Man, 62, Skateboarding from Salt Lake City To Las Vegas With Goal of Reducing Carbon Use
Dec 10, 2018, 9:09 PM | Updated: 10:53 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – It’s not hard to see on inversion days why people are worried. More cars on the road just add to the issue of pollution and climate change. So, one man is hitting the road in a different way.
“I’m skateboarding from Salt Lake city to Las Vegas,” said Laughlin Artz.
The 62-year-old may be an unlikely candidate to try and go 400 miles on four skateboard wheels.
“I just missed a pothole there,” Artz said, as he skated through downtown Monday. “That could have been pretty dangerous.”
However, the Brooklyn, New York resident says he has to try something.
“Well, you know Gandhi fasted but I don’t think anyone would notice if I fasted,” he said with a laugh.
Artz is the executive director of “2020 or bust,” a campaign hoping to wake-up the world to some harsh realities.
“This is particularly for ordinary people who think climate change is too big or too complex for an individual to make any real impact,” he said.
The group has an app for download that allows users to input their location and receive ideas of how to reduce carbon use. The app even tracks the user’s progress.
“If we don’t get the word out to ordinary people, most people are just going to be sitting there for the next two years thinking that somebody else or hope that somebody else is handling it.”
There have been some literal bumps along the road for Artz and his team.
“I’ve had my share of falls and, you know, I’m not really a skateboarder,” he said.
The group got as far as Richfield before one of them got sick and they turned around and headed back towards Salt Lake City.
(This is) definitely more difficult and definitely more painful than I thought,” he said.
On Tuesday, they will start again where they left off. Artz knows the journey is a gamble with no guarantee of success, but he’s not backing down from the challenge.
“The likelihood of me getting to Las Vegas on a skateboard is maybe equal to us getting our crap together in time to end the climate crisis,” he said.
To learn more about the campaign, visit 2020orBust.org.
