This is a guest post from Elise Gabriel, Texas Trek organizer. The Trek to Re-Energize America is a bike ride to D.C. in support of clean energy solutions and a sustainable future, summer 2009.
“We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way”, was Papua New Guinea’s charge to the United States at the Bali Summit in 2007. During a discussion of this quote in my Planning for Sustainability course, the Trek came to mind. I disengaged from the class discussion and began thinking of how a tiny country, which entered the summit with a negligible amount of political clout on the international level, was able to turn the tide of the United States’ negotiation strategy with a single comment.
As a small group of people dedicated to a cause that has just recently come to garner greater public attention, I realized that we are much like Papua New Guinea. The Trek to Re-Energize America is going to serve as the platform for us to be leaders in this movement that is gaining more and more ground every day. This is our opportunity to speak with complete strangers on our routes across the country, engaging them in a discussion of how they envision America being “re-energized” and building the movement even further by inspiring leadership at the local level. Every time I talk with people about the Trek, I find it difficult to explain in words why I am riding next summer. It is one of those things similar to explaining why global climate change is real and why action needs to take place now. It is hard to comprehend that people do not feel as impassioned as you or see the situation in the same way. However, I feel that the Trek is a self-explanatory manifesto in the purest sense.
Those who are trekking this summer may be a small group, yet this action will undoubtedly help turn the tide of the way American citizens’ commitment to our government becoming leaders in global climate change policy and creating a sustainable future is perceived. We will not get out of the way because we are ready to lead and we are ready to wholeheartedly ask our government and our new policy makers to lead our country and the rest of the world in ways that we cannot.
