The workout room is called "The Green Gym" and all the bikes are hooked up to the grid. Over the course of a year, Reverend Fowler says these bikes could produce enough energy to power 36 apartments for two months. That could make quite a dent in CASS's electricity bill.
Am I the only one who thinks this story is just bizarre?
It gets more weird:
Fowler runs two other environmental and social projects at the warehouse. One pays homeless men to turn dumped tires into doormats. The other employs mentally-disabled residents to shred and recycle documents for local businesses.
CASS's vocational training coordinator Stacey Leigh says the job programs and the gym let homeless people experience the pride of giving something back.
"It's good for their health, it's great for feeling like well I've helped keep the lights on here, I helped make a difference, I helped save the planet," she says.
You have to believe that if it was anybody but a "community activist" putting mentally disabled residents to work, it would be called slave labor.
What I really like is the woman's claim that generating electricity helps the homeless feel like they've worked to save the planet!
Excuse me? Just how big of a carbon footprint do homeless people have? I bet they don't have even a Prius let alone an SUV. I bet they don't jet off to exotic locations for vacations or eco-meetings. I even bet--and forgive me for making this leap with no direct evidence--they have no houses! Which does get the homeless in trouble when the green activists question them on whether they've switched to eco-friendly twisty light bulbs, of course.
Virtually the only carbon impact of the homeless is the actual effort of breathing, for God's sake. But the organizers of this place have the nerve to suggest that the homeless people need to do something like generating electricity with their sweat to earn green street cred. Maybe they'll just hook up the bike generators to Thomas Friedman's estate.
Not to worry, more projects are in the works to help the homeless end their green slacker status:
This way, Al Gore can look down on even the hybrid vehicle owners.
The eco-nuts just are beyond parody.
