Planetwalker

Here's a piece on John Francis, a man whose response to the 1971 San Francisco Bay oil spill was to give up motorized vehicles :

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/10/hertsgaard-francis/index.html
(Via Riding Sun)

For 22 years, Francis walked pretty much everywhere. (There was also a 17 years-long vow of silence in the middle.) Apparently he still walks quite a bit; according to the planetwalk website he's off on a 7-year walk.

I suspect our opinions would diverge on a number of issues, but I respect Francis' committment to the environment. So many people are unwilling to stand up for their beliefs in any way that might make them seem odd to their more mainstream countrymen. So we get Catholics who rush to assure people that "of course they don't accept all that sex stuff", Jews with Christmas trees in their living rooms, and environmentalists driving gas guzzlers. Nice to see someone who's willing to put the shoe on the road for his beliefs.