September 30, 2005

Al Gore, Wangari Maathai, and Citystreets at Mohonk Mountain House

Mohonk, NY - The Environmental Grantmakers Association held their fall retreat at Mohonk Mountain House September 24th-28th. The purpose of the conference was to nurture a groundswell with leading environmental grant-makers.

Speakers included former Vice President Al Gore who gave a passionate and fact filled presentation about Global Climate Change that the entire world should see. Reverend James Forbes, Senior Ministor of Riverside Church in NYC, passionately spoke about the end of time for foolishness from our leaders. Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai spoke beautifully of her work in Africa and had a profoundly simple message that real and meaningful changes happen when we solve core problems and not symptoms. Dr. Roger B Saillant, President and Chief Executive Officer of Plug Power also resonated with a message of honesty, integrity and personal accountability in a forum that also included author Bill McKibben.

Citystreets wondered how you can nurture an environmental groundswell without considering transportation so we organized a transportation component to the conference. Knowing that over the last couple of years there has been a lot of innovation with electric vehicles, we put together a group of zero emission vehicles. We had everything from Segways to electric Vespas. Vehicles that run on electricity get the energy equivalent of hundreds of miles per gallon.

Citystreets volunteers arranged for hundreds of demos and we had meaningful discussions, with some very smart, concerned passionate people.

Nurturing a groundswell indeed.

Special thanks to: Ego Vehicles, EVT, Segway,Tidalforce, Electric Transportation Solutions, NYCE Wheels, and Cycle Dynamics for supplying us with vehicles.