Eugene weekly., March 10, 2016, Page 13, Image 13

BIKING FOR PEOPLE
AND PLANET
INTERFAITH EARTHKEEPERS
AND INVESTING IN ACTION
Jane Smith , a member of Eugene Interfaith
Earthkeepers Alliance (EIEA) through the First Unit-
ed Methodist Church, is taking action against climate
change.
The EIEA is made up of different congregations
across Eugene coming together to educate the com-
munity and respond to environmental issues. Smith
says the Interfaith Alliance holds events and invites
performers and speakers to help raise awareness to
climate change and issues such as pollution and ocean
warming.
“We all practice our faith in different ways,”
Smith says. “We’re trying to make climate change
more visible to help educate people on the crisis of
climate change.”
Smith, 83, has been a member of the alliance for
the past five years. She completed a graduate degree
in social work, but later went into banking and retired
as the CEO of the Hawaii Community Foundation,
where she lived before moving to Eugene. She says it
was in Hawaii, while reviewing various climate reha-
bilitation proposals, where she became aware of the
consequences of climate change.
“Hawaii is so far from any other land,” she says.
“We were very concerned with the ocean and the en-
vironment.” Interfaith Earthkeepers focuses on that
concern with the environment and “activating com-
munities of conscience to serve and keep our sacred planet,” according to the Episcopal Church of the Resur-
rection.
“We meet once a month with other church representatives to try to reduce pollution with certain activities,”
Smith says.
Now that she’s retired, Smith is getting more creative with her investment portfolio and is urging others to
consider the same. “It doesn’t make sense to hold our investment portfolio,” Smith says. “We’re investing our
capital in better opportunities.”
Smith says she’s helped create jobs for women in developing countries and other environmental initiatives
through her investments.
“We feel especially mandated to be good stewards of this Earth,” Smith says. “God gave us Earth to take care of
and we haven’t done a good job. We need to clean up our act.”
The Earthkeepers meet on the second Wednesday of every month at the United Lutheran Church on Washing-
ton Street. They last met March 9. — Mohammed Alkhadher
ACTING FOR A
HEALTHY CLIMATE
Zach Mulholland first started hearing about climate
change in middle school, he says. He knew it was impor-
tant, but like many, he didn’t know what to do about it.
Years later, Mulholland, now 31, says, “global warming is
the biggest issue we are facing right now” from extreme
environmental conditions such as habitat loss to plastic
pollution.
Climate change exacerbates problems we are trying to
deal with in society, Mulholland says, like feeding, shel-
tering and providing water to future generations.
Mulholland went to community college in Bend, in-
terned with Oregon Rep. Phil Barnhart and went to the
UO, where he worked with OSPIRG and was a founder
of Divest UO, he says. He brings that background and ex-
perience to coordinating the Healthy Climate Coalition,
made up of 35 groups trying to bring about climate change
legislation in Oregon.
The Healthy Climate Act (see EW 1/28) didn’t make it
out of the short legislative session, despite a rally in Sa-
lem Feb. 3 that brought 400 people to the capitol calling
for greenhouse gas legislation. “It’s frustrating as a young
person that the best humanity seems to be hoping for is
terrible,” he says of his work to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
“The science is very clear,” Mulholland says, “drought,
salmon die-offs. We need to substantively reduce green-
house gases. And for those who really recognize the sci-
ence, I think we not only want to keep global temperatures
from above 2 degrees Celsius, ideally we need to bring
greenhouse gases back down over the long term.” We need
to get back to a zero-degree increase rise, he says.
As for the Healthy Climate Act itself, it “didn’t get the
level of attention to be a priority and get though a short
session given the short time frame,” he says. And now the
climate community will come to together and figure out
the best strategy for a “comprehensive climate policy that
we can” get through.
In one ray of hope, Mulholland says that in the Leg-
islature’s budget bill there was to be $230,000 allocated
“so that the DEQ [Department of Environmental Quality]
could hire someone to look at market-based mechanisms
for carbon reduction and how they are implemented else-
where and could be implemented in Oregon.”
Mulholland says this would let the DEQ get its “feet
wet” if the Healthy Climate Act is passed in next year’s
session, which “hopefully we can still get it implemented
in 2020.” Back in 2007, the Legislature voted to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels by
2020 and 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, but these
goals were merely aspirational.
We need bigger institutional change, Mulholland says.
He says young people who see the problem and want to get
involved should join. He names Divest UO, Earth Guard-
ians, Our Children’s Trust, 350.org and the fight against
liquefied natural gas as examples. And if you see a means
to make a change exists elsewhere but not here, “know
you can make those changes where you are.” — Camilla
Mortensen
Shane MacRhodes says he wants to see more kids
on bikes. It’s good for the environment, he says, but more
tangibly, it’s good for kids.
As program manager for Eugene Springfield Safe
Routes to School, MacRhodes oversees a fleet of bikes
that moves from school to school, giving kids an opportu-
nity to learn biking and practice safe riding.
MacRhodes says the program serves more than 1,000
kids in the Eugene-Springfield area by offering a nine-
hour class on the rules of the road. Fifth and sixth graders
learn how to signal, make turns and handle intersections,
among other skills.
“For me, it’s about rediscovering childhood and inde-
pendence,” he says. “Many people who rode as kids re-
member that freedom they had, and we’re not giving that
freedom to kids now.”
A culture of fear has fostered a reluctance to allow
children to play and explore on their own, MacRhodes
says, even though crime has trended downward over time.
“We’re protecting our kids to death,” he says, adding
that the most recent generation is the first to have a lower
life expectancy than the previous generation. “It all has to
do with inactivity and obesity — the diseases killing our
kids are about inactivity and poor food.”
That’s why it’s important to foster an interest in biking
early, he says, and make Eugene’s infrastructure friendlier
to bikes.
MacRhodes’ own passion for biking started when he
was a child growing up in Eugene, exploring the river path
system. As a teenager, he moved to Alaska, where he rode
his bike to his first job. He returned to Eugene to pursue
his higher education, attending Lane Community College
and the University of Oregon, and that’s when a bike be-
came his main form of transportation.
After graduating, MacRhodes took a job with the Cen-
ter for Appropriate Transport (CAT) where he “realized
what bikes could do to transform cities,” he says. “I like
the vision of what a city could be if built around people
walking and biking rather than people in cars.”
MacRhodes traveled to Europe and attended a world-
wide bike conference, where he heard about cities like
Copenhagen that chose to build infrastructure with pedes-
trians and bicyclists in mind. For the first time, he imag-
ined the possibility of cities free of spaces devoted to the
parking and storage of vehicles.
“It really blew my mind,” MacRhodes says. “We have
good walking and decent biking, but nothing on the scale
of cities that planned for better walking and biking.”
Current infrastructure isn’t equitable, he says, and it’s
largely tipped in favor of vehicles. But, he asks, “what if
we built our cities so that it’s easy for kids to walk and
bike to school?”
And that’s part of MacRhodes’ mission — to see the
Eugene-Springfield area become more bike-friendly. Eu-
gene is a better place to bike than Portland, he argues, but
Eugene still has some missing links. Connectivity plays
an important role in making communities more accessible
by foot or by bike.
MacRhodes says he’d like to see a connection between
the Amazon bike path near Roosevelt Middle School and
Eugene’s river path system, something separate from the
main roads to create a “stress-free environment” for bik-
ing. “If the city built more of that infrastructure, it could
be revolutionary,” he says, but “it will require a change in
people’s perspective that cars need all the space.”
Part of that perspective is thinking globally and re-
ducing emissions through choosing not to drive. “I think
it’s an important piece to this,” MacRhodes says. “I value
people who are working on that piece and really making
that connection, and it’s always something that’s at the
back of my mind.”
But, he says, the impact biking can have on kids is al-
ways front and center.
“As a bike advocate and now as a dad, it’s clear to me
that the health of our communities is dependent on our
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