About thirty environmentalists are cycling across Canada to bring attention to climate change. They hit Ottawa in early August, during a week of record-breaking heat and stinging smog. The conditions made cycling tough, but made it easier to make their point.

The Climate Change Caravan began its big bike ride in Tofino, British Columbia, on May 7. The journey will end in Halifax at the end of September. The plan was hatched by a group of students from Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, who were frustrated with government and industry inaction on climate change. Along the way, more cyclists have joined, sometimes just for one leg of the trip, sometimes for the whole ride.

“We’re saying that the focus of the Canadian government is not representing the focus of Canadians,” says Megan Shirley, who took a break from the caravan in July to travel to Bonn, Germany for the international climate conference.

The cyclists are betting the federal government that Canadians can meet or better the country’s Kyoto target – with or without the government’s help.

The cyclists are asking people across the country to cut their personal carbon emissions by 50 per cent, through actions such as biking to work or replacing their dryer with a clothesline. It’s a kind of twelve-step program for fossil fuel addicts.

The cyclists put the name of every person who signs up for the bet onto a small “promise flag.”

“The message we’re peddling across the country is that living without fossil fuels is a goal we can aspire to,” caravan member Graeme Verhulst told a crowd at Ottawa’s city hall.

Of course, the cyclists have taken the bet themselves. They are eating vegetarian on the road, and trying to make sure that most of their food is grown locally to cut down on emissions from its transportation and refrigeration.

They are accompanied by a mechanically moody red school bus, which carries their gear and acts as a support vehicle in case of injuries. The diesel engine has been converted to burn vegetable oil, which releases a subtle french-fry smell, but also releases only about half the emissions of fossil fuels.

The cyclists chose vegetable oil because it’s fairly easy to convert a diesel engine to burn it, and because they can get the used oil for free from the backs of restaurants. The bus also carries solar panels and a wind turbine, which provide power for cell phones, laptops and a small sound system.

To meet the Kyoto commitment, Canada needs to cut 129 megatons of carbon, or the weight of 12-million school buses.

“You have come bringing a call to action on climate change,” Ottawa councillor Gord Hunter told the caravan. “The Climate Change Caravan proves that you don’t need to harm the environment to get where you are going. If you can do it crossing the country, we can do it crossing the city.”

That lesson was a personal one for Ida Martin, a student at the University of British Columbia, who has been cycling with the caravan since it left Tofino.

“Before I didn’t even have a bike!” she admits. “So certainly I’ve decided never to own a car and I’ve learned that I get anywhere by bike. If I can get across the country, I can get to the grocery store. The other thing is that we talk a lot about how planes are really bad for CO2 emissions. I’m planning on going to New Zealand next year and I’m going by boat, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

The cyclists have made presentations along the way, wherever they could scrape up an audience: schools, church basements, community centres, at the side of the road. They have met with a warm reception from most of the people they’ve met – with the exception of some drivers, who didn’t appreciate the caravan’s friendly but quite deliberate blockades in the downtown arteries of several cities, or at the entrance to a Toronto Esso station.

Most of the feedback they’ve had from municipal politicians has been enthusiastic. Feedback from provincial politicians has been more mixed, and from federal politicians almost nonexistent.

But the cyclists say their message is really directed at citizens, not politicians. They say politicians will only act once public demand for action reaches a critical mass. Their goal is to help make driving and other bad habits socially unacceptable.

“It’s better if individuals can restrict themselves,” says caravan member Yuill Herbert. “No politician wants to restrict people, because that hurts their political power.”

Herbert and several other caravan members plan to “chill out” in Nova Scotia for a couple of weeks, after the ride is over, and make plans to continue the momentum – perhaps plan a caravan for next summer.

“We’ll know we’ve had success if other people take over the cause,” says Shirley.

Kate Heartfield [www.angelfire.com/ca5/kateheartfield] is a freelance journalist who lives in Ottawa. Her last piece for rabble.ca was “Energy Addicts,” July 6, 2001.