State group urges focus on global warming
It was a race between a wind turbine vs. a coal smokestack, but no TV cameras and only one reporter showed up at a South End park where environmentalists staged the stunt yesterday to emphasize the problem of global warming.
Maybe it was just too hot.
About a dozen members of a state environmental group staged the five-minute race between clean and dirty energy to urge Governor Mitt Romney to reduce global warming emissions from Massachusetts power plants.
Organizers from the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, or MASSPIRG, all recent college graduates, nearly outnumbered people who already happened to be in the Southwest Corridor Park by West Newton Street on a sultry, 85-degree Saturday morning.
Some who wandered past the park stopped to sign the group's petition, which topped 17,000 names yesterday, just 3,000 shy of their summer goal.
The race was a three-legged one, with the sun and a wind turbine competing against the coal smokestack and an oil derrick.
Tied at the legs, the pairs of dirty and clean energy raced towards a finish line that read 2020. The goal, organizers said, was to convince the governor to support a 25 percent reduction in global warming pollution from power plants by the year 2020.
''My money's on the sun!" shouted a man carrying a sack of laundry over his shoulder as he walked through the park.
The state's power plants produce 22 million tons of global warming pollution each year, according to the group. That contributes to the loss of 65 acres of coastline a year because of rising sea levels, said organizers, citing US Environmental Protection Agency statistics.
''Governor Romney, it's up to you who wins the race. Clean energy or dirty energy? Which one will take us into the future?" said Bob Filbin, 22, dressed as an oil derrick with duct tape and spray-painted cardboard strips sprouting from his head.
''We were hoping more people would come," said Liz Goulding, 22. ''This park is usually very crowded. But it's so hot."
Added Smita Reddy, 22, dressed as a smoke stack from a coal power plant: ''Kind of fitting for global warming."
