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Already there are hybrid cars on the market that get between 50 and 70 miles per gallon – three to five times as much as most gas-guzzling SUVs – without sacrificing comfort, convenience, or safety. Yet how many people know about hybrid cars? Surely not enough. That’s why we’re taking the message on the road, starting in Florida where rising sea levels threaten to swallow a vast portion of the Everglades and warming temperatures pose serious threats to public health and well-being. Along the way, we’ll pay homage to John Muir in Cedar Key, where the visionary naturalist and explorer ended his 1,000 mile walk in the late 1860s and wrote about the sublime beauty and grace of coastal Florida. At each stop, we’ll deliver the message to protect, enjoy and preserve the planet while having as much fun as we can along the way. We’ll also be hosting press events with local officials and fellow environmentalists to get the word out about what the Sierra Club is doing, both locally and nationally. We live in a world where it matters what we drive. It matters globally and it matters in Florida. We have blanketed the planet in heat-trapping greenhouse gases and American tailpipes are a leading producer of those gases. Washington and Detroit may wish to turn a blind eye to the crisis, but consumers are in a position to demand more. It’s time to read the care instructions for the earth: Drive Clean Only. Who?
Before joining the Sierra Club, where she now serves as Florida Global Warming Representative, Darden worked with Florida Public Interest Research Group, Green Corps, and Clean Water Action. Darden bought a fixer-upper in St. Petersburg six years ago. More recently, she succumbed to a mad delusion of having loads of free time and disposable income: she went in, with a friend, on a 1969 24-foot Columbia sailboat. Now, if she’s not sweating equity into the house, she’s toiling away on the boat.
In the past, Joe has worked for the Florida Public Interest Research Group, the Pro Earth Times newspaper, the Endangered Species Coalition, and Sweetwater Organic Community Farm. He now works for the Sierra Club, having decided that any group with the likes of John Muir and David Brower in its lineage is the place for him. In his spare time he hikes and paddles the backwoods of Florida, one eye peeled for skunk apes, aka Bigfoot.
Tales from the road:
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This trip is about demonstrating the real life alternatives we have to drilling in beautiful, fragile, and sacred places like Big Cypress
National Preserve, the Gulf Coast of Florida, the Great Lakes, and the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a journey to demonstrate that we can start making a difference today without waiting for the technology of tomorrow. 
Darden Rice grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and blames Jesse Helms for her early politicization. She fell in love with Florida while a student at the University of South Florida. She earned a degree in American Studies from Eckerd College and published her thesis: From Seminoles to Capitalists: The Environmental History of Fisheating Creek. 
A native Floridian, Joe Murphy grew up in Spring Lake (pop. 37), but now lives in the big city with his wife, Becky, and two dogs, Mick and Kiefer. They don’t have a cat yet, but they’re thinking about it.