Toban Black

Here is a small set of photos from a recent critical mass bike rally here in London -

Mike also took this video as he arrived at the end of the ride.

Jim also has sent more photos.

I would have taken at least a couple more photos if I didn’t have camera battery problems.

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This ride was linked with a climate justice day of action — which you can read about at the end of this Ecojustice Declaration.
(Here are ways those links were made locally.)

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I was one of the co-writers behind this action report -
“London, Ontario actions against Fossil Fools”

Most of the photos are from me. (The ones that I posted are here and here)

There were a various actions against the tar sands that day. People out in London, England even joined the action.  Here in Canada, RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada) was the main Fossil Fool target. That bank is the leading financier behind the tar sands.

Compared with other local campaigning against RBC tar sands financing here, there was a lot more tension at the protest at the first RBC bank building we went to on the Fossil Fools day of action. Just leafletting inside an RBC building has been enough to get us into a confrontation (of sorts) with police though. Security staff and police officers always are at hand to defend corporations like RBC by preventing people from voicing concerns on company property.

That said, I still don’t appreciate conflicts (or potential conflicts) with police and security staff. That sort of excitement doesn’t work for me, and I’m generally not hostile towards police officers and security workers.  There are a lot of problems police/security systems — given how they are bound up with a much wider status quo — but I don’t find targetting police and security workers to be a productive way of confronting those problems.  We’ve got to find ways to change and replace the mainstream systems that employ those people. If there are no dirty banks (for instance), then the police and security forces can’t defend them.

[In this post I am following up the previous one, which also was about health and mobility issues]

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A patch that was made by Rachel, a local artist

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A Streetfilms video -
“Stop the pollution, pick a solution” (from July)

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“No Impact Man” makes some points that should be more obvious -

“If you walk instead of drive, you use more calories.

Walking and cycling is healthier for people than driving. Walking and cycling is also healthier for the planet than driving. Use cars less and you get to reduce global warming and be less fat. What an amazingly wonderful synergy.”

(Obviously he is referring to the Earth’s biosphere when he uses the word “planet.” The thing is, that “planet” language implies that people don’t live in the biosphere — which just isn’t the case.)

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A sign that I used to display on my bike during critical mass rallies

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A lone cyclist — surrounded by automobiles
in London, Ontario, Canada

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As I noted in a previous post, our streets are battlegrounds. The automobile drivers definitely have the upper-hand in these battles -

A post on the Baltimore Spokes site -
“Half of traffic fatalities are not in cars (in June)

Elana Schor on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“WHO report highlights global health risk of traffic” (in June)

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Automobile branding

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Little drivers

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A car advertisement on the back of a local bus

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Andy Rowell on the Oil Change blog -
“Electric Vehicles May Increase CO2”
(I think it’s too much of a stretch to say that electric vehicles are “all the rage”; but some people definitely are looking toward them as ’solutions.’)

Brad Aaron on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“Do Your Part: Buy an Audi, Drive Fast” (in October)
(Evidently the author is using the word “transit” to refer to mass transit — such as buses.)

Fred Pearce in The Guardian -
“BMW’s ActiveHybrid X6 Accelerates Nonsense About High-performance, Low-emission Cars” (in September)

Brad Aaron on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“Ad Nauseam: Toyota’s (Passive-Aggressive) Ransom Note to America” (in October)

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Here are some related posts on this blog -
http://tobanblack.net/blog/?tag=automobiles

[In this post I basically am following up another one titled "Waves of greenwash"]

Body Shop marketing in a mall

Shop for The Earth!
Buy from the Planetary Guardians!

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Exerpts from an article by Stan Cox in CounterPunch -
“The Political Economics of Greenwashing: Green as a Blackjack Table” (in 2008)

“In their desperation to keep the American economy afloat, government and business will be tossing overboard any proposals for real environmental protection. No time for such romantic foolishness when there are investments to be protected.”

“Not that we won’t be hearing about the environment; indeed, the next [commercial expansion] spurt, if it comes, is likely to be clothed in a green as green as the felt on a blackjack table.”

“For more than 30 years, The Body Shop and its CEO, self-styled anti-capitalist capitalist Anita Roddick, avidly cultivated a corporate image as pioneers of high business ethics. But The Body Shop has been dismissed by critics as no more than a world leader in pale-green consumerism.”

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In London, Ontario, Canada

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Blaine Harden (in this article — late last year) -

“In the United States, with the exception of a handful of cities … car-centric transportation policies and suburban sprawl continue to make bicycle commuting rare, arduous and relatively dangerous. Although millions of Americans recreate on bikes, they ride them for just 0.4 percent of their trips to work, according to the U.S. Census.”

“In recent months, bike shops across much of the United States have been flooded with new customers fed up with high gasoline prices.”

“Yet without major changes in U.S. transportation policy and infrastructure, an earnest desire to save money on gas is not enough to turn American bike owners into everyday cyclists who ride to work, according to [some] urban planners, transportation experts and bicycle company executives.”

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Some relevant statistics -
- According to a 2009 survey, 88% of Americans consider cars necessities (source)
- “Canadians and Americans use bikes for fewer than one in a hundred trips - although in Vancouver … it’s a bit higher, at about 2.3 per cent. Compare that to the 20 to 35 per cent of trips taken by bike in the European Union and 50 per cent in China. (Unfortunately, the trend is reversing in China as the country embraces car culture.)” (from a 2008 source)
- “Germans are 10 times more likely than Americans to ride a bike and three times less likely to get hurt while doing so.” (from the same 2008 article quoted above)

Of course, cycling is just one transportation alternative. Although I’m focusing on cycling in this post (as I have in other blog entries here, in the past), I also think that rail and bus systems are two more important alternatives to cars, trucks, and vans. I’m not going to try to summarize all of the constructive alternative transportation possibilities (right now, anyway); basically I’m just questioning the entrenchment of automobiles — while looking at cycling, as one positive alternative.

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Michael Glotz-Richter (in this post) -
“Studies have shown that, on average, most cars are parked for 23 hours a day. Do we really want to use so much valuable space for storing vehicles?”

The start of that post conveys how parked cars are like elephants in our rooms (so to speak); that is, the post elaborates on how we refuse to acknowledge and re-assess how much space we are devoting to automobile parking.

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Matthew Blackett on the Spacing Toronto blog -
“42 Folding Bikes vs. One Car”
( “Sometimes it takes a visual illustration to make the strongest argument.” …)

(Here is a larger version of the second image shown there.)

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John Bennett (in this post) -

“Instead of making more room on the street for idle cars, we should be making room for more people. We should [claim] space to stroll, shop, sit and socialize.”

“Our unrelenting fixation on cheap and easy driving has blinded us from recognizing this simple fact: More than five decades spent adding capacity is proof that increasing the parking supply will not solve the problem. We have to decrease demand.”

“Unfortunately we’ve come to regard suburban retail [complexes], with their acres of parking lots, as the norm. As a result, we insist that a convenient parking place should be waiting for us at the end of every car trip. How much longer will we try to satisfy such an unrealistic expectation? How much are we willing to sacrifice to perpetuate this fantasy? When will we realize how much we’ve already lost in this foolish pursuit?”

(As I occasionally do, I have replaced a couple of the words there with slightly different ones that fit better with my own point of view.)

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Overviews

A Camp for Climate Action press release -
“Climate Activists Hit Big Business and Banks”

A BBC article -
“Climate activists stage protests”

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Bike swoop photos
- Set one
- Set two

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Day 2: The European Climate Exchange

A Camp for Climate Action video and press release -
“Everyone’s a loser at the Climate Casino!”

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