We liked to ride our bicycles - we like to ride our bikes! (From Bucks Free Press)

The Marlow Carbon Cycle Ride n Park celebration

7:33pm Monday 26th October 2009

• Print
• Email
• Comments(26)

Well my opinion -and I’m the lucky one writing this blog- is that Saturday’s Marlow Carbon Cycle Ride n Park was a big community success - all round. Some 175 amazing people took part, despite rain, despite half term, despite football etc. We welcomed a few intrepid elderly, many brave youngsters, and some very young! I salute everyone who cycled. For some it wasn’t easy. We got a lot of brave people that day, some maybe braving their own personal demons. And some cool dudes just coming along for the ride! I am going to ‘wheel’ off some thank-yous and some expressions of appreciation and gratitude:

For starters, what a great bunch YOU were. I wasn’t sure you’d make it, in the rain, but you did. Thank you.

Weren’t the ride Marshalls good, and encouraging and clear in their direction.

Weren’t the singers good, and the speakers, Liz MacKean, Mayor Neil Marshall and Willi Moore.

Wasn’t the mass 350 photo good – enjoy! You are being beamed up in Times Square New York!

Wasn’t the weather good? (Has Dave lost the plot?) No it could have been so much worse.

Weren’t our sponsors and partners and helpers good: Good Energy, Marlow Council, Marlow FM, Saddle Safari, Crowne Plaza, Energy Saving Trust, Marlow Chamber, all our local businesses who helped with posters and leaflets, all our local schools, clubs, churches, faith groups, halls...

It’s scary trying to list all who helped, because, basically – all of you did. YOU are amazing. Marlow’s energy really is in its community. No one refused do their little bit to help.

What an amazingly lucky lot we all are. You may think by ‘we’ I mean Marlow. Well I don’t. I mean we in the UK. We are not scrabbling for food scraps, fighting guerrillas, coping with drought, disease, extreme weather or dictatorships. We are, generally speaking, a lucky lot.

Every day, delivered to our doorstep (metaphorically) we get 25 pints of oil equivalent:- 25 times a ‘pinta a person a day’ those of you who remember the old milk adverts! (25 is the overall UK average, the better off can easily quadruple this figure. Some habit huh?) We burn it nonchalantly, mostly unknowingly, in our daily routine, in various invisible bonfires. (Inside cars, airplanes, power stations, boilers, ovens, factories etc) perhaps hoping the climate sceptics are right - and that the 30 extra kilos of carbon dioxide ‘smoke’ a day, that results from these fossil fuel fires doesn’t really do any lasting damage to our common finite atmosphere.

It has been said that if CO2 were purple humans would be very scared by now – the sky would have changed colour - during our lifetimes - with the accumulated ‘smoke’ – but it’s colourless so that’s ok isn’t it? Never mind that that background CO2 when I was born was 318ppm, when I left college it was 338, when we moved to Marlow it was 358, and its 388 now. Oh and for the 1000 years prior to us staring burning fossil fuel in any quantity, the industrial revolution, it was rock steady at 280ppm.

The point, and the number 350 in the 350.org campaign, is that 350 is the likely safe upper limit. Yes we are at 388 now, we have overshot, but as the website explains, it’s not over until it’s over.

Now where was I? Oh yes how lucky we are! Oxfam’s latest campaign makes it plain that millions of people are already suffering from climate change; it’s not a ‘future’ thing any more, for many people. In UK, on the other hand, we are lucky, as climate impacts won’t hit us hard yet.

Here’s another one. We are the luckiest generation ever to be born. We are the ones that get to decide – collectively – whether to take any action – to quit our current carbon heavy habits - cut the carbon from our lifestyles - and bit by bit extinguish the mass fossil fuel blow-out-sale (every drop must go) the once in 100s million years fossil bonfire.... or.... fiddle on with habits and business as usual - and seal our species fate. Yes it’s that big sadly. Quite a downer really - no?

But wait – you, we, everybody on the 24th October got on our bikes and did something – on the 350 Global Day of Action - and so sent a signal round the world – literally- that we are ready to look again - at how we lead our lives. That we are ready to resolve to start to do what needs doing - to get the children’s planet back on a viable path, for not just our children, and our community, but globally too.

If you are in any doubt about the science, remember how Liz MacKean explained that the BBC has put aside the old 50:50 "balanced" reporting now - because the science is clear and unequivocal.

Do we feel lucky? Is there any point trying to turn the supertanker round. Is it too late? Well we are all writing history as we speak. What bigger privilege than taking part in “The Great Turning Times” as its been described, and achieving Transition, from where we are (going headlong off a cliff), to a place with a community that is resilient, and powered not by wasting precious oil, but by local peoples ingenuity, creativity, warmth and compassion.

Liz also told the crowd of an overheard remark on arrival at the park, when one of the younger riders turned to her mother and said: "Have we saved the planet now, Mum?"

“Not yet little one, but we will. Whatever it takes, we will do it, I promise!” would be my reply.

What about you?

Anyone interested in hearing more about the aims of Transition Town Marlow, 350.org, and/or getting involved, is cordially invited to a social event in the Pugin Rooms, St Peter St, Marlow on Saturday,14th November at 7:30pm. Please come.

www.transitionmarlow.org