We started the week with demonstrators carrying “coal kills” signs outside the Bank of America in downtown Ashvegas. Looks like we’ll end the week with demonstrators running and cycling through the streets demanding clean air.
On August 18, the fourth annual Relay for Clean Air will begin at 6:15 am as the first bicyclist leaves Newfound Gap at the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park carrying the pennant-sized “Clean Air” banner. Through a continual chain of bicycle riders, runners and walkers, the banner will arrive in Asheville, North Carolina via the Blue Ridge Parkway, 100 miles and fourteen hours later. This is a march for the right to breathe clean air. Sure we can replace our AC unit filters easily enough with sites like https://filterbuy.com/air-filters/20x25x1/, but that doesn’t answer the question, should we even have to?!
We are marching for clean air in the Great Smoky Mountains and on the Blue Ridge Parkway because these are the two most visited and most polluted national parks in America. Acid rain and high ozone levels are leaving a legacy of millions of dead and dying trees. Unique species of plants and animals in this region are threatened by air pollution and climate change. Average visibility is a small fraction of what it was half a century ago.
Avram Friedman is the executive director of the Canary Coalition, a grassroots clean-air group based in Sylva, N.C. For a schedule and more information about the relay, call 828-631-3447 or visit the group’s Web site.