Climate Ride California, was a success!  Keegan Eisenstadt, ClearSky CEO, and Devin Trainor, ClearSky’s new intern, cycled together as part of the first California Climate Ride.  Over 100 riders rolled along the northern coast of California as part of a fundraising bike ride for climate change awareness and bike advocacy.

Here Devin reports on his experience:

It took a full week of dedication and extreme logistics but we pulled it off!  The sleep deprivation and sweat was well worth it.  Each rider raised $2,400 for the event.  This money was donated to 1 Sky, Rails to Trails Conservancy, and Green America.  Riders were cyclists, non-cyclists, educators, students, business people, advocates, young, and old.  The ride was a forum for creating climate action connections through an untraditional platform – the bicycle.   The bicycle took us through the impressive coastal redwoods.  Cycling 320 miles created a common experience for all of us to struggle through.  As we were pushing up hills, a comparative simile came to mind of the climate policy struggle our nation has been pushing on Capitol Hill.  We endured these long hills and full days to contemplate, connect, raise money, and raise awareness.

The ride is best summarized by day 3:  A 100 mile day.

• A 7am departure,
• A 10 hour ride,
• Devoured every edible part of a pasta dinner,
• Listened to captivating lectures from University of Pennsylvania’s, Dan Garofalo, and an internationally acclaimed photographer, Chris Jordan,
• With images of decaying seabirds and colorful plastics piles where their stomachs should have been, the riders set up camp and go to sleep while the staff summoned energy to plan the entire next day.

As part of my ClearSky internship, I am positioned to gain a foot into the complex world of current climate action.  The issues are immense and often intimidating.  Educating oneself goes as far as your mind is willing to participate, then what?  Information does not act on its own, it must be translated into action.  Climate Ride is one approach, and it all adds up!

Three re-posts from Worldchanging caught ClearSky’s eye this week.  While we can’t see our greenhouse gas emissions, artists and writers continue to use their disciplines to reveal the impacts of our energy use.

Photograph: Black River Productions/Mitch Epstein, 2009

Artist Mitch Epstein:  Altamont Pass wind farm, California, 2007.  He also photographed many of the things that the Earth’s most energy-profligate nation does with that power – such as build golf courses in the desert.

Writer Eric De Place:  Equates US CO2 emissions to a BP-size leak every 3 hours.  BP’s Gulf oil spill is about five million barrels of oil total.  Compared to what the United States emits in greenhouse gas emissions, our carbon pollution is so huge that it’s like taking that five million barrels of oil, burning every drop of it, and then doing the same thing again every 2 hours and 41 minutes.

Photograph: Screenshot from Save Power

An advertising campaign used by the New South Wales government:  Utilizes the black balloon image, one black balloon contains 50g of carbon pollution, as part of it’s Save Power advertising campaign.

While ClearSky Climate Solutions found these posts on Worldchanging (see linked photos), Worldchanging found the original posts on We Make Money Not Art, Sightlines Daily Score, and Save Power.