As we watch the climate change locomotive coming down the tracks, there are two choices, said 24-year-old Eberley Wedlake of Ashland: sit at your computer or get out and do something.

For Wedlake, a former Ashland Waldorf student and 2004 graduate of Ashland High School, the choice was simple. She decided to make a seven-week tour of the U.S. with a 350-foot long cloth banner supporting a limit to atmospheric carbon dioxide below 350 parts per million, the safe ceiling for human life.

In stops in Boston, Minneapolis, Denver-Boulder and this week in Ashland, Wedlake is asking people to sign the banner, for eventual display in front of the U.S. capitol on Oct. 24, the International Day of Climate Action.

"I feel a strong call to action instead of being a pessimist," Wedlake said. "It's really easy, especially with the health care crisis, to slide into that. But I chose to be an optimist and see where it carries me."

Wedlake, a sociology graduate from Carleton College in Minnesota, said she's especially moved by global warming's impact on the poor, most of whom live in warmer equatorial regions and are being impacted by dengue fever and other maladies. A warmer climate means spread of mosquito populations who carry the virus, she notes.

"I'm approaching environmental issues from a social justice standpoint," said Wedlake, who added that she's doing her trip by mass transit (train and bus) and employing her love for public art to bring people, especially children, together — something she learned while painting a tile at age 10 for the Ashland Food Cooperative's peace wall on the front of the store.

"I was at the Ashland Car Free Day a few weeks ago and kids really love to draw on the banner," she noted.

That proved true Wednesday as Wedlake laid her banners out on the Plaza, quickly attracting a flock of eighth-graders from the Eugene Waldorf School, who happened by while on a trip to Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

"Peace, love, happiness. That's what I wrote and it's what I want," Alia Pearlson said.

"Save the earth. I drew the earth and wrote that," Emile Beath said. "We should stop trashing the world. We should work together and save it."

Their teacher, Tricia O'Neill, lauded Wedlake for "doing something so admirable, that she believes in, caring for the earth and its people and to be active behind it."

Wedlake started her banner journey in concert with "350," the group organizing the International Day of Climate Action (www.350.org). That number — the safe limit of CO2 — has been surpassed and is now 390, compared to 275 ppm just before the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, she said.

The Day of Climate Action Web site says high CO2 is melting ice, spreading drought and killing forests, adding that "it means switching off fossil fuel much more quickly than governments and corporations have been planning."

The goal of Wedlake and the group is to pressure nations meeting in December at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol with a much stronger strategy to limit greenhouse gases.

Wedlake, who gets much of her funding from non-profit organizations in each area she visits (including Grilla Bites, DreamSacks, Ashland Food Cooperative and Full Circle Real Estate in Ashland), will have her banner carried to the Copenhagen conclave by supporters from the Midwest.

Among the inscriptions are, "Ensure the survival of all countries and peoples," "Make quality living simpler, cleaner, less materialistic and more meaningful and create a better life for a better planet. Now!" and "We cannot change the past but we can change the future!"

The Oct. 24 event will be observed with activities in the Ashland Plaza. Images from demonstrations all over the world, she said, will be flashed on TV screens in front of the U.N.

Her banner now has over 300 signatures and covers 90 feet. She will make presentations through Oct. 9 to several local groups, including Southern Oregon University's Ecology Center of the Siskiyous, the Ashland First Congregational United Church of Christ and Transition Ashland. She will set the banner up at the Plaza from 4 to 9 p.m., Oct. 9.

Wedlake goes next to San Francisco. Her Web site is 350coast2coast.blogspot.com.