Biking group raises climate awareness
From June 21, 2011 edition of The Telegraph
NASHUA – Biking is difficult. Biking from town to town all over New Hampshire is more difficult.
Five college sophomores and juniors taking part inw New England Climate Summer, a movement to decrease consumption of fossil fuels and connect environmental organizations, are up to the challenge.
The group parked their bikes in Nashua on Sunday after 40 miles of bike travel from Concord. The students will ride around the city over the next week in an effort to highlight and connect local organizations working to promote environmental sustainability and energy efficiency.
Nashua is the first stop in 2011 for the group, which is in its third year. The team will bike to eight other towns over the next nine weeks to promote their message.
A cluster of bikers in a populated area like Nashua may look strange to some, but one of the riders, Jordan Swenson, only sees the peculiarity of the group as a positive.
“When we all wear our orange shirts, people can’t help but notice us,” Swenson said. She also thinks that the group’s uniqueness will present a positive image of the organization to the community and help the cause.
None of the bikers stationed in Nashua for the next few days is from New Hampshire. Swenson is from New Jersey, and another biker, Van Scholten, traveled the farthest, coming from more than 900 miles away, in Franklin, Tenn, a rural town right outside Nashville.
That backwoods childhood is what inspired Scholten to initially join the Climate Summer movement. He credits the brooks and meadows that surrounded him as the inspiration for his love for nature.
“Look at it, look at it, it’s beautiful!” Scholten said, pointing to the forest in the distance. Some of the other bikers also point to their upbringings, as well as simply learning about the human impact on the environment, as what led them to participate in the program.
The bikers said they are already expecting Nashua to be one of the most environmentally active towns on their route.
“We have been told Nashua is one of the best cities we’re going to, in terms of initiative,” Scholten said.
That initiative can be seen across the city as organizations such as Better Buildings, Renaissance Downtown and the Green Initiative Group have worked hard over the past months to add more sustainable energy to the city while making it more energy efficient. The students will work with those groups as well as others over the next week.
Bob Eldredge, community manager for Better Buildings, will serve as a sort of city ambassador. His organization works to educate homeowners by showing them affordable ways to make homes more energy efficient while also providing them with rebates and education. To accomplish such a task, the group must work to connect with other environmentally conscious organizations, something that is also a primary goal of the New England Climate Summer movement. To see young people work so passionately for a goal that is so similar to his group’s is inspiring to Eldredge.
“For me, it’s very exciting to see teens with this commitment and enthusiasm out there,” Eldredge said. “It makes me look at my generation and want people to work harder.”
Perhaps the most prominent event for the bikers over the next week will be “Nashua’s Roadmap to an Energy Efficient City,” a summit at the town hall Wednesday (see related article) that will allow the bikers to hear from environmentally conscious groups from all over the city. By speaking to and connecting with these groups, the bikers hope to work toward their goal of creating a network of people and organizations across the state working to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
After they leave the city, the bikers will create a report on Nashua’s efforts. One of the riders, Bryna Cofrin-Shaw, hopes the report will allow the community’s organizations to see how they can work together.
“We’re going to come across so many community partners who are all basically trying to get across the same message,” Cofrin-Shaw said. “I think that’s really interesting and really part of what we’re doing. How do you get across the same message to different demographics?”
Eldredge also hopes to use the report as a comprehensive resource so communities can compare what they’re doing correctly so that each can improve and learn from each other.
After creating reports for each town they visit, the bikers, who also include Sandy Carter and Ben Trolio, will reconvene in Boston with five other teams that have also worked to spread the movement across New England. There, the groups will create a “State of the Movement” report, which will attempt to illustrate the vast network of environmental organizations across the region and see how they can work together.
While Scholten acknowledges that the next nine weeks will not be easy, he and the other bikers are passionate about their cause.
“What other kids would want to devote their entire summer to just riding around, sweating around with each other?” he said, laughing. “We must be a bunch of weirdos.”
Other stops along the way are Portsmouth, June 27-July 5; Keene, July 5-July 11; Concord, July 11-July 18; the Upper Valley, which includes Lebanon and Hanover, and Hartland and Norwich, Vt., July 18-July 25; and Milford, July 25-July 31.
For more information, visit www.climatesummer.net.
