levels by 2010. Williams College has also invested in sustainable practices.
The group is working with the COOL Committee on Thursday night's Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and on installing weather stripping at Mount Greylock Regional High School with Williams students and others on Thursday morning.
Rather than think of Thursday night's event as a symposium, however, Rubin said a better description is an interactive workshop with audio and visual presentations. The participants will break into smaller discussion groups.
The goal is to transform information into emotion, said Rubin, and focus on what the individual can do to make a difference. "Its focus is on bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling society."
It was a similar presentation on destructive mountaintop coal mining in an environmental class at Oberlin College that pushed Rubin from the fringes of the green movement into outright activism.
"I realized what we were doing to the Earth is a crime," he said. "I was tired of people talking and wanted to do something ... and sitting in an office was not going to do it."
What he hopes will do it is the Climate Change Congress slated for December in Copenhagen, Denmark, at which U.S. Sen. John Kerry will be a lead negotiator. Along with talking about climate change, the youths will be asking for signatures on a petition to urge Kerry to make Massachusetts and the nation leaders in finding solutions to climate change.
"John Kerry has to make it happen. We're here to make John Kerry make it happen."
