The air is thick this morning, my first day back to work since vacation. It’s dense with water vapor and a stagnant quality that makes it hard to breathe. It feels like the air trapped by plastic wrapped tight over the top of a bowl of left-overs that mistakenly sat overnight on the kitchen counter.

I was noticing the unusually thick smell of auto-exhaust when the three dump trucks passed me, each blowing an opaque cloud of soot. These clouds hung in the asphalt corridor between the trees as I made my way through them. Consciously, I tried to breathe shallow, but instinctively, I breathed deeply -- I was in middle of a two-mile climb with more than 40lbs of gear and bike to haul.

A gray and brown swirl of soot and grime circles the drain of the shower at work. The same particulate dulls the brightness of my otherwise yellow jersey. I wonder what breathing that stuff does to my lungs, then wonder why I ride in a place where days like today are the norm.

Durham’s air is thick for the same reason that exhaust clouds hang in the Cornwallis Rd corridor -- the wind just doesn’t blow.

In the three cities I visited recently there was a constant breeze. The Gulf-born winds across Tampa and Jacksonville, Florida constantly scrub the air. Residents of those cities can exercise outdoors without concern for ozone pollution. Even Atlanta, a city that seems more red -- Republicans, Coca-Cola, banking -- than green, enjoys the benefits of clean air because the wind is constantly moving across the sky.

So, why not move to one of those places? If I am going to bike commute, then, in Durham, that means filling my lungs with voluminous amounts of toxins every morning and evening. And even though public health officials think that the benefits of a regimen of exercise outweighs the individual costs of exposure to poor air quality, just think how much better it would be to ride every day in clean air. Such thoughts are immanent on my daily ride to work.

But to bail on Durham and move someplace else is to give up on the work that needs doing here. It’s the moral equivalent of abandonment: rather than take responsibility for the mess you’ve made, just move somewhere else and start over. Communities are not fungible. If I don’t do what I can to create a clean environment here in Durham, I’ll not likely appreciate Tampa’s environment either.

A better idea is to love the place where you are. Durham’s Greenhouse Gas Plan needs support, and I’m sure there’s something in your town, in your place, that needs your support too. (Link updated; thanks Ellen)

This week’s Carnival of the Green includes submissions from others who are rolling up their sleeves, unafraid of real work.

At Behavioral Ecology, Matt MacManes asks whether the Moss Landing power plant (near San Francisco) is killing marine mammals? “The power plant releases 900,000 tons of CO2, 60 tons of NOx and 4 tons of SO2 into the atmosphere yearly, and 1.2 billion gallons of hot water (50C) DAILY into the ocean,” he says. “ Why do we continue to operate it? Will darkness fall upon San Francisco if we closed it?”

Nina at Queercents asks us to consider the effects of congestion pricing in major metropolitan areas of the United States. “Have you heard the buzz about congestion pricing?” she asks. “What can $8 a day buy you? Soon, the right to drive into NYC.”

The Coding Grasshopper has a follow up to a documentary about Carbon offsetting and whether it actually works.

Leon, at Sox First, takes a look at ways that climate change is affected corporate board room discussions. “Climate change is shaping up the big corporate governance issue of the 21st Century,” he says.

David at The Good Human asks a question I’ve wondered myself -- “Why In The World Do Businesses Leave Their Lights On At Night?”

One more corporate concern is whether Burning Man is selling out?

Arvind Devalia submits an urgent plea to save the greenery of Regents Park in Central London for future generations.

Chris Baskind at Lighter Footstep reminds homeowners that traditional milk-based paints are a safe, non-toxic alternative to interior paints containing petroleum products and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

GP presents Present Simplicity posted at Fish Creek House - INNside Innkeeping.

Tracy at Eco Street offers tips to give your garden a green makeover.

and Tiffany Washko presents Eco Friendly Birthday Party posted at Natural Family Living Blog.

The finale for this week’s Carnival is an entry that wasn’t submitted -- just one I came across while reading. The author asks a pertinent question that bears repeating in this new wave of popular environmentalism: whether the green aspects of green consumerism outweigh the costs of consumerism itself. Like her, I too am skeptical. Living green is about simplifying one's demands of the world, and green consumerism is still consumerism. How do we get out of this box?

Thanks to everyone who submitted entries, and thanks for the work you all do to raise the profile of environmental issues. Enjoy this week's Carnival. Next week's host is the Organic Researcher.

Posted by nicomachus at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

These Green Times is a new online publication with an environmental focus. Friend Bob Schildgen (better known as the Sierra Club's Mr. Green) is an early contributor. They're looking for submissions, so all you environmental writers out there, send them something.

Check them out...

Posted by nicomachus at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our relationship to built space is not something we often explore, and yet these spaces define for us the world of our daily lives. Authors like Wordsworth and Thoreau write about the wonders and mysteries of the world revealed to them simply through careful observation of their environments. The observant way of moving through the world revealed, for the romantic and the transcendentalist, an overlooked simplicity of everyday life.

Being observant in this way has value intrinsically in that it is a way to feel more connected to the place you occupy and a way to recognize the importance of that connection. Often, as in the case of Wordsworth and Thoreau or even contemporaries such as Ron Rash or Edward Hoagland, those who know something about this connection experience it in wilderness -- standing on a mountain top after a day’s hike or standing on the edge of a river or lake. The unique foil that wilderness poses to the human-built environment is arguably the basis of most environmental ethics, from Aldo Leopold’s land ethic to Edward Abbey’s monkeywrench defense to Deep Ecology. In each of these versions of environmental ethics, the bottom line human/wilderness relationship is one where we ought to preserve wilderness.

But basing an environmental ethic on juxtaposing wilderness and urban areas leaves those of us who live in cities without any sense of ownership over our environmental responsibilities. "The State of World Population 1999," a report issued by the United Nations Population Fund, documents the trends of increasing urbanization. One-third of the world's population lived in urban areas in 1960. By 1999, that percentage had increased to 47 percent. The report predicts 61 percent of the world's population will be city dwellers by 2030. “The State of World Population 1999” offers this prediction about urbanization:

the ecological and sociological "footprint" of cities has spread over ever-wider areas, creating an urban-rural continuum of communities that share some aspects of each lifestyle. Fewer and fewer places on the planet are unaffected by the dynamics of cities.

Basing environmental ethics on wilderness preservation alone is a luxury we can no longer afford.

There are other models, however, for an urban environmental ethic. It took a while, but the Sierra Club finally gets it. It released a white paper endorsing more density in urban growth. The US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) awards for sustainable architecture reasonably acknowledge the fact that environmentally friendly building design contributes to far fewer resources consumed for every person who lives and works in those structures. To get a sense of what’s required by LEED certification, read the article in this week’s Independent on a proposed building in Chapel Hill that, if built, will be North Carolina’s first LEED Gold standard building. Apart from urban planning, Michael Pollan’s works can be thought of as an attempt to design an environmental ethic that’s based on agriculture instead of on wilderness. His theory of co-evolution (developed in Botany of Desire) and the agro-industrial food policies he calls into question in The Omnivore’s Dilemma both serve as models of how to think responsibly about the environment and be a city dweller.

Durham has its own theorist on urban environmentalism, and his focus, like most enviro-ethics theorists, is on preservation. Only this time, Gary Kueber is trying to preserve buildings. Preservation and sustainable urban design go hand in hand, argues Kueber.

Endangered Durham, Kueber’s medium for developing his preservationist ethic, is a website dedicated to showing what happens to a city when poor planning decisions dominate its development culture. Probably the most striking feature of his project are the before and after photographs. Using historical photography from archives, libraries, universities, and books, he identifies areas of Durham that have changed significantly -- and identifiably -- over the years. As you can imagine, much of the time this change is not for the good.

A good example of the kind of relevance his site has is his collection of posts on DOT’s woeful redevelopment plans for Alston Avenue. He’s done a great job articulating just what's wrong with DOT's current way of thinking. See http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/search/label/Alston%20Ave. for more. These posts speak to his concern that sustainable design is about more than just preserving buildings. "An equal part of my intent is that what we build new," -- whether roads or buildings -- he says, "is human-scale - respecting the lessons of how we used to build cities for pedestrians and integrating knowledge of our impact on the natural environment."

His breadth of familiarity with historical documents and evident depth of thought on urban design would lead you to believe he is a life-long urban planner. Not the case, however. Originally trained in Internal Medicine, he practiced primary care in Durham for four years -- right up until he decided that his “hobby” of historic preservation was more important to him. “ So I gave up medicine, went back to school to get a Master’s in Public Health, and a Master’s in Urban Planning. I’m finishing up the latter this May,” he says.

Kueber grew up in New Orleans. Like many of us who live in historic cities, he took the beautiful architecture for granted. It was only after college at Duke, medical school back in New Orleans, then moving back to Durham for a second time that he got involved with efforts to save historic properties. He worked with and eventually chaired the Endangered Properties Program with Preservation Durham.

He started the Endangered Durham website when he realized that “Durham had lost so much historic architecture, and the majority of folks who live in Durham weren’t aware of it.” Creating a publicly accessible tool for researching Durham’s landscape and architectural history, he thought, could strengthen preservation efforts. He describes an often-repeated pattern of development thinking “when someone would propose a teardown, there was no context – people would see it as ‘well, that building is pretty far gone’ instead of ‘we’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of buildings – we really need to go above-and-beyond to keep what we still have.’ Along with that, I saw that the same ethos that led to the loss of so much architecture was still around.”

While Endangered Durham’s posts are tagged by property types and streets, Kueber’s concerns also fall into themes -- loss of greenspace or demolition by neglect, for example. He confesses that site organization is one of the biggest challenges he faces.

“I would like it to exist in perpetuity as a community resource where people can look up a site and the history of that building/buildings that came before. The tags are a mixed bag, and they include both themes and locations. They could really be overwhelming, because I see the creation of a healthy, vibrant community as the whole, and these landscape pieces as parts of that whole.”

He adds,

“To a lesser extent St. Theresa (Southside) and West End. These areas of town have persistent economic disinvestment and difficult to change social forces that mire people in poverty and crime. And to a large extent, those problems are bigger than Durham. But people need help and want change in their neighborhoods, because they need a better life. Unfortunately, old buildings play a pretty small role in the creation or maintenance of those problems, but they become symbolic of decay. I often joke with people that the reason buildings (and trees) get knocked down is because they are the only parts of the neighborhood than can’t run away when the bulldozers come. It’s something tangible for politicians to point to as an accomplishment. Unfortunately, there is no good evidence out there that demolition helps neighborhoods, and some evidence that it exacerbates neighborhood social conditions.”

A rare honor for bloggers is to meet in person the strangers who read and enjoy their sites. But Kueber was in attendance at the grand opening of the Bull City Headquarters, a mixed-use community center that local artists have opened up in Little Five Points. During the organizers’ speeches about the Headquarters’ mission, they indicated that one reason for locating in LFP was based on what they had read about the area on the Endangered Durham website. Kueber says, “that went beyond my best hopes for what the site could do -- inspire others to community action in neighborhoods other than their own, to see all of Durham as their city.”

Posted by nicomachus at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Appalachia... even the word feels like home to me. There's an exciting world out there -- from Montreal to Accra, from the Grand Canyon to Buenos Aires -- not much of which any one of us has explored. The lure of exploration excites me, but when I travel it is equally exciting to think of returning home, to the Appalachian places I already know. Table Rock, Pisgah, the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian Trail, and breathtaking summit views. Hiking under blooming rhododendron in June, biking down smooth, fast singletrack, walking the red, gold, and orange carpeted trails in October -- these are the mountains of North Carolina.

I asked my fellow Appalachian state bloggers to reflect on our state's mountains. These fine entries make up this week's Tarheel Tavern.

Laura from Moomin Light takes us on a hike up Mount Mitchell.

At Slowly She Turned, Laurie reminisces visits to Mortimer ghost town/camp ground and the Little Lost Cove area.

And Nnena of Balanced Life Center gives us an ode,There was a Young Lady Who Lived in a City.

For good measure, two off-topic submissions I'll include are Ken's LIVE and Bora's book review of John Janovy's On Becoming a Biologist.

Posted by nicomachus at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Pictures from a backpacking trip to Pisgah a few weekends back.

The hike in...

The view the second day...

The view the third day...

Note the Blue Ridge Parkway near the top of the closest ridge.

Posted by nicomachus at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

In the mail yesterday, I got a letter from Outward Bound. At first I thought it would just be a solicitation for money, as most mail is these days. Whether it's bills due or advertisements, it seems like the postal service exists these days more to carry encouragements to get money changing hands than to carry news from one part of the world to another.

But, I was wrong. OB is forming an alumni association, which is free of charge to all alum. Cool. Included was this window-sticker.

The presumption of an organization like Outward Bound, which taught me a lot my own environmental ethic, that I would own a car just irritated me. So, I wrote (and mailed to) them a letter -- a letter I think is best considered an open letter. Any other OB alumn with me on this?

-------

October 11, 2006

Dear John Read,

I was excited to receive in the mail my invitation to join the Outward Bound Alumni Association. It seems like such an obvious extension of the OB experience that there should be an Alumni Association, and yet I never thought about its absence until I received the invitation. Thank you for perceiving and filling the void.

You’ll find enclosed the window sticker that was included with my invitation. I return it to you in the hopes that you’ll be able to reuse it – to pass it on to another alum. It’s not that I don’t want to display proudly my affiliation with Outward Bound; I would if only I had the right sort of surface for displaying such a sticker. But I don’t.

I do not own a car. After many years of parsing and defining my own environmental ethic, I made the conscious decision to go car-free. Through a rather deliberate process that has as much to do with my love of the environment as with my critique of the United States as an unsustainably developed, automobile-centric culture, I decided to sell my car and use my bicycle as my daily means of transportation.

Outward Bound’s emphasis on Leave No Trace as well as the empowering effect of completing the North Carolina Outward Bound School’s rock climbing course factored into my decisions to live more consciously and to concern myself with how I move through the world as a way of examining my relationship to the world.

That said, I’d love to display an Outward Bound Alumni Association sticker on the snap-deck of my bike. As environmentally conscious and self-reliant as the Outward Bound experience makes us, it would surprise me to learn that I’m the only Outward Bound alum who has made the decision to live car-free.

Thanks, and I look forward to taking an active role in the Alumni Association.

Posted by nicomachus at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

News from CatEye about their solar rechargeable light I first mentioned here back in April...

We have experienced delays on this product only because we are unable to secure enough solar cells to make the product available on a global basis. The product is currently only available in Japan.

http://www.cateye.co.jp/tlhtml/slld200.html

We hope to launch this in the US sometime in 07.

Thomas

Posted by nicomachus at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Finally, someone is making progress thinking outside the 19th-century box.

The folks at Angstrom, a Vancouver-based alternative energy company, have developed and are testing hydrogen fuel cells for portable lighting devices like flashlights. One of their first models is a bicycle light.

You can contact them via their website if you want to learn more about their products including when they may be available.

Posted by nicomachus at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In observance of International Car Free Day, all the bus services in the Triangle will be FREE this Friday, September 22nd. All of 'em. This is the day to try Capital Area Transit, Chapel Hill Transit, Durham Area Transit, Cary Transit, the NCSU Wolf Line, or TTA.

Of course, your bike is free every day.

Visit www.gocarfree.com or www.goTriangle.org for more information.

Esta Viernes, todo los autobuses en el Triangle estarà gratis. Viernes, Septiembre 22, es Dìa Mundial Sin Auto, y CAT, CHT (en Chapel Hill), DATA, Cary Transit, y TTA estarà gratis. Si usted no ha intentado montar el autobús, entonces Viernes esta una dia buena a montar para el tiempo primero.

Por supuesto, su bicicleta está gratis montar cada día.

Por que yo quiero para mejorar mi español, escribiré de vez en cuando en la lengua de los países a el cual deseo estar más cercano. Si algunos nativos del español leen este web site, por favor siéntase libre corregir mi español.

Posted by nicomachus at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Finally, a portable solar charger for portable electronic devices. And it's not unreasonably expensive either.

Charging your iPod, cell phone, or digital camera from one of these exclusively is a great start towards a sustainable digital lifestyle. Plus, when traveling internationally sunlight is easier to come by than the right AC converter.

The manufacturer claims that the Solio charges as fast as an AC charger.

Posted by nicomachus at 10:29 PM | Permalink

Daryl Hannah has a new video blog with an envioronmental bent. Using the medium that made her famous, she brings to the screen individuas and groups working on everything from bio-diesel to Rwanda to greening the "extreme sports" industry to vegan junk food.

She promises a richer site this summer, but there are already ten video-blog entries up and they're fantastic.

The intro music (for most of the videos) is a Ditty Bops song. If you don't know the Ditty Bops, they're a pair of socially conscious musicians from California. They're also avid cyclists, currently touring the U.S. on bikes.

Posted by nicomachus at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Some truths are hard to swallow. This one is just plain uncomfortable because of what it means for our future. Because of what it means we're responsible for. Because of what it means we have to do.

Teaching ethics classes, I've learned that students will resist the plain truth (even when the data spells it out) as long as it makes them uncomfortable. Each semester, students would routinely practice self-deception around the fact that Burger King hamburgers come from factory farms, that fast food hamburgers often have feces (1,2) mixed with the beef, that people die preventable deaths because we would rather buy a DVD or download an album than redistribute that same $20 to where it is needed most, or that it costs more to execute someone than to keep him/her in prison for the rest of his/her natural life.

Peter Singer has a reputation for making people uncomfortable, and his Practical Ethics is usually the text in these classes.

The general public is practicing that same self-deception now. "Peak-oil" (a term I've learned just recently) is just the name of a phenomenon we've been taught since grade-school -- that non-renewable resources don't last forever. And despite rising gas prices and wars to ensure a regular oil supply, gas-guzzling SUVs still dominate the parking lots and gridlocked highways. Seems some of us still have but an elementary grasp on the fact that petroleum will not be cheap nor will it even last forever.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary about a presentation Al Gore has been giving around the world. It's about global warming, about how we're responsible for it, and about how there is an impending "climate crisis". It's about what we need to do if we don't want to see the Outer Banks underwater in the next generation.

An Inconvenient Truth will be released nationwide May 24th. It will show locally at the Carolina Theatre beginning June 16th. You can watch the trailer here.

Posted by nicomachus at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back in November, Treehugger posted some advance notice that Cat Eye would have this photovoltaic and vibration powered rechargeable bike light available in early 2006 for mounting on handlebars everywhere.

From the Treehugger write-up: It's powered by vibration, with the help of a photovoltaic solar panel. The light itself, about 3 cm x 6 cm, apparently fires up when vibrations (ostensibly from riding) are felt, and the little PV panel (under the transparent case on top) supplies power to the light as well. According to the information available at the show, the light has a potential life span of around 10 years if well taken care of. No word on what sort of light would be used, but CatEye looks to be big fans of LEDs (and who could blame them?) so we'll keep our fingers crossed.

But, it looks like Cat Eye hasn't updated their product news section since August.

Anyone seen one yet? I'd love to pick one up.

Posted by nicomachus at 10:49 PM | Permalink

Chevy's advertising division is holding a contest, inviting the public to make the next Tahoe commercial. They provide the layout, video shots, and choices of music. You provide the text that will inspire folks to run out and buy an SUV.

Here's my entry. I'll let you know if I win.

For the inevitable time when GM removes my contribution from their website, AlaskaAction has kindly ripped it and hosted it over at YouTube.

Posted by nicomachus at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Albert Camus argued that artists bear a moral responsibility to engage politics with their art. He challenges artists to "create dangerously" and use creation as a medium for social criticism.

There is some honest, heartfelt, critical music coming out of Katrina's aftermath.

The Legendary K.O.'s "George Bush doesn't care about black people" -- a politicized remix of Kanye West's "Golddigger"

Public Enemy's "Hell No We Ain't Alright"

Posted by nicomachus at 4:08 PM | Permalink

--my comments at the public hearing --

Good morning. Thank you for setting aside time in your schedules to listen to the public on this issue.

I'm dressed a little differently than the rest of you because I just biked here. Several other riders and I started in Durham this morning to ride here and show our commitment to clean air in North Carolina � as part of the Sierra Club of North Carolina's �Bike Against Bad Air.�

I'm not a policy expert, nor am I a scientist. So, I won't speak to the specific nature of either the causes of the problems or the solutions.

I am, however, a North Carolina resident and someone who cares deeply about the natural environment of this state. It's no accident that I do. I've been spending vacation time in the mountains of North Carolina since I was very young.

I grew up camping and hiking in the mountains of Pisgah National Forest. In high school, I started mountain biking, rock climbing, and backpacking through the Nantahala National Forest as well as Pisgah. The challenges unique to being in the mountains helped shape my values of respect and care for the natural environment.

I still visit the mountains as often as I can. But the mountains I visit today are different from the ones I visited as a kid.

The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains in the world, withstanding the wind and rain for millenia. But thanks to acid rain, the face of the mountains has changed more in the last twenty years than in the last twenty-thousand.

In 1996, I hiked the Appalachian Trail through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At that time, the observation deck at Clingman's Dome stood among a dying forest. The delicate spruce-fir ecosystem was finally succumbing to years of acid rain attributable to the emissions of outdated power plants in Tennessee and Georgia.

There is simply no reason why power plants in our neighboring and upwind states cannot comply with stricter air-quality standards � standards that at least match those of North Carolina.

As of 2002, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most polluted National Park in the country. The Smokies suffer from some of the worst acid-deposition in North America. Clouds enshrouding the mountains regularly have acidity levels as high (or as low) as vinegar.

Today, Clingman's Dome is a spoiled vista. The surrounding forest is a shell of what it used to be. Under normal conditions, one should be able to see for 100 miles. During the summer months, average visibility is a mere 14 miles. Visibility is impaired by the unnatural smoke that mixes with the natural blue haze that originally gave the mountain range its name.

I mountain biked out at the Tsali National Recreation Area twice this summer. Tsali is situated on the southern shores of Lake Fontana, looking across the lake to the Smokies. You can begin to see the same effects of acid rain taking root at Tsali.

You shouldn't have to risk ozone poisoning to visit a National Park. Since this is an interstate problem, North Carolina can't force Tennessee or Georgia to clean up their power plants. The EPA, however, can. I hope you will.

Thanks to Christa Wagner of the Sierra Club for organizing this event and to Victor D'Amato for the photos.

Posted by nicomachus at 12:15 PM | Permalink

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
September 8th, 2005

DURHAM -- As if North Carolina didn't already have a hard enough time combating air pollution, a new federal ruling may allow neighboring, upwind states to off-load soot and other particulate pollutants on the Tar Heel State.

In July, Attorney General Roy Cooper filed a lawsuit in federal court and a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider portions of the agency's Clean Air Interstate Rule. "While we generally support EPA's new standards to clean our air," Cooper explained, "we fear that loopholes in this Rule will give power plants in other states the ability to send additional pollution our way."

According to the Sierra Club of North Carolina, the petition specifically asks the EPA �to require emission reductions from power plants in thirteen upwind states in order to reduce their contribution to North Carolina's fine particle pollution,� a contributor to asthma and other respiratory ailments.

On September 14th at 9 a.m., the EPA is holding a public comment hearing on the CAIR ruling and Cooper's petition for reconsideration. The hearing will be held at the EPA facility in Research Triangle Park.

The Sierra Club hopes to gather the support of local cyclists who want to say something about it. In order to show support for Cooper's petition and cleaner air standards, the environmental group is organizing a bike ride from downtown Durham to the EPA hearing, says Beau Memory, NC Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign Coordinator.

The �Bike Against Bad Air� begins at 8am at the American Tobacco Trail's northern trailhead, just across Willard and Blackwell streets from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The planned route to the EPA is less than ten miles � approximately a third of which follows the greenway, a third follows the new bike lanes on Cornwallis Rd, and the remainder follows Alexander Dr. through RTP.

The plan is for cyclists to ride together and enter the EPA's campus as a group. A photo ID will be required to enter EPA facilities. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Sierra Club invites the cyclists to return to downtown Durham for lunch at the Mellow Mushroom.

�Getting riders out in the middle of the week will demonstrate North Carolinians' commitment to clean air,� says Memory. �We're lucky to have a great trail system here, and we also want to show people there are cleaner ways to get to work each morning.�

In a July press release, Roy Cooper says that �out-of-state polluters are interfering with North Carolina's ability to meet national air quality standards despite the state's success at cleaning up in-state pollution under it's Clean Smokestacks law.�

Memory acknowledges that �North Carolina's taken a huge leap forward with smokestack legislation.� The point of the �Bike Against Bad Air� and the public hearing, Memory says, is to convince the EPA that �unfortunately, air pollution doesn�t stop at state lines. Every day that goes by that our neighbors don't clean up their pollution means more soot, more smog, and more asthma for North Carolinians.�

RIDE DETAILS
If you're interested in riding or testifying, you can register with the Sierra Club by emailing bikeagainstbadair@yahoo.com or calling Christa Wagner at (704) 374-1125.

Cyclists should arrive downtown at 8am and be ready to roll by 8:30.

All riders are required to wear a helmet and sign a waiver of liability.
Bring plenty of water, a photo ID, and a bike lock.

Posted by nicomachus at 9:37 AM | Permalink

The last time images like this, images from the United States, hit the international news, the Civil Rights movement of the 50s really picked up momentum. The U.S. was publicly embarassed to have the truth of its racist, classist government policies exposed so clearly and so openly. I can't help but think that emergency response would be different if the images coming from New Orleans were of white middle class soccer moms.

Change is coming.

In the midst of the chaos, David Gonzalez wrote for the NY Times a moving article on how race and class are factoring into the evacuation. If you don't have access to the NY Times archives, you can find the article at truthout.org.

Posted by nicomachus at 11:18 AM | Permalink

I don't normally mountain bike in the rain. Riding when it's wet is not good for singletrack, and I respect the fact that I'm sharing the trail with others including my future self. But what can you do when the weather report isn't calling for any rain, it doesn't look like it's going to rain when you hit the trail, but the sky opens up anyway midway through your ride? I did the only thing I could think of – I kept riding but was very careful not to lock my brakes.

It started as a torrential mist. The air changed from just humid to a thick cloud, as though colloidal water droplets particularized in mid-air. We're having such unusually warm weather that I have to say it felt nice. I stopped just to enjoy it. It's just the deer and me in this part of the park; I stood there looking upward, letting the soon-to-be raindrops hit my face and arms. The trail feels like it's lined with those really fine misting soaker hoses.

Once my soul is as refreshed as my face, I start riding again. A few minutes and it starts to rain. The trail is turning darker, the roots are getting slicker, my tires sound like suction cups pulling up from the dirt, and when used my brakes screech horribly.

Before the trail is wet in all spots, long before the first puddles start to form, the rain stops. The wet roots are still reason to be cautious, but the trail is dry enough to ride without hurting it.

I'll take 70 degree weather whenever I can get it, but I love it in January.

Posted by nicomachus at 12:19 AM | Permalink