Originally published on EV Obsession.
Our friend and wind expert Mike Barnard recently passed along a cool story: a “negative-carbon” US road trip all around the US (or almost all around it).
Naturally, being 2015, there’s a Facebook page. But more importantly, there’s an Indiegogo page where the driver is trying to raise the funds to cover the road trip. Here’s the key line: “Johnny Appleseed meets the electric highway. Proving the viability of electric vehicles while planting trees in each of 48 US States.” So that’s how he’s getting to a zero-carbon footprint.
In total, the trip is supposed to take 100 days, and cover 25,000 miles.
And no, it’s not happening in a long-range Tesla Model S. It’s happening in Brian’s Nissan Leaf.
If you’re familiar with the anti-electric car hype, that should be impossible! Unrealistic! Stress-inducing! Unfathomable! Masochistic! Etc! Etc! And that is apparently a big reason Brian is setting out on the journey.
As I’ve written more times than I can count, I think the biggest current barriers to electric vehicle adoption is lack of awareness and sociopsychological inertia. People don’t even know what electric cars are on the market. And if they know the name, they still don’t get how they work. And if they get how they work, they more likely than not have crazy ideas about things that may go wrong with them. And if they’ve gotten past all of that, they probably are still afraid of “range anxiety” — in other words, they have range anxiety anxiety. They certainly aren’t aware of all the benefits of electric cars, since only a 5* people who aren’t already electric car owners or lessees know about all of these great benefits.
And that’s what Brian is aiming to help with.
My campaign is about exposing the myths of electric vehicle use. I want to show people what electric vehicles can do–because seeing is believing.
As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
To me, it’s a shame that so few of us take advantage of such an easy way to reduce the impact we have on the world we live in. But doing things differently starts with thinking differently.
What a great idea, eh? So chip in to give Brian a hand. “With your help, I’ll be planting trees in each of the 48 states I stop. The same way John Chapman did back in 1800. One tree at a time, one step at a time.”
Btw, Brian is blogging about his road trip on Quora.
For a lot more info on the road trip, though, including cool details on the trees, head over to the IndieGogo page.
*Uninformed estimate that is 100% incorrect.
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