Travels in the Riel World

Thomas Friedman is in Greenland to learn about climate change.  Greenland, of course, is a sparsely populated land near the top of the earth. So why would one go to Greenland to study the environment? Friedman explains:

Because the world’s biggest island has just 55,000 people and no industry, the condition of its huge ice sheet — as well as its temperature, precipitation and winds — is influenced by the global atmospheric and ocean currents that converge here. Whatever happens in China or Brazil gets felt here. And because Greenlanders live close to nature, they are walking barometers of climate change.

What did he learn there? Well, a new language. Sort of.

I learned a new language here: “Climate-Speak.”

It’s easy to learn. There are only three phrases. The first is: “Just a few years ago …” Just a few years ago you could dogsled in winter from Greenland, across a 40-mile ice bank, to Disko Island. But for the past few years, the rising winter temperatures in Greenland have melted that link. Now Disko is cut off. Put away the dogsled.

There has been a 30 percent increase in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet between 1979 and 2007, and in 2007, the melt was 10 percent bigger than in any previous year…Greenland is now losing 200 cubic kilometers of ice per year — from melt and ice sliding into the ocean from outlet glaciers along its edges — which far exceeds the volume of all the ice in the European Alps.

There’s much more in his column in today’s paper. Check it out.

I’ve had some posts in recent months about the character and personality of cities. It never really occurred to me, however, that these character traits could make a city resistant to a recycling program. But that seems to be the conclusion of this story about the startlingly low recycling rate in Houston, Texas.

While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not. The city’s shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world’s energy capital, but deep in Houston’s Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.

Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively.

Houston officials - even those who favor recycling - place a large part of the blame for this issue on the city’s sense of independence and aversion to government regulations.

“We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up,” said Mayor Bill White, who favors expanding the city’s recycling efforts. “Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated.” …

“I’m a Texan, and it pains me that we still have the Old Western mentality,” said Tex Corley, the chief executive of Strategic Materials, the nation’s largest glass recycler, which is based in Houston.

Well, there you go. Some cities promote walking and mass transit, while others shun recycling as just another unnecessary government mandate.

The website New West has an interview online with Heather Hansen, co-author of the new book, Disappearing Destinations, which looks at the environmental challenges that are plaguing popular tourist destinations worldwide. An excerpt from the interview:

How did you come up with the idea for Disappearing Destinations?

Kim and I were at a conference in Denver, talking about the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, which had just come out. We tossed around the idea of “1,000 Places to See Before THEY Die.” Once we started looking at our favorite places in that context, we became obsessed with writing a book that could help travelers see their dream destinations as whole places with real issues that affect the lives of the people who live there and, ultimately, the viability of the locations themselves.

Global warming seems to be the cause of many of the problems you describe … Do you think it’s more difficult for local people to respond to the situation when the cause is so widespread?

In the case of climate change in this region, there’s plenty that people can do on a daily basis to mitigate its effects…It may be difficult to see immediate results but that doesn’t mean we aren’t making a marked difference at a critical time. As Gerald Meehl, a climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder says in the book: “The longer we wait, the worse the problem gets. Every day we’re committing ourselves to climate change in the future. When you view it that way, it’s not something that you should just give up on…

Since our expertise is in how to travel more mindfully our message is also that all us have control over the way we move around the world. We have the power to affect change–for worse, or we hope better–in these places with the choices we make. For example, if you go to the Galápagos, you have the choice whether or not to support an outfitter with a proven record of environmental stewardship and investment in the local community.

What do you suggest that people who are concerned about the issues you raise in your book do?

What needs to be done really varies from one location to the next. In some places, responsible tourism is the “great green hope” as I talk about in the Appalachia chapter. Just going there and contributing to the diversification of the economy makes a difference (this is also the case in the Congo Basin and the Amazon where tourism revenue can sustain a population in the long term, while logging cannot).

Do you enjoy living someplace that is walkable? It’s important if you like to walk to restaurants and shops, if you harbor a desire to walk to work, or even if you just enjoy walking for fitness.

The act of walking may also be helpful in much bigger ways. Paul Krugman has a column in today’s New York Times about the environmental and economic benefits of walking and of taking public transit, given fast-rising gas prices. He reported on the topic from Berlin, and had this to say:

Any serious reduction in American driving will require … changing how and where many of us live.  To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.

Now, of course, some U.S. cities are actually friendly to pedestrians. But which ones? Lucky for us, Prevention magazine has already done a study on this and ranked the best cities in the country (and in each state) based on which were the most walkable. 

In all, Prevention ranked 500 cities. Of these, the top five were Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City, Ann Arbor, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. These just edged out San Francisco, Boston, Honolulu and a few other urban areas for the top spots. Other major cities that scored well include Philadelphia (15), Seattle (23), Denver (24), Portland, Oregon (27) and Austin, Texas (29).

Here’s a report that should give many of us pause. The Southwestern United States could lose two of its largest sources of water within the next two decades.

Climate change and a growing demand for water could drain two of the nation’s largest manmade reservoirs within 13 years, depriving several Southwestern states of key water sources, scientists warn.

Researchers at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Wednesday that there’s a 50 percent chance that lakes Mead and Powell will dry up by 2021, and a 10 percent chance the lakes will run out of usable water by 2013.

“We were surprised that it was so soon,” said climate scientist David Pierce, co-author of the institution’s study that detailed the findings…

Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border and the West’s largest storage reservoir, and Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, have been hit hard by a regional drought and are half full…Researchers said that if Lake Mead water levels drop below 1,000 feet, Nevada would lose access to all its river allocation, Arizona would lose much of the water that flows through the Central Arizona Project Canal.

The Arctic climate of Greenland hasn’t traditionally been a big tourist attraction, but interest is growing. Climate change, ironically, is one of the factors behind a rise in tourism to Greenland, as this Associated Press article notes:

Hunting is the central element of the Inuit culture in Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, but that immutable way of life is facing its greatest challenge: climate change. It’s a double-edged sword for the Inuit. It’s transforming their frozen landscape, melting glaciers and disrupting animal life…

Since 1995, Greenland’s vast ice cap has lost 7 percent of its mass and 300 feet in height…But the change also presents new opportunities. Twenty years ago, when visitors were rare, the fjords and bays were clogged with ice through July. Now, those bays are navigable by April or May. That means more tourists _ eager to explore one of the most remote and unexploited corners of the globe. Eight cruise ships will come to the area for the first time this month and next.

“You could say that the Inuit on Greenland are the early adapters to climate change,” said Jacqueline McGlade, EEA executive director. “The people here are determined to embrace a sustainable form of tourism that fosters their traditions and respects their landscape.”

A similar story in the Toronto Globe and Mail makes the same point, in between descriptions of the dramatic iceberg views:

I’m sitting atop a small hill of smooth rock watching centuries of history drift by. In front of me, Disko Bay is filled with icebergs – big ones, smooth ones, small ones. They seem to be waiting, glinting in the midnight sun. It’s approaching 11 p.m. in this village north of the Arctic Circle, but the sun is still two arms’ lengths away from the horizon and won’t set for a couple of weeks.

From my perch, it’s the scale of the scene, not the beauty of each iceberg, that is most impressive. The view is both peaceful and striking. It’s one of those travel-earned vistas that stays in your mind: the red rooftops of Florence from the Campanile, the golden forts of Jaisalmer at sunset, and, here, the shimmering white icebergs of Greenland pausing in the bay…

While Greenland often draws a passing glance on a polar-route flight or conjures up Vikings – or the 10th-century marketing spin by Erik the Red, who came up with the island’s contrary name – today, the country is becoming known as a destination at the forefront of climate change.

Climate change threatens ice sheets and ecosystems, but it also threatens human cultures.

So begins an interesting report on NPR about the Tuareg nomads of Mali and how their way of life is being affected by climate change.

For centuries, the Tuareg people have lived as nomads, herding their animals from field to field just south of the Sahara Desert in Mali, near Timbuktu.

“Our life is basically the animals we have, so we protect them and we feed them,” says Mohamed Ag Mustafa, a herder living the traditional nomadic lifestyle. “Whenever we need tea or grain or clothes, we take an animal to the market and sell it and buy something.”

But this way of life has become impossible due to a change in the climate. Over the past 40 years, persistent drought has forced the Tuareg to give up their wandering way of life. To survive they have had to start settling in villages and cultivating land to secure a food supply which is less susceptible to drought…

Uwe Korus, director of programs for CARE in Mali, visits the town of Er-Intedjeft near Timbuktu, where he is greeted warmly. He is here to learn what the Tuareg need in order to make the rapid and jarring transition to a new way of life. One of the big questions on Korus’ mind is whether the Tuareg can retain their ancient culture.

The Tuareg welcome Korus with a mishwee, a traditional feast like they used to have in the desert. They build a fire in a sand pit, and when the sand gets scorching hot, they bury a sheep carcass in it. After the sheep has roasted, they blow off sand still clinging it and bring it over to straw mats laid out under rust-colored tents they erected for their guests.

The online story includes a narrated slideshow.

What’s a traveling environmentalist to do?  Even individuals who are ultra conscious about conserving energy, fuel and water in their daily lives must still live with the fact that the airplanes in which they fly make a significant contribution to global pollution.  During a roundtrip flight of 2,200 miles, for example, an airliner will emit an average of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger. 

The Practical Traveler column in the NY Times examined this issue on Sunday and reported on the rise of carbon offset programs.  These enable people to make a contribution towards preserving the environment that is roughly equivalent to the pollution they are causing by flying.  The donations may fund projects that range from planting trees to installing solar power in buildings.

Call it penance for eco-conscious travelers: a growing number of travel Web sites and nonprofit groups are selling so-called carbon offsets designed to compensate for travel-generated emissions by reducing levels of greenhouse gases in some unrelated way.

Here’s how it works: Travelers go to one of several carbon-offset Web sites and use an online “carbon calculator” to determine the approximate amount of carbon dioxide produced when they drive, fly or otherwise burn fossil fuels. Then they buy “offsets,” donating money for projects that promise to produce energy without burning fossil fuels or otherwise reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The reduction financed by the purchase is supposed to equal the amount of gas the trip created, per passenger. Typically the price is anywhere from $5 to $30, depending on the length of the trip and the form of transportation.

The article notes that it’s still unclear how much of a difference these programs make and that, at best, it’s just one tiny component of what is needed to combat global warming and other environmental issues.  Still, first steps are always necessary and most people who contribute to carbon offset programs seem to understand that they’re only making a small impact.

Passengers who contribute typically understand the limitations and give the money anyway. “Honestly, I can’t really believe this could result in significant carbon emission improvements at any corporation,” said Justine Johnson, a veterinarian from East Greenwich, R.I., who paid more than $200 at myclimate.org to offset the impact of her car and plane trips for the year.

“But it also was such a small investment that I figured I would do it anyway. Mainly I was casting a vote. I thought that if enough people demonstrate a willingness to put money toward solving this problem, then maybe the government will start listening.”

For more information about this topic, the article refers to Sustainable Travel International, which has a considerable resource area on carbon offsets. One of the programs mentioned in the story that is also recommended by Sustainable Travel is MyClimate.org.