We all agree – it’s gonna take a mass movement to avert climate catastrophe. But what kind of movement? After the Senate climate debacle, it’s clear that we need to step up our game, broaden our analysis, and bring in new allies if we’re to have any chance at winning climate justice.
The following is one attempt to expand our movement by aligning with front line groups battling the economic root causes of global warming. And what way to build the movement would be more fun than biking to COP16 in Cancún?! Dig it:
Crossposted from Climate Reality Tour:
This October, we’re embarking on a two-month bicycle documentary trip to the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Cancún, Mexico from November 29th to December 10th of this year.
That’s right. We’ll cross deserts and climb mountains, biking roughly 2,500 miles as awareness-raising documentary project about the economic root causes of global warming. We’ll post video and written content from the tour as we meet with local front line organizations that are fighting climate changing corporate interests and promoting sustainable alternatives. But we need your help to make it a reality.
It’s called the Climate Reality Tour – because the U.S. needs a reality check, not just about global warming, but about the economic model that creates it, one that we’ve helped export over the whole world. We believe that to solve the climate crisis we must undo the root causes of global warming – namely our unfair global economy that pits working people against one another, and against our shared environment.
It was devastating to see already-compromised climate legislation die in the U.S. Congress a few weeks back. As concerned global citizens, we clearly need a new approach. We believe that a holistic campaign for a sustainable global economy could be a winning recipe. It’s going to take a unified, diverse, massive movement to win that sort of change. We hope that by facilitating discussions on root causes and highlighting the connections between our many movements, it’ll help sew, fertilize, and cross-pollinate the seeds of change.
We hope you can add your support as well by donating to the Climate Reality Tour. Our car-tires and chicken wire budget is about $5,000, so any amount you can contribute – $100, $50 or even just $5 – will go a long way!
What’s more, we’ll donate half the funds you donate to the under-resourced organizations with whom we’ll meet along the way. These orgs are on the front lines of he climate, food and economic crises, and one main goal of our trip to is to support and spread the word about their inspiring work.
To donate, simply click the button at the right of the page, or visit our donation page for further info.
* We are working on a way to make contributions tax deductible. If you hope to make a tax-deductible contribution, contact us individually and we’ll make arrangements.
The Climate Reality Tour (CRT) serves two main functions. The first is to project to a broader audience the inspiring resistance of those on the front lines of the fight for a sustainable economy. From the coal fields of Appalachia to the cornfields of the U.S. Midwest and the Mexican milpas of maíz, from shuttered factories to sweatshops, we’ll document and post video from our encounters with organizers and activists we meet along the way, highlighting their resistance to the unsustainable global economic order. We’ll weave these stories together, showing that to solve the crises, we must attack the roots of the problem – the unsustainable, corporate run global economy that simultaneously destroys the climate and hurts the world’s working people.
The second function of the CRT is to organize and mobilize concerned global citizens into action for a sustainable global economy and swift action that averts the looming climate catastrophe. We’ll hold movement-building climate reality potlucks along our route and help folks plug into the growing sustainability movement. We’ll visit not only with environmental organizations, but with organizations fighting against unfair trade, industrialized agriculture, and immoral immigration policies.
We’ll start off in West Virginia’s coal country where communities are fighting for renewable alternatives against infamous corporations like Massey Energy that are blowing off the tops of mountains and turning people’s drinking water to sludge. We’ll follow the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers west and south to the border to see shuttered factories, industrialized agriculture, oil refineries and oil spills, and migrant-labor system – each a social, economic and environmental injustice in its own way.
We’ll cross into Mexico and take the bus to the capital (not to burst your bubble, but there’s no time to bike the whole way) where we’ll meet with Mexican climate justice and global justice movement organizations before embarking toward Cancun on bike. We’ll head visit with allies in Puebla, Oaxaca, and Chiapas along the way – learning from our southern neighbors how they are confronting global warming so as to inform and inspire us in the U.S. to step it up.
We’ll arrive in Cancún for the U.N. summit, and parallel indigenous peoples’ and social movement forum. 2,500 miles and hundreds of conversations later, we’ll showcase a preview of a mini documentary we’ll make along the way. We’ll post it for you on the blog as well! Check here for the full itinerary.
This could be big. We think the Climate Reality Tour could really be the start of something exciting. We hope our blog builds a strong following that capture the hearts and minds of many. We’ll give it our all, but won’t make it without your help.
We appreciate and all your support – moral and material! We can’t wait to share our tales from the road and to see the fruits of your generosity in a more just, more sustainable world for all the world’s people.
We are biking for a sustainable economy and a healthy planet. If not now, when? That’s why it’s Cancún or bust – for the climate, for the economy, and for the CRT riders.
* Check here for more about our movement-building vision for a sustainable global economy.
** We’d love your thoughts about CRT! Please share your feedback via blog or email.
