Burnin’

People tend to think of South Florida, and The Everglades in particular, as a swamp. But it’s not a swamp. It’s a massive river system that begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state.

Last week Darby, my mom and I got to see the river up close in the Shark Valley section of Everglades National Park. The river and what’s in it—birds, alligators, turtles and fish, all easily visible despite the throngs of camera-toting international tourists. Darby kept a handwritten record in her notebook of the scores of endangered wood storks, the anhingas drying their wings, pied-billed grebes moving through the water, blue herons and egrets fishing, and roseate spoonbills on the wing.

We also learned that Everglades National Park, established in 1947, is the third largest national park in the lower 48 states, covering 1.5 million acres. And that the sup-tropical region is home to six distinct habitats: hammock, mangrove, pineland, sawgrass, slough, and marine.

The Everglades is a great place to reconnect with nature, but the ecosystem is also the sole source of drinking water for more than six million people in South Florida. Hence, the idea that The Everglades needs protective care, now more than ever, is without question.

Contact Friends of the Everglades, the environmental group founded by writer and Everglades activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969. Or reach out to Everglades Foundation, another group doing important work in the area.

For the past four years I’ve been keeping track of the various trips I take during the year as a way to celebrate (and make note of) the people and places I had the good fortune to visit.

This year I spent at least one night in the following places (other than at home in Portland, OR):

• Seattle, WA*
• Brownsville, OR*
• Carlton, OR
• Omaha, NE
• Ashford, WA
• Union, WA
• Medford, OR
• Miami, FL
• Marco Island, FL

*indicates more than one visit

Also see: 2006 | 2007 | 2008

Activists seeking “Climate Justice” have been methodically protesting in Copenhagen during the two-week U.N.-sponsored summit on climate change, in order to push delegates and leaders toward real solutions instead of the usual rhetoric-filled nothingness.

According to The New York Times, the protests went from peaceful to heated today.

In Wednesday’s demonstrations, protesters began massing north of the center shortly before noon and pressed into a tight line of riot police blocking access to the hall. Some of the officers wielded truncheons against the chanting, shoving protesters in a close-order scrum. After forcibly removing protesters from a truck parked in an intersection outside the Bella Center, police in blue vans kept moving the protesters backwards, nearly pushing some into a watery marsh.

As the police vans advanced, skirmishes broke out with protesters who formed human chains and chanted their commitment to nonviolence and to helping people in parts of the world that they said would be hardest hit by climate change. A number of protesters encouraged individual groups to keep pushing against the police.

Apparently, 250 people were arrested today in these “skirmishes” with police. Like the protests around the WTO meetings in Seattle and elsewhere, it’s a hard core minority that seeks to escalate the confrontation. But I don’t believe anti-capitalist sentiment is a minority opinion. People are tired of powerful interests simply running people into the ground.

Mette Hermansen, 27, studying to train teachers, and a member of the International Socialists of Denmark, told the Times, “In the Bella Center they are not discussing solutions to climate change. They are discussing how rich countries can continue emitting and how to sell that to the public. We are not preventing leaders from making solutions but encouraging them to make solutions.”

Bonus click: I also wrote about “Hopenhagen,” the U.N.’s effort to rebrand the famous Danish city during the Conference, on AdPulp.

NPR is running a story on cargo bikes that features two Portland companies in the cargo bike business—Metrofiets and Clever Cycles.

The piece also introduces Portland mom, Carie Weisenbach-Folz, who picks up her two kids, ages 5 and 2, from school. “But instead of loading them into the usual minivan, she’s uses a cargo bicycle.”

Try that in Dallas, Missy.

It’s interesting to note that the majority of Metrofiets’ customers aren’t families—they’re businesses. Metrofiets has built a custom cargo bicycle for a floor refinisher to carry his sander, and another for a brewery to transport their beer kegs. Phillip Ross of Metrofiets says businesses “can absolutely get rid of one of their fleet vehicles, and use one of these bikes, within a certain geographical area around their shop.”

Today, 750,000 Americans bike to work–a 50 percent jump since 2000. There are no estimates yet on the number of cargo bikes on the street.