Green Options

[Creative Commons photo by Paul Kist]

A few folks asked for a followup to the post about Colin Beavan’s run-in with Senator Jeff Klein. After Beavan posted about the Senator almost mowing him down with his black Mercedes, people around the country called Senator Klein’s office to express their outrage. All of that action made a big difference! The Senator set up a meeting with Beavan, and the two men met yesterday along with Paul Steely White from Transportation Alternatives.

This article is part of EcoWorldly’s week-long spotlight on Politicians You Can Believe In. To read more, subscribe to our RSS feed, or view our posts about politics.

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation” - Nelson Mandela, Make Poverty History rally, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, February 2005

What makes a political leader to be great? What makes a generation to be great? To think of it, one word defines it - sustainability. Would this, then, be a moral issue or an economic issue?

Does the world’s population today — both older and younger segments — understand the social dilemma that the next generation of leaders just on the threshold of global influence find themselves in?

Yes, next generation of leaders. Because we can no longer hedge our hopes and beliefs and inspirations on leaders who are stuck in the time warp of old politics.

This week, EcoWorldly presents political leaders from around the world who have had significant positive effects on the environment and society. View more on our posts about politics, or subscribe to our RSS feed, as our international team of writers uncovers political leaders with truly positive track records.

Believe it or not, inspiring and effective political personalities do exist. Not only that, but they are the sort of figures a country should expect to lead them.

With the US presidential election on the doorstep, both the candidates are bandying promises of “change.” This week’s spotlight, Political Leaders You Can Believe In, will seek to reveal politicians who have already succeeded in delivering on the promise of positive change. In doing so, we hope to raise the bar for the US presidential candidates and encourage voters to hold the candidates to some of the following pledges.

[Creative Commons image by Jasoon]

The letter below reminds me a lot of something that happened to me.  I was riding down 10th Street in the right hand lane.  Rather than pass me in the empty left lane, a giant SUV swerved towards me, nearly running me into a ditch.  At the next light, the driver rolled down the window to shriek that I should be riding on the sidewalk (untrue/illegal), and he knew because he was a cyclist, too!  I guess he was a cyclist with no belief in Karma?

Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, had a run-in today with a NY state senator today.  Or, I guess, you could call it a near run in?  Here’s his open letter to Senator Jeff Klein:

Dearest Sustainablog!

Thank you for welcoming me back after an extended hiatus travelling our great American countryside.  Burned out from the stresses of the Sust Enable project, my partner Scott and I took off for the great wilds of U.S. National Parks in early August.  I haven’t written a blog since, as my adventures swept me far from the reaches of the Internet, for the most part.  Now I am back in Pittsburgh, not living sustainably, yet still reeling from the life lessons reaped from the past four months.

I anticipated having a slew of breathtaking photographs to offer you, alongside commentary from the trip in which I reflected on our often-severed connection with nature, and the deep wisdom such a connection provides.  Instead, one night while we camped in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, our video and digital camera were stolen from the glovebox of Scott’s car.  In the middle of a peaceful campsite, in which the sense of goodwill invoked a dozen campers to leave their car doors unlocked that night, a band of thiefs took advantage, slipped in after dark, and robbed a handful of people… not only of material possessions, but of their precious trip memories.

I wept inconsolably when I learned that the camera which held our trip photographs had been taken from us.  I cared little for the money-cost of these items, but I couldn’t stop hurting from the void that the thief left in me–having robbed me of the potential for life-long memories.

Memories surely live on in one’s mind… but as an avid student of the sciences, psychology easily reminds me that minds distort experiences.  I was hoping to use the photographs from our trip as a guideline for revisiting the feelings and sights that this wonderful trip stirred in me.  That hope is gone now, exchanged for a fleeting handful of cash to another.

And so, in the middle of my meditations on how the entire human race might be unified if we each and all had the opportunity to pause in the arms of nature’s bounty… I was sharply reminded with a single malicious act… that we have much further to go before then.