In Cas of Global Warming: Bicycle: Global Climate Action Day!

Bike the SF Shoreline! Get your bikes ready for underwater pedaling! Pull out your floaties and snorkel masks!

We are riding on one of many future shorelines of San Francisco to dramatize the inevitable rise in oceans and the subsequent inundation most coastal cities face due to catastrophic human-induced climate change. As we approach the December global climate summit in Copenhagen, we ride in solidarity with thousands of others around the planet, demanding real action—not bogus market-oriented, cap-and-trade, smoke-and-mirrors inaction. Drastic reductions in carbon emissions are a straightforward and urgent necessity, and will not be achieved by auctioning off the last true commons, our skies.



We bicycle, too, to demonstrate one of the many ways we can change our daily lives towards a just world that provides a good life to everyone as a matter of right. Because addressing the climate involves the way we live as much as it does planet-wide agreements on technology and public policy. The failure of the U.S. to enact strict federal rules to promote clean, green technologies and restrict, reduce and eliminate dinosaurs like coal, oil and nuclear is paralleled by a failure of imagination among activists here. Too many of us think we can solve the ecological crisis by recycling more, or shopping responsibly. Our individual behaviors ARE important, but they are far from sufficient.



So join us in raising the temperature of public pressure. Start changing how you live by using less energy, water, and resources. But industrialized food production, a car-centric transit system, oil dependency, and a long list of bad technological choices cannot be solved by good shopping. They require a sudden, dramatic, and forceful shift at the national and state levels. This inevitable shift cannot be made at the expense of those who have already been left behind or left out, subjected to polluting factories, toxic waste dumps, power plants, and incinerators. We can create a healthy, prosperous life for everyone, not just in the Bay Area, but across the country, and crucially, across the world. But not if we leave power in the hands of the same business and government leaders who have profited so handsomely from the mess they’ve already made.

—Committee for Full Enjoyment, Oct. 24, 2009