[sustran] ECFD 2001. The nose of the camel is under the tent

[eric.britton at ecoplan.org]

Dear Friends of Sustainable Transportation,

Well, Earth Car Free Day 2001 is fast upon us - opening up for business at
dawn tomorrow for the first time in this or any other century.  If you
journey CO2-free to our website at www.carfreeday.com you will see what we
have managed to accomplish over these last six months of volunteer
ground-laying work with zero dollars of taxpayer money and no official
support of any kind.  We hope that you will take your time when you get
there since there is a great deal to see.

Today, barely three weeks after we opened up our new (original, fast and
terrific by the way) ECFD database, more than two hundred groups, cities,
individual citizens and families have registered projects for this first
Day.  The latest, which whipped in barely an hour ago from a Moscow school
and entirely in Russian, has been blasted into the best translation we plus
our machines could manage, and there you have it: a touching and original
effort in support of the great Day by thirteen year old schoolchildren,
their teachers and parents.  And then there are the city-wide projects in
Halifax, Pune, Seattle, Bhaktapur, Pusan, Singapore, Surabaya and the list
goes on.

Here's an interesting thought for you. None of this... none! would ever be
taking place if our all-volunteer team had not rolled up their sleeves and
got to work on this in the first place. Who says that the Internet is
useless for anything serious?  Visitors are rolling into the site at
www.carfreeday.com at a tempo of close to one a minute.  And while most of
them are not going to be ready in time to do very much on this first day,
judging from the flood of email that is coming in every one of them has
started to think about it.  Which indeed is what this first ever Earth Car
Free Day is all about.  Getting people to think about it, getting them
together, and giving them a handy place to go to get materials, ideas and
inspirations of what they can do next to make the transportation
arrangements of their cities more sustainable and more socially just.

Okay.  Now let's talk about you.  What if anything can you do at this late
date?  I can imagine that many of you, busy as you are, may be feeling a
slight pang of guilt about not being able to get to this earlier.  But fear
not! we have prepared an escape hatch for you.  And while we would have
liked it certainly if your schedules had permitted you to talk your mayor
into issuing one of our ECFD City Proclamations (you'll see that when you
click City-Wide CFDs), or possibly to have started an ECFD Petition in your
community (see the Citizen Initiative section for more on that), there still
is something very positive and useful you can do in the next five minutes.

If you do to the site at www.carfreeday.com you will see at the very top a
linked image with a mother and child crossing a street (borrowed form our
German cousins actually).  If you click that you will see a small handful of
slots that you can quickly fill in, which will tell the world what you think
of this kind of "trickle-up" approach to the challenges of sustainability.
The car free day approach as we understand it may not be able to make good
on all of the ambitious and worthy objectives of Kyoto, but it is a valuable
parallel instrument.  And indeed, it just may be this sort of swelling
grassroots movement that will put the pressure on our elected
representatives to stop the posturing and start to do something concrete and
useful.  Because there is a great deal that we can do, without waiting for
the present American Administration to reveal its mid-game plan.

So take a minute to join in and let us know that you are or at least
seriously wish to be 'part of the solution'.

With all good wishes,

Eric Britton

Earth Car Free Day is permanently at www.carfreeday.com
Sustainable Development and Social Justice
"Earth Car Free Day 2001: The nose of the camel is under the tent."

The Commons ___technology, economy, society  ___
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France
Eric.Britton at ecoplan.org    Tel: +331 4326 1323