SHOULD PARADES GIVE FOSSIL-FUEL USERS THE BOOT?
Posted on 03.24.08
By: Edie Lau for OCG.org
Spectators at the 50th Swallows’ Day Parade in San Juan Capistrano on Saturday will see plenty of horses bearing riders or pulling carriages, children dancing, colorful costumes of Mexico and the Old West and probably pet dogs in red wagons.
What they won’t see are cars, trucks, motorcycles or motor vehicles of any sort.
The parade, marking the seasonal return of swallows from Argentina to Southern California, bills itself as the largest non-motorized parade in the country. While the distinction of largest may or may not be true, one thing is certain: As a procession powered without petroleum, the Swallows Parade is a rarity.
Modern American parades have come to be dominated by internal combustion engines. “You say ‘parade’ to me and I think of cars and trucks pulling floats, decorated cars and princesses with the little wave,” said Kori Titus, director of policy, communications and youth programs at Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails, an advocacy group for healthy air.
Indeed, practically no parade is without beauty queens or dignitaries perched in classic convertibles or other fancy automobiles. In this year’s New Year’s Day Rose Parade -- one of the best-known and celebrated parades in the nation -- 45 of 46 floats were propelled by fossil fuels.
With rising concerns about world oil supplies and prices, climate change and deteriorating air quality, people are starting to ask why.
Last summer, Dr. David Swann, a physician and legislator in the Canadian province of Alberta, asked leaders of a festival in his district called the Calgary Stampede to consider shifting to more environmentally friendly conveyances in their parade. He suggested horses, bicycles, Smart cars and hybrids.
“Idling in an older vehicle for two hours produces unhealthy emissions for all those in the parade and sends a message that we are not moving forward with the times,” Swann wrote in a letter to the board, which he posted on his blog.
A few years earlier, Green Party member Allan Zenos of Alameda made a similar plea to Alameda Mayor Beverly Johnson. Marching in the city’s Fourth of July parade in 2003, Zenos choked on diesel fumes. As participants convened before the parade, Zenos said, “It looked like a big traffic jam on (Interstate) 880.” He even saw a high school marching band riding a truck.
“I couldn’t reconcile using this amount of foreign oil to celebrate our independence,” Zenos said. He suggested that a future parade take up the theme “Energy Independence” and forgo fossil fuels. The mayor offered to forward his suggestion to parade organizers, he said, but so far, nothing has changed.
Elsewhere, though, the idea is catching on. In Sacramento and neighboring counties, some high school students are eyeing homecoming parades as a potential source of pollution that could be modified to improve campus air.
The idea came to them from Titus at Breathe California. The students -- at El Camino and Folsom high schools in Sacramento County; Woodcreek High in Placer County; Winters High in Yolo County; and Armijo, Country, Rio Vista and Will C. Wood in Solano County -- participate in a project by Breathe California that teaches students to measure campus air pollution, critically assess its sources and find ways to reduce its production.
Although motor vehicles in a homecoming parade may be a small contributor to a school’s total pollution, homecoming parades are a good place to call attention to the issue, Titus said: “Parents come, the whole school comes. It’s a great way to educate.”
Titus, who picked up the idea about fossil-fuel-free parades from an inquiry by Our Green Community, said her favorite parades move on foot. “The only ones I go to are the little ones in the neighborhoods where everybody walks it,” she said. “It’s great fun, everybody has a great time, and nobody’s polluting anything. It’s much more accessible.”
Larger foot parades do exist. San Juan Capistrano’s Swallows’ Day Parade, for one, dates back to 1958. Founded by C. Fulton Shaw, who was a business owner, animal trainer and local mover and shaker, the event honors the city’s western heritage, according to parade publicist Barbara Kimler. Thus was born the rule, strictly followed to this day, of no motors.
Another event that, too, claims to be the country’s largest non-motorized parade is the Tucson Rodeo Parade in Arizona. Started 83 years ago, the parade wasn’t always without motors. “Back in 1925, they took just about anything,” publicity director Bob Stewart said with a laugh. “Cars were more a novelty (then).”
Trouble was, cars weren’t compatible with parading horses. “Any sort of noise like a backfire could agitate the horses,” Stewart said. “So it kind of evolved to being horse-drawn (only).”
In time, organizers accrued so many pieces of horse-drawn equipment and carriages that they started a museum. The parade has become an opportunity to bring out and show off some of the museum’s 170 pieces.
The Tucson Rodeo Parade inspired the Augusta Horse and Carriage Parade in Georgia, begun 16 years ago, which also prohibits motor vehicles. Parade Chairman Dennis Kelly said mules, long-horned steer, goats and, of course, horses, power the entries.
Other parades adopted a foot-only tradition by happenstance. In New Orleans, the only Mardi Gras parade that passes through the historic French Quarter is required, by city ordinance, to do without engines. “The French Quarter is tight, and it’s also flammable,” explained Keith Twitchell, Poobah of Publicity for the Krewe du Vieux.
The Krewe du Vieux is a throwback to old-time Carnival processions in its hand- and mule-drawn floats, street musicians and costumed dancers. Though it doesn’t burn petroleum, Twitchell noted wryly that the event might still contribute to global warming.
“Since we have mules, what we save in fossil fuels we may partially be giving back in methane gas,” he quipped.
In Santa Barbara, the Solstice Parade in June is another human-powered affair with accidental origins. The story goes that when the event was founded in 1974, the city feared it might be a political demonstration in disguise, so imposed a ban on signs, symbols, words and motor vehicles.
Now, organizers revel in the rules, believing they’ve inspired creativity that otherwise wouldn’t exist, said parade executive director Claudia Bratton.
“We have a workshop open for two months prior to the solstice. Anybody from the community can come in and learn to make a float, make a mask, make a costume. We have a paid staff of people who can help you make your wildest dream come to fruition, and push it up the street,” Bratton said.
She remembers fondly a giant magenta-colored elephant, created in 2002, that prompted another group to enter as pooper scoopers. They marched behind the elephant, dropping and picking up fake purple poo.
Out of the Santa Barbara Solstice Parade grew a Solstice Parade in Seattle, now in its 20th year, also propelled only by people. Co-founder Peter Toms said cars separate performers from the spectators. “We’re interested in breaking that separation down,” Toms said. “It’s a human celebration, not a machine celebration.”
Today, concerns about the environment and public health are bringing “no motors” thinking to more conventional parades. David Swann, the legislator in Alberta, Canada, said his eyes burned during last year’s Calgary Stampede parade, which runs about four hours. “The air was still, it was warm, and we were all idling in this sitting position,” Swann recalled. “I’m sure it was ground-level ozone.”
Swann said he asked to ride a bicycle in the event, but instead was placed with other dignitaries in antique vehicles, following Stampede tradition.
Jay Barker, chairman of the Stampede Parade Committee, said organizers share Swann’s concern for the environment. “(We) will work with him to arrive at a solution for his particular needs,” he said in an written response to questions.
Barker also said organizers have tried to reduce the number of motorized vehicles, but suggested it would be difficult to remove them entirely. “Fully decorated self-propelled floats use a car or truck chassis as the infrastructure to provide the float base,” he wrote. “This level of infrastructure is necessary to carry the weight of the high quality decorations that ... help make the Stampede Parade world renowned.”
He questioned whether exhaust from the parade aggravates air pollution, noting that during the parade, ordinary traffic is diverted from downtown. “Arguably, the carbon footprint of our parade is far less than that of the buses and vehicles normally accessing our congested Central Business District,” Barker wrote.
The petroleum habit may be hard to kick, but Bill Flinn, chief operating officer of the Pasadena Rose Parade -- also heavily reliant on fossil-fueled floats -- predicted that technological advances will drive change. “We’re very open to new ideas,” Flinn said.
Larry Palmer, spokesman for Phoenix Decorating Co., which builds about half the floats in the Rose Parade, said the standard float is outfitted with a V-8 engine and 25-gallon tank. But it doesn’t have to be. “If there is a client that doesn’t want a gasoline-powered engine,” he said, “I’m sure we could accommodate them.”
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