Nobel (bike) parking
A new bike rack, recognizing Berkeley faculty contributions to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, sits to the left of a cluster of U-shaped bike racks outside the Free Speech Movement Café.
Thousands of scientists and officials from more than 100 countries collaborated on the prize-winning research that exposed the scale of global warming and sharpened the connection between warming and human activities. Berkeley contributors included Daniel Kammen, a professor of nuclear engineering and founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, whose tongue-in-cheek comment at a 2013 panel discussion on climate change on campus planted the idea for an NL bike spot.
The bike rack is a light-hearted spin on a revered tradition. Berkeley Nobel Laureates get prime parking spots on campus — a prize coveted nearly as much as a Nobel. Berkeley now has 10 such parking spaces for cars. The decision to create NL bike parking “was also tied to broader efforts to provide enough bike parking in the right places for students, staff and faculty,” says Lisa McNeilly, director of sustainability and energy.