Honk If You Care About the Climate

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, published in 1989, the first book for a general audience on climate change. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, his forthcoming book is titled Deep Economy. He's participating in a five-day walk calling for action to fight global warming -- From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future.

We're camped tonight in a broad field at Shelburne Farms, eight miles from our goal in Burlington, after 24 hours of such constant activity that it's hard to remember exactly what's happened. The main impression: incredible support.

We've been marching up Route 7, western Vermont's main thoroughfare, and according to our fairly scientific survey, 80 percent of Vermonters will wave and honk when they see a long line of people marching against global warming. Five percent will wave and honk so wildly that their Priuses almost veer off the road, wiping out said march. Two percent of people apparently think global warming should be accelerated, and 13 percent are looking for a new station on the radio dial.

Saturday night, after a long haul, we pulled into a senior center in the town of Charlotte, to be greeted with a big spread of food and a not-at-all-senior rock-and-roll band. After a night camped by the lake (a swim! with biodegradable soap!), we reassembled the next morning at the Charlotte Congregational Church for a morning service devoted to caring for Creation. People from around the region crowded in, spilling out onto the front steps. The hardworking deacons ran out of Communion wine. But the hymn-singing was intense; we left with a lilt in our step.

By dusk, we'd reached this enormous farmstead, now a nonprofit center for environmental education. We gathered in what once had been the horse-breeding barn -- the largest single-span wooden structure in the world -- for hours of music and talk. We heard from the Buddhist environmentalist Stephanie Kaza, the enlightened entrepreneur Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation, the folk-singing preacher Fred Small, and, perhaps best of all, the wailing jazz clarinet of Bud Leeds, sounding a pure, clear note in the enormous space.

And tomorrow we're on to the final stop -- the gathering of politicians on the lakefront in Burlington, where we hope to win agreement from all our candidates to make the Jeffords-Waxman climate-change legislation a strong priority if they're elected. We have no real idea what's going to happen: Will they sign our pledge or won't they? Will they even show up?

But in some sense it feels like we've already succeeded. This is no longer a second-tier issue in Vermont politics; it's now firmly on the agenda. All it took was a few hundred blisters.