New Canaan Advertiser, Thursday, September 18, 2008  6A

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe

Any month is a ‘Bike Month’

May has been known as Bike Month since 1956, but it turns out September is growing in stature as a bicycle-friendly month.  It helps that the weather is generally warmer in September than in May.

For starters there’s World Carfree Day, hosted by the Prague, Czech Republic-based World Carfree Network, which takes place this year on Monday, September 22nd. 

Most events take place in Europe, but look for World Carfree Day to pick up in American communities in years ahead.

Coney Island

Then there’s Transportation Alternatives’ NYC Century Bike Tour, which took place this year on Sunday, September 7th.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to bicycle over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Prospect Park, past Coney Island, Brighton Beach and Canarsie Pier (sections of Brooklyn that I visited for the first time) on a sun-filled day before volunteering as a marshal on Randall’s Island. 

Hell Gate Bridge

Founded in 1973, Transportation Alternatives’ mission is “to reclaim New York City’s streets from the automobile and to advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit as the best transportation alternatives.”  Transportation Alternatives strives to influence elected officials to direct New York City Department of Transportation officials to implement measures such as traffic calming, car-free parks and bike lanes with the goal of creating safe streets.

Brooklyn Bridge

Friday September 19^th is National Parking Day (http://www.parkingday.org/) and it is promoted on the home page of the Trust for Public Land at tpl.org.  It is an effort to create temporary parks in parking spaces.

Finally two new cycling events have emerged this September.

Bicycle For A Day  occurs on Saturday September 20^th from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM at South Street Seaport in Manhattan.  More information is available at bicycleforaday.com.

Founded by actor Matthew Modine, Bicycle For A Day is an initiative to reduce an individual’s carbon footprint by traveling by bicycle and other carbon free modes instead of by petroleum-powered vehicles

Brita Climate Ride is a five-day bicycle ride from SOHO in Manhattan to the Capitol in Washington D.C. in which “climate riders” raise money for non-profits Focus the Nation and Clean Air-Cool Planet, which has a branch in New Canaan.  (See related story on Page 8)

Climate lectures will take place in the evening each day of the ride.  Further information is available at climateride.org

Four cyclists from Connecticut have registered for the 300-mile fundraiser including me.  To make a donation, click “sponsor a rider,” enter the climate riders name, click on that name, and click on the riders name that appears below. 

Climate Ride is no bike-cation, but it provides an opportunity to network, raise money for two climate education organizations while traveling by bicycle to the nation’s capital.

Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling.  He may be reached at bike.rail.politics@gmail.com

New Canaan Advertiser, Thursday August 21, 2008 Page 5A

OPINION

A rumbling ride with Riggio

Phil Riggio bikes weekdays from his home in Darien to his job in Manhattan (Richard Stowe Photo)

Darien resident Philip Riggio lives “maybe 50 yards from I-95” and works weekdays in mid-town.  While at work he notes “my family hears emergency crew’s sirens blasting every few hours as they cart accident victims off to the hospital. This is concerning.”

But Mr. Riggio is “no prisoner of the fine, white lines on the freeway.”

He lives exactly one-half mile from the Noroton Heights Railroad Station.  Mr. Riggio, who begins work at Cantor Fitzgerald at 7 a.m., appears to be the perfect candidate for a 48-minute, 36.2-mile train ride to Grand Central Terminal.  But up to three days per week he shuns the rail commuting opportunity.  Nor does he drive on nearby I-95. 

Instead, Mr. Riggio, a Catholic-educated, Baltimore, Maryland native, bicycles a minimum of 38.5-miles to work to his mid-town office each way on a Bianchi road bike with flat bars and MTB shifters.

In forging what may be a new category of cyclist: an “extreme” bicycle commuter, Mr. Riggio may be cycling at the edge of history, into an America, which holds 1.6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, but can no longer afford its motor vehicle-driven petroleum habit. 

By setting an example with his 77-mile round trip commute three days per week; Mr. Riggio hopes “to encourage others to follow suit over shorter distances.

Mr. Riggio even straps a trailer to his bicycle, much to the delight of Stella, his daughter, and bicycles her to school.

On Friday August 1^st I joined Mr. Riggio on his bicycle commute to Manhattan.  At 4:20 a.m. I left my apartment in New Canaan.  Except for a rumbling ride along Lapham Road, New Canaan’s answer to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the 6.3-mile trip to Mr. Riggio’s home was fast and smooth. 

Phil Riggio sports Light & Motion headlight at daybreak in Pelham Bay Park - photo by Richard Stowe

I knew I had reached his driveway when his handlebar mounted-Light & Motion headlight broke the darkness – beaming brightly at me. 

A quick hello and we departed from his driveway at 4:40 a.m.  In twelve minutes we reached Stamford Downtown; twenty minutes later we cycled through downtown Greenwich; nine more minutes we arrived in Portchester, NY.  In the next 6.3-mile stretch to Mamaroneck Avenue, Mr. Riggio, a USCF category-2 bicycle racer, cut a relatively fast, flat course averaging 23.7 miles per hour. At 5:42 a.m. we reached downtown Larchmont, 62 minutes after leaving his driveway.

Riggio (on St. Anns Avenue) approaches MTA subway 6 line and Westchester Avenue - photo by Richard Stowe

Phil Riggio cycles on Third Avenue Bridge - photo by Richard Stowe

Early morning traffic developed as we cycled over Bronx streets.  Upon cresting the Third Avenue Bridge, we looped back to Second Avenue at 128^th Street, where Mr. Riggio positioned himself well for the malaise of diesel trucks, transit buses and motor vehicles that lay ahead on the final stretch into mid-town.

Two hours-fifteen minutes after leaving home, Mr. Riggio parked his bicycle at a 62^nd Street storage locker, showered at a gym and walked to work at Cantor Fitzgerald.  Twenty minutes later he was at his desk.

After leaving the Cantor Fitzgerald building, I bicycled down to Union Square Farmer’s Market to buy whole-grain pastries and wild blueberries. 

Westside Bikeway approaching George Washington Bridge - photo by Richard Stowe

In an effort to simulate Mr. Riggio’s return trip later that day, I cycled over to the Westside Bikeway and back to New Canaan, via the Botanic Gardens and the Boston Post Road -clocking 95 miles roundtrip.

OK, you’re not a cat 2 racer and your commute isn’t 80-miles roundtrip, but you’re interested in bicycling to work, or bicycling as transportation.  You’ve concluded that bicycling can significantly reduce your carbon footprint.

But you’ve concluded that bicycling on suburban streets is foreboding.  You can overcome that fear by taking a League of American Bicyclist BikeEd “Road 1” course. Driven by “vehicular cycling” principles, BikeEd instruction evolved from a course and book called Effective Cycling (first published in 1976) by John Forester.

In the New York area BikeEd classes are offered by Bike New York (http://bikenewyork.org/education).  To take a BikeEd course in New York City, you may contact Emilia Crotty at (212) 932-2453×131.  If individuals are interested in taking a “Road 1” course locally, contact the New Canaan Environmental Group at nceg2453@gmail.com. If a dozen or more individuals sign up for a BikeEd course, arrangements will be made for Bike New York BikeEd instructors to teach the course in New Canaan, or Darien. 

New Canaan Cyclery owner Rob Sherlock shuttered his store last summer, relocated to Austin, Texas and now works at Fallbrook Technologies.

In the wake of that closure, Ski & Sport at 11 Forest Street in New Canaan (and its sister store in Ridgefield) began selling Jamis bicycles this summer.  Ken Ryan, a 13-year veteran at Ski Market, where he served his last six years as either assistant manager or manager at the Danbury and Norwalk stores, manages the bicycle department.  Mr. Ryan states that both sales and service cover a broad spectrum – kids, commuter/hybrid and performance racing bicycles.

Come on New Canaan, come on Darien, “cause summers here and the time is right for (cycling) in the street…”

Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling.  He may be reached at bike.rail.politics@gmail.com

OPINION

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe

Gas prices too high?  Take a ‘bike-cation’ this summer

On Thursday May 29, Henry Stowe finished breakfast at H&M restaurant in Sanford, Florida. In between jobs, he would return to work on Monday June 2, but at that very moment he was about to transform a stay-cation, in which one remains within 50 miles of one’s home, to his very first bike-cation, riding 215-miles in three days.

A bike-cation is travel by bicycle to and from your vacation destination. A bike-cation is an antidote to escalating summer gas prices. On bike-cations, you burn carbs, not carbon.

Five years earlier in 2003, Mr. Stowe, my younger brother and a life-long subscriber to Car and Driver, accepted my challenge to ride in the 42-mile Bike New York. Riding a total of 57 miles by bicycle that day was a watershed event for him.

By 2006, he had relocated to Sanford, Fla., and bicycle-commuted eight miles round-trip per day.

After breakfast, Mr. Stowe embarked on a 55-mile bicycle ride to Ormond-by-the Sea that included an ocean swim break in Daytona Beach. The next day he blazed into uncharted territory on A1A, riding 95 miles, a personal best. That ride took him to St. Augustine, where he lunched at Blue Planet on organic fare, a hummus wrap with ginger dressing, salad and berry smoothie, before heading back down A1A to bed at a motel in Flagler Beach.

An ocean swim at Flagler Beach commenced day three; at Daytona Beach, Mr. Stowe put the wind to his back by cycling due west easing the 65-mile push back home.

My first bike-cation this summer began on June 27. The trip from New Canaan ended at the Flagpole on the Green in New Haven, where I addressed a hundred-plus cyclists about a June 6 letter from Governor Rell to Mayor DeStefano in which she expressed concern “that the new rail cars provide adequate bicycle storage” adding that “there is sufficient time to modify the design without delaying scheduled delivery.”

The cyclists had gathered for a June critical mass first in New Haven in which police corked intersections for participating cyclists.

Saturday, I rode in the New Haven Century, one of the free Arts & Ideas festival rides organized by Elm City Cycling, which passes through West Haven, Milford, Orange, Woodbridge, Bethany, Hamden, Wallingford, Durham, Killingworth, Madison, Guilford, Branford and East Haven.

About 70 miles into the ride, I bicycled into the Boston Post Road entrance to Hammonassett Beach State Park in Madison.

Cyclists experienced beautiful stretches of Connecticut back roads,

passing nearby West Rock Ridge  and Sleeping Giant State Parks in Hamden, a picturesque farm in Durham and classic Connecticut  shoreline in Madison, Guilford and Branford.

Bicycling 160 miles in two days, I was spent at the end of the century. I stretched and showered before a salad, soup and pizza dinner and walk down to Firehouse 12, an upscale lower Crown Street subterranean pub that draws Yale grad students and cyclists.

I re-fueled at Claire¹s, a vegetarian eatery, with a whole-wheat blueberry pancake Sunday brunch for the 40-mile ride back to New Canaan. I powered by the Boston Post Road malls in Orange and Milford and a Connecticut Avenue neighborhood in Bridgeport before watching a few minutes of Bridgeport Bluefish baseball from the right field fence at Harbor Yard Ballpark.

Calories burned: Countless. CO2 emitted by fossil fuel on these bike-cations: Zero!

Cycling for a purpose. Riding back into town from a short-lived party during the Sunday, June 8, heat wave, I reversed direction upon randomly sighting six touring cyclists featured in the Darien Times and rode with them up Oenoke Ridge. They were cycling across the America to advocate an end to extreme poverty through microfinance.

Not primed for a bike-cation, or cycling coast-to-coast?

Consider the two-mile challenge (http://www.2milechallenge.com/)* that substitutes short car trips with bike trips (http://www.1world2wheels.org/.)

Why not ride? After all, the number one contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in New England is the automobile-and truck-dependent transportation sector. New England’s transportation produces more CO2 than direct use of fossil fuels in New England’s homes, businesses and industrial buildings combined. In fact, the region¹s transportation sector alone emits more CO2 than the aggregate economies of Austria, Portugal, Israel and 150 more nations. And 74 percent of those emissions are gasoline-driven, fuel burning to move cars, light trucks and our “High and Mighty” SUVs.

Forty percent of all automobile trips are less than two miles and account for 60 percent of automobile-created pollution. At eight miles per hour, a two-mile bicycle trip takes 15 minutes.

No bicycle? Why not bike sharing? A town bicycle fleet could be located at Mead Park, for example, and be administered through recreation department employees.

Links to information about safety, the beneficial cultural values that cycling and being green impart on a community, and a two-mile route in New Canaan can be found by clicking on this column under the opinion tab at ncadvertiser.com.

Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling.

Below are links to information about safety, the beneficial cultural values that cycling and being green impart on a community, and a two-mile loop in New Canaan:

• Bike New York  http://www.bikenewyork.org/rides/fbbt/history.html

• New Haven Century http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2014408 • Microbike USA|Accion http://www.microbikeusa.com/home.html • The End of Poverty http://www.earth.columbia.edu/pages/endofpoverty/index • Two-mile New Canaan route** http://www.2milechallenge.com/map.php?address=198%20Elm%20Street,%20New%20Canaan,%20CT%2006840 • Streetfilms: Return of the Bike Box! http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/06/27/streetfilms-return-of-bike-box/ • How to Not Get Hit by Cars http://www.bicyclesafe.com/ • Two wheels http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/wellbeing/story/0,,2287337,00.html • Streetstyle & Bike Advocacy from the World’s Cycling Capital (Normal people in normal clothes on normal bikes http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/ • Copenhagenize [the planet] – LIFE IN THE WORLD’S CYCLING CAPITAL (Debunking the flat country myth) http://www.copenhagenize.com/2007/11/debunking-flat-countrybike-country-myth.html  • The New Yorker – A Reporter at Large (The Island in the Wind: A Danish community’s victory over carbon emissions) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_kolbert/?currentPage=all) * Enter your home address into this site & find out what locations are within a 2-mile bicycle ride of your home! ** This shaded area in this map represents a two mile radius from the New Canaan Metro-North RR station at 198 Elm Street 

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., MAY 1, 2008  7A

Eco Man

Now is the time for bikes on trains

By Richard M. Stowe

In his Talking Transportation column Fit people on trains before bikes, Mr. Cameron rages against the “pro-bike lobby,” which he describes as “well organized, very vocal and relentless.” “Fit people” revolves around a string of assertions and four alleged facts.  Regarding fact No. 4, Mr. Cameron admits confusion; he’s not sure if its fact, or opinion.

Cameron: “What is it about “bikers” that they feel their rights trump those of other commuters?” 

Stowe: Cyclists didn’t create the crowding on the New Haven Line, nor are we seeking to prevent anyone from boarding Metro-North trains, whether with a set of golf clubs, or a baby stroller at any hour, or on any day.

Cyclists aren’t out to squelch the rights of other commuters, what we’re seeking are equal rights, a very pro-American notion.

It’s the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council that Mr. Cameron leads, which took an injudicious position at its March 19^th meeting by striking all, but 13 words of a resolution primarily written to encourage Metro-North Railroad “to safely and securely accommodate bicycles on New Haven Line train cars.”

Cameron: Bikers have no more “right” to bring bicycles on crowded rush-hour trains than I have to haul aboard a steamer trunk. 

Stowe: This statement implies that steamer trunks, or their modern variants – suitcases with rollers, are prohibited at peak hours, but they’re not, nor should they be, but bicycles are!

Deconstructing Mr. Cameron’s facts:

Cameron: (No. 1) There’s no room for bikes at rush hours.

Stowe: Not all rush hour trains are equally crowded at all stations; the extent of crowding is time and location dependent.  When a peak hour train is less crowded, the revenue of a cyclist’s fare benefits Metro-North. 

Cameron: Heck, we don’t have seats for paying passengers, let alone bicycles. 

Stowe: In his column Saving the Bar Cars, Mr. Cameron, a self-confessed teetotaler, sings praises about efforts spearheaded by alcoholic-drinks-on-trains advocate Terri Cronin and her commuter council posse to lobby for bar cars, which he describes as analogous to Metro-North’s holy grail.  But Mr. Cameron fails to inform his readers of the trade-off: a loss of a minimum of 72 seats per M-8 bar car. 

According to C-DOT officials, ten M-8 bar cars are on order; that’s a loss of 720 seats.  Mr. Cameron’s thinking: a seat sacrificed for alcoholic beverage consumption is good, but a seat lost for a bicycle, a vehicle for invigorating exercise to and from train stations, is unconscionable? 

With seats already removed, perhaps peak-hour bike parking can be integrated into bar cars.  Drinks aren’t served in the a.m. peak.

Cameron: And the M-8 cars that are coming won’t change that crowding for many, many years given annual ridership increases averaging five percent.

Stowe: 380 M-8 cars plus 132 M-2 cars rehabbed in a “critical-systems-replacement” program, equals a forty percent increase in train cars and at least a thirty percent increase in seats.

Cameron: (No. 2) Bikes are already allowed on non-rush hour trains.  And they’re carried for free.  So quit your whining.

Stowe: We’re not whining.  Section 66 of New York State Railroad Law, to quote the New York Times, mandates “free transportation of bicycles as baggage.” Section 66 states “no such passenger shall be required to crate, cover, or otherwise protect any such bicycle,” nor does it permit peak hour restrictions.

Cameron: (No. 3) if you’re heading for New York City, you don’t need a bike.  Mass transit is plentiful, so leave your Cannondale in Cannondale.

Stowe: For intrastate travel in Connecticut, where mass transit is infrequent and doesn’t deliver the “last mile,” bicycle travel in tandem with trains is essential.

Cameron: (No. 4) I don’t think there’s any demand for bikes among city-bound commuters.

Stowe: Caltrain officials said the same thing before instituting its 24-7 bikes-on-trains program, but in the San Jose to San Francisco corridor cyclists travel to and from all stations. 

In 2007 a record breaking 2300 bikes-on-trains customers boarded Caltrain daily. That accounts for 6.2 percent of Caltrain riders.  What’s good for California in this case is good for Connecticut. 

With price of oil cresting 120 dollars per barrel never has there been a better time for Metro-North to accommodate bicycles during peak hours.

Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Cameron’s Fit people on trains before bikes ran in the New Canaan Advertiser on April 24.  The same day the commentary also appeared in print in the Darien Times (The facts about bikes on trains) and Greenwich Post (Keep bikes off trains).  The commentary appeared on April 21 as “Bicycle on Trains?” in Talking Transportation (http://talkingtransportation.blogspot.com) - Mr. Cameron’s blog.  

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, APRIL, 17, 2008 PAGE 7A

Eco Man

Spring brings green efforts

Easter Sunday, March 23, was the first holiday to fall at the outset of spring 2008.  I celebrated that brisk, sunny day with a bicycle ride from New Canaan to an unnamed neighborhood south of Chinatown, south of the Williamsburg Bridge.  Easter Sunday – the unofficial start of the cycling season.   

My destination was Broadway East, where I would feast on what turned out to be an unquestionably un-Easter Sunday-like dinner. 

After bicycling down Old Stamford Road I traversed a subdued U.S. 1 to New Rochelle.  There I turned left on Echo Road and right on Pelham Road.  That allowed me to ride through Pelham Bay Park and down Westchester Avenue. I entered Manhattan on the Third Avenue Bridge, which led me on a fast ride down Second Avenue. 

Broadway East is a bright, new, upscale eatery (it opened April 7) with a palate that is decidedly low on the food chain.  Our server, Annabelle, was 20-something who sheepishly revealed she was from Fairfield County (Greenwich, Darien and Wilton) and had boarded at Westminster School in Simsbury.  Annabelle, who traveled in Africa and beyond, while pursuing pre-med at University of Edinburgh, shared with us the restaurant’s philosophy and her favorite dishes on the menu.

After dinner I bicycled back to Grand Central Terminal and with my bicycle boarded the train back to New Canaan.  Fortunately, Easter Sunday isn’t one of the ten holidays each year in which Metro-North policies dictate that bicycles are prohibited on its trains.

The downside of those arbitrary restrictions (especially prohibiting boarding bicycles at peak hours) came to the attention of outgoing Metro-North President Peter Cannito on March 26 at the annual President’s Forum.  That evening nearly a dozen cyclists expressed their outrage at Metro-North’s recent announcement to continue its current restrictive policies toward bicycles and not include bicycle parking on 300 new M-8 cars even though cyclists had been repeatedly assured that parking would be provided.  A forty percent increase in the New Haven Line fleet (380 MNR M-8 cars plus critical systems replacement rehab of 132 M-2 cars), cyclists argue, is the perfect time to integrate bikes on to trains.  Add climate change and potential future fuel shortages into the mix and agency-sanctioned bikes-on-trains-at-peak-hours certainly makes sense.

Of course, other issues arise when it comes to climate change.  

New Canaan resident and longtime Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp posits solutions in “Earth: the Sequel – the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming,” which he co-authored with Miriam Horn. Consider it to be a 21^st Century update to “Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School Project,” the 1979 energy strategy primer edited by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin (Mr. Yergin’s 1991 tome “The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” is a great read.)  “Earth: The Sequel” opens with an easy-to-bite read into the research, resource and production challenges facing Silicon Valley entrepreneurs transitioning a solar future into the solar decade.

The 2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change (http://research.yale.edu/envirocenter/) will take place at Yale University on. On Friday April 18^th, Governors M. Jodi Rell. Jon Corzine, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Eduardo Bours (Sonora, Mexico), Martin Bursick (Czech Republic) and Premier Jean Charest (Quebec) will convene in a 10:30 a.m. plenary session open to the public at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street.  At 1:30 p.m. a signing will take place and at 2:00 p.m. Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will give a public address.

The 2008 conferences serves as a centennial anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Conference of Governors, which is credited as launching the modern conservation movement.

Theodore Roosevelt, IV will pay tribute to his great-great grandfather’s legacy in a private ceremony on Thursday evening

Gifford Pinchot, who in 1900 founded the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the centennial event host) and later himself served as Governor of Pennsylvania, organized the 1908 conference. 

Thirty years have passed since Fred Krupp founded New Haven-based Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE.)  On Sunday April 20th one of his protégés, Don Strait, CFE’s current executive director will address a Earth Ministries gathering at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.  The talk – a primer on past, present and future Connecticut Fund for the Environment initiatives – will take place in the church’s Library Room at 11:30 a.m.  That will be preceded by an organic coffee, organic cookies hour in Morrill Hall at 11:00 a.m.  Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Keep it green.

Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe

Orchestrated Deception

The Center for Public Integrity recently released Iraq – The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, a project (publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=home&context=overview&id=945), which documents 935 false statements made by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and six other top administration officials in an easily accessible database. 

A crescendo of false statements commenced circa August 26, 2002 when Vice-President Cheney falsely declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.  There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” 

Elizabeth de la Vega referenced that false statement in her book United States v. George W. Bush, et al.  She asserts that those false statements conjointly constitute a “conspiracy to defraud” Congress and Americans.  She argues that committing fraud is a crime and President Bush has committed fraud. Article II Section 4 of the United States Constitution states that “The President, Vice President” and administration officials are subject to “Impeachment” when they commit “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler’s online petition (wexlerwantshearings.com) calls for commencing impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney.  On that site Congressman Wexler joins fellow House Judiciary Committee members Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) as co-authors of an opinion piece outlining reasons for holding impeachment hearings.  

Joining the call for impeachment hearings is 60-year old college professor John Nirenberg (marchinmyname.org/) who recently completed a six-week 485-mile walk from Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass. to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in the Capitol.

I learned of those impeachment efforts when I attended a theatric performance entitled “A Question of Impeachment: Trial by Theater – They Took It Off the Table So We Put It on the Stage” (a cheeky reference to Speaker Pelosi’s 2006 election year proclamation) at the Culture Project in So Ho.  The highlights of the multi-part performance, which took place from November 18^th to December 16^th, are on the Culture Project’s website (cultureproject.org/). Ed. Note: currently accessed through this link: (http://cultureproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62)

The performance included many accomplished individuals representing a broad spectrum of American cultural and political interests. 

New Canaan’s own Lewis H. Lapham, a great-grandson of the founder of Texaco, participated in the political theater. I spoke with Mr. Lapham during intermission.  The Yale University graduate, author and editor of Harper’s magazine from 1976 to 2006, drew me out to Mercer Street where he lit up a cigarette while reminiscing about living at Waveny, then known as the Lapham estate.

Participants also included former New York State District 16 Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who at the age of 31 became the youngest woman to serve in the House of Representatives.  She served on the House Judiciary Committee and participated in the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon during the summer of 1974.

“A Question of Impeachment” concluded with a performance by Jackson Browne, a gifted folk-rock-singer-songwriter (his songs have been performed by the Byrds, the Eagles, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and others).

I was drawn into “A Question of Impeachment” by the opportunity to see Bruce Fein, a noted constitutional lawyer and 1972 graduate of Harvard Law School.  A resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, a columnist for The Washington Times and a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Fein asserts, among other charges, that Vice President Cheney “summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.” 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, President of Waterkeeper Alliance, senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council and a renowned environmental advocate, details Cheney’s role and actions in the Energy Task Force in Chapter 6: “Blueprint for Plunder” of his 2004 book “Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country & Hijacking Our Democracy.”

Mr. Fein penned a commentary entitled “Impeach Cheney: the Vice President has run amok and must be stopped” (slate.com/id/2169292/) on Slate on June 27, 2007.  It may have been this opinion (plus his testimony about presidential signing statements in front of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, also on June 27) that likely led to a July 13, 2007 “Bill Moyers Journal” interview on PBS television.  That show in turn became the inspiration for “A Question of Impeachment.”

In the Slate commentary, Mr. Fein opines that Vice President Cheney has overtly and willingly exercised an unconstitutional taking of power from the President.  He contrasts the duties accorded the Office of Vice President by the 12^th Amendment and the powers Vice President Cheney has taken beyond what is allowed by Section 3 of the 25^th Amendment.  Mr. Fein refers the reader to a four part series in The Washington Post titled “Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency” (blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/).  Of notable interest is the final installment “Leaving No Tracks” (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html), which focuses on Vice President Cheney’s influence on environmental policy. 

Keep it green.

Mr. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group.

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY JANUARY 24, 2008 6A

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe

Warming warrant greater attention

Dateline: January 11, 2008

Location: New Canaan

Time: 2:00 p.m.

Temperature: 55

Average January High: 38

Average January Low: 19

Record January Low: -18

I know what you’re thinking: What is the record January high?  Well, that was set last year (2007): 69.

Try to imagine a new record low being set this year.

The latest climate change research reveals that Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously thought. 

60 minutes re-broadcast its hour-long “The Age of Warming” on Sunday evening.  It’s well worth the time to read the transcript, or watch the video at the Age of Warming link, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/30/60minutes/main2631210.shtml.

Warmer winters is a growing concern among Olympic skiers and professional hockey players, such as Andrew Ference, the Boston Bruins defenseman, who is seeking a commitment from the entire National Hockey League to go carbon neutral. 

Winter athletes have joined concerned citizens in requesting that “our leaders (to) freeze and reduce carbon emissions now” in an online petition (stopglobalwarming.org).

A national organizing effort called Focus the Nation (focusthenation.org/) is assembling a mass teach-in on global warming solutions for America at schools and churches in communities across the United States on January 31.  Focus the Nation website lists New Canaan Country School and St Luke’s School as participants.  At New Canaan Country School fourth graders will talk about global warming at their weekly assembly and at home will ask each one of their families to switch at least one fixture from incandescent to compact fluorescent.  Upper school students (seventh through ninth grades) will screen “The 2% Solution” on January 30.

Another voice calling for greater focus on global warming is the League of Conservation Voters.

It asks: In 2007 how many times did Sunday talk show hosts – Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer and Chris Wallace – mention global warming?

Answer: 3 plus 24 global warming related questions (12 by Tim Russert, 5 by George Stephanopoulos, 4 by Chris Wallace, 3 by Wolf Blitzer).

Question: How many presidential campaign questions did these 5 hosts ask in 2007?

Answer: 2484

According to Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters these statistics were culled by reading the transcripts of every one of the five Sunday morning talk shows and every debate that one of the aforementioned journalists was associated with in 2007.

That was in 2007, the year the International Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize!  And, let’s not forget that Vice-President Al Gore, a former presidential nominee, won the Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Question: Who asked those questions in which they mentioned global warming?

Answer: Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday asked two questions and Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked one question.

Question: Who didn’t mention global warming in any of their questions? 

Answer: Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, asked zero out of 238 questions; Clinton protégé and former Clinton senior advisor on policy and strategy, George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” asked zero out of the 726; Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” asked zero out of 755 questions.

The League of Conservation Voters believes global warming warrants more coverage by these Sunday talk show hosts. 

If you agree that greater attention is warranted, the League of Conservation Voters has set up an online petition for you to register your support: whataretheywaitingfor.com/

This is how the remaining Presidential candidates, who serve, or have served in Congress, line up in terms of the League of Conservation Voters lifetime voting record rating on environmental issues.

Senator Barack Obama                         96%

Representative Dennis Kuchinich         92%

Senator Hillary Clinton                         90%

Senator John Edwards                          59%

Representative Ron Paul                      30%

Senator John McCain                            26%

Senator Fred Thompson                      12%

The candidate’s positions on energy and global warming are spelled out at lcv.org/voterguide/

Keep it green. 

Mr. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2008 3A

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe

King’s environmental legacy celebrated at Yale Sunday

Today as I write it is January 15, 2008.  That would have been the 79^th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. if he were alive.  At this time last year (2007), I briefly met his son Martin Luther King, III, a human rights advocate, at the Riverside Church in New York, where nearly thirty years earlier on April 4, 1967 Mr. King gave what was then characterized as a controversial speech – “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” 

As we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. this coming weekend I invite you to join me in attending the 7^th Annual Arnold J. Alderman Lecture (http://www.peabody.yale.edu/events/mlkday.html#lecture) at the Yale Peabody Museum on Sunday January 20^th at 2 p.m.  This year’s speaker is Jerome Ringo, the President of the Apollo Alliance (http://www.apolloalliance.org/).  His lecture is entitled “Environmental Injustice: The Other Inconvenient Truth.” 

The lecture is the keynote during a two-day tribute at the Peabody Museum to the slain civil rights leader called “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy of Environmental and Social Justice.”

Keep it green.

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2008

Eco Man

By Richard M. Stowe 

As December gives way to January, New Years Resolutions chatter has been upended by discussions about the leading presidential candidates, the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. 

There’s the intrigue generated by Huma Abedin, Senator Hillary Clinton’s supernatural presidential campaign’s “traveling chief of staff,” who was featured in the August issue of Vogue. 

Then there’s the cell phone calls taken on stage by Rudy Giuliani from his third wife Judith, whom he met in 1999 at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. 

If you plan to vote in the 23-state February 5th super primary and you would like to choose a presidential candidate whose views and values align most closely with your own, visit the site http://www.glassbooth.org/.

From a climate change perspective, keep in mind that only three candidates participated in the first ever-global warming debates in November: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich.

Thursday January 3rd (the same day as the Iowa Caucus) presents an opportunity for New Canaan drivers to learn about modern roundabout design as an alternative to traffic signals. Part I of an Interactive Web Seminar will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Board Room of Town Hall (2nd floor).

And at 10 a.m. (after a 9:30 a.m. coffee) on January 8th (the same day as the New Hampshire primary) George Hawkins will give a must see presentation at Darien Community Association 274 Middlesex Road entitled Cowboys, Spacemen and a Theory of Almost Everything: How Responding to Global Warming Connects to Traffic Jams, Housing Prices, Property Taxes and the Flood in My Creek. 

Mr. Hawkins is a 1983 summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Currently Mr. Hawkins is Director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Environment (http://ddoe.dc.gov/ddoe/site/default.asp?ddoeNav=|31003|)

When I met Mr. Hawkins a few years ago at a New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Miami, Florida he was serving as Executive Director of New Jersey Future (http://www.njfuture.org/), a smart growth non-profit advocacy organization. 

Prior to that he was executive director of Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. Since 1999, he has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches environmental law and policy for the Princeton Environmental Institute.

Happy New Year! Let’s keep it green.

NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2007 PAGE 7A

Eco Man

A holiday for Rachel Carson

By Richard M. Stowe

Born on May 27, 1907 to a nature-loving mom, the youngest of three children, in a simple, quaint farmhouse near Springdale, Pennsylvania, 15 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, an area now covered by modern artifacts such as the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills and Pennsylvania Turnpike, Rachel Carson, in her 56 years, grew to be one of the America’s most influential citizens.

Ms. Carson attended what is today known as Chatham University, just twelve miles from her birthplace.  She studied English, Creative Writing, majored in marine biology and graduated magna cum laude in 1929.  On scholarship at John Hopkins University, she received a masters of arts degree in zoology in 1932.

Hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio script, Ms. Carson became the first woman to take and pass the civil service test and second hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full time professional position.  In 1936, Rachel Carson was a junior aquatic biologist; in 1949 she rose to editor-in-chief for all U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service publications.

In 1951, Oxford University Press published Ms. Carson’s first commercially successful book.  “The Sea Around Us” remained on The New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks, won the 1952 National Book Award and was subsequently adapted as an hour-long Oscar-winning documentary film.

With newfound financial security, Rachel Carson became a full-time writer.  She summered north of Portland, Maine in a seaside cottage she purchased on Southport Island, the beach and tide pools of which became the subject of her 1955 book, “The Edge of the Sea.”

But it was “Silent Spring,” published in 1962, in which Rachel Louise Carson summoned the public’s conscience in a manner that no American female author has done since Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published 110 years earlier.

In January 1958, the Boston Herald published a letter by Olga Owens Huckins in which she expressed outrage at aerial spraying of pesticides over her family’s private two-acre bird sanctuary in Duxbury, Mass., in 1957.  The goal of spraying was to kill mosquitoes; the lethal result – many dead birds.  Ms. Carson attributes that letter, forwarded to her by Ms. Huckins, as her deciding factor to write “Silent Spring.”

It was while writing Silent Spring, a book that criticizes the reckless application of pesticides, that Ms. Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In a speech to the National Women’s Press Club on December 4, 1962, Ms. Rachel Carson said, “Early in the summer as soon as the first installment of the book appeared in The New Yorker, public reaction to Silent Spring was reflected first in a tidal wave of letters – letters to Congressman, letters to government agencies, to newspapers …”

But Ms. Carson also acknowledged pesticide industry and trade association-sponsored “masters of invective” who personally attacked her and her work in an “unquiet autumn” public relations strategy “designed to protect and repair the somewhat battered image of pesticides.”

The language in Silent Spring was prophetic; read the opening paragraph of the closing chapter.

Whether you reflect on the emerging pollinator crisis or challenge of climate change, her words are timeless.

In December 2006, a list of the 100 most influential Americans of all time appeared in The Atlantic Magazine story entitled “They Made America.”  A panel of ten eminent historians ranked Rachel Carson number 39.  Among women, only Elizabeth Cady Stanton (30) and Susan B. Anthony (38) placed higher.

The premiere Environmental Protection Agency conference room is the Rachel Carson Room, but she deserves greater recognition.

As the centennial of her birth passes on Sunday, it’s time for Congress to dedicate her birthday as a Federal holiday, a first for a woman or an environmentalist. Her birthday would be celebrated on either Friday or Tuesday of Memorial Day weekend creating the nation’s first four-day holiday weekend.

Richard M. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group. Prior to that he served six years as a board member for the Environmental Council of Stamford, and advocates for improving conditions for commuter rail and bicycling via Rail Transportation Excellence Coalition. He received a bachelor of science degree in environmental science from Marlboro College in 1980.