Travel to exotic lands ... 82

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1. 
   • odograph 1748
   • 26 Apr 2007 5:01am 1177588909 1177617709

   huhI was going to make a joke yesterday about us all flying up to see "Warming Island"

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2. 
   • Hooverflagit 6356
   • 26 Apr 2007 10:34am 1177608860 1177637660

   Marketing aside....Although the NOLS ad is not exactly promoting nor implying environmental stewardship, their teachings and philosophy are some of the most environmentally responsible and low-impact of such an institution. They participate in a carbon-offset program and run a nationwide tour educating people to how to be conscious and responsible for their environmental impact on an individual level. This type of thinking pervades the whole institution right down to the course instructors.
   NOLS helped develop the Leave No Trace organization and they practice its low-impact ethics on every expedition. I would say that as a result of people participating in these learning expeditions in majestic, far-flung places, they are gaining a respect and sense of responsibility for the world they exist within every day at home.   ...read more

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3. 
   • JMG 1615
   • 26 Apr 2007 1:54pm 1177620856 1177649656

   The price is too highOK, if the NOLS folks are such great stewards of the environment, then how long should it take them to see that what they are doing is providing excellent cover for the denialists and the dont'-give-a-damn-ists?
   After all, say the GOP, the Natl. Manufacturers' Assn., the Business Roundtable, the airline lobbies, etc.,  if the most environmentally ethically advanced beings in the universe think it's ok to keep on traveling to far away places just because of some offsets, then it must be ok for the rest of us to keep right on trucking ...
   At some point, people who profess concern for the environment have to stop helping to screw it up in the name of consciousness raising.
   
   "An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."   ...read more

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4. 
   • atreyger 1759
   • 26 Apr 2007 2:08pm 1177621725 1177650525

   Right...So the people who travel to glaciers and go on grueling three month long hiking expeditions through some of the worst terrain in the world are the reason for global warming. Yep... You're right, the NOLS advetisement is going to get through to about a billion people in the world and they're all going to go to glaciers expending trillions of gallons of fuel. That's exactly what's going to happen.
   Do you think about the root causes for global warming or do you like to complain?

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5. 
   • JMG 1615
   • 26 Apr 2007 3:17pm 1177625861 1177654661

   Tell me, what are they?I think about the root causes of global heating every day.  Obsessively so, says my bride.
   But perhaps I'm not thinking about the right things--what should I be thinking about?  
   Should I follow the course blazed by tens of millions before me and decide that carbon emitted by those with a pure heart (whose values are similar to my own) is less damaging than carbon emitted for base reasons?
   Should I decide that carbon emitted from jet travel by people who are clearly aware of and take global heating seriously is less damaging than carbon emitted by H2 drivers?
   The phrase "root causes" strikes me as odd, because I've been trained and am quite proficient in root cause analysis as a method for improving safety and in improving organizational performance.  I know what I mean by the term, but what do you mean by it?  What do you think the "root causes" of global heating are that I should be concerned with?
   Part of me probably does like to complain, though.  I admit to having always had a fondness for Oscar Wilde's observation that "Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation."
   
   "An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."   ...read more

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6. 
   • atreyger 1759
   • 26 Apr 2007 3:45pm 1177627521 1177656321

   umm...Clearly, the root causes of the climate change is not the three hundred people or so that take part in the NOLS courses. It's the billion cars and people and machines and industry and land clearing and Amazon deforestation and a hundred other systemic causes.
   Singling out travelers, who once arriving at the destination hike for hundreds of miles is unfair. Jealous?

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7. 
   • Bart Anderson 1760
   • 26 Apr 2007 4:51pm 1177631475 1177660275

   Time for us all to wake upNOLS is a great group, as Hooverflagit pointed out. However times are changing. Trips like this are clearly irresponsible now that we know what we know about global warming. But of course, NOLS is not alone. The Sierra Club magazine is full of adverts for wonderful trips to faraway places (many sponsored by the club).  
   Those of us who love the outdoors are going to have to change, just as everybody else will.  For example, we probably should do most of our outdoorsing nearby - get to know our own hills and lakes  and deltas, rather than jetting off to Peru.
   SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson had a wonderful story about this at GORP: The Future of Adventure
   Sports fan Bill Henderson is envisioning how sports need to be re-thought in light of global warming and peak oil: The relocalization of sport.
   
   Bart
   
   Energy Bulletin   ...read more

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8. 
   • JMG 1615
   • 26 Apr 2007 5:49pm 1177634944 1177663744

   Causes vs. Symptomsatreyger,
   I suggest that none of your list of activities that contribute to global heating (the billion cars and people and machines and industry and land clearing and Amazon deforestation and a hundred other[s]) are "systemic causes" at all.  
   Rather, those are symptoms of a greater root cause, our ability as individuals to rationalize anything we wish to do that benefits us or our kin as good/justified/worthy while we ignore or minimize costs that we impose on others outside our kin group (living now or later).  That, I suggest, is a lot closer to a root cause for global heating.
   You ask:  "Singling out travelers, who once arriving at the destination hike for hundreds of miles is unfair. Jealous?"  
   How does the fact that NOLS folks hike for hundreds of miles change the equation?   What's the difference between them and people who fly to Bali to lie on the beach, or people who fly to Patagonia to climb, or people who fly anywhere to pursue their own private pleasures?
   As for my feelings, I experience a feeling closer to despair when I see the NOLS ad, not jealousy.  It tells me that even the folks who might be expected to be the most dedicated to reducing global heating carry the same "de minimus" fallacy in their heads as the SUV drivers and the Amazonian loggers:  the belief that the damage that I do is so small as to be inconsequential.
   
   "An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."   ...read more

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9. 
   • caniscandida 1569
   • 26 Apr 2007 7:02pm 1177639323 1177668123

   Robert H. Mohlenbrock(Dammit, Gristmill, I hate it when I have composed a message, then I submit it by pressing "post," and then it gets irretrievably lost, somehow, so then I have to recover its gist, from my unreliable memory.  This has happened to me often before, e.g. last night.  Dammit, Gristmill!!!)
   So sorry, I am feeling very miserable and cranky.
   Rightly so, though, as any writer would understand.
   To Bart: By "SF," you apparently mean "sci-fi."  Be sure to specify, in the future.  "SF" by itself means too many things in different contexts, e.g. San Francisco, Santa Fe, self-feeling, sans-farine, subwarp-frequency, and So Forth.
   Kim Stanley Robinson, back in 2000, published a piece, not exactly a story, which deserved to have been received popularly better than it apparently has been received.  I like this meaningful fragment:
   
   <<
   
   This is called commodification, turning things you do into things you buy, and it's long since been true that experiences in America are as commodified as things.
   
   >>
   I have no knowledge whatsoever of who NOLS are and what they do. I do know that the aspect of the Sierra Club that I like by far the least is their travel industry, in the name of green values and eco-education.
   Why in the world is it that young(ish) Americans, with a goodly amount of bucks in their pockets, do not feel that they have truly "experienced Nature," until they have spent a lot of money traveling to distant continents whose names begin with "A," and who expend lots of jet fuel getting there, and who take lots of pictures once they have got there?
   There is so much of beauty and interest to see right here in North America.  As the old saying goes: "Do you learn more about mountains, by climbing a hundred mountains, or by climbing the same mountain a hundred times?"
   Robert H. Mohlenbrock is a terrificly underestimated environmentalist hero.  For decades, he has been writing the "This Land" column in Natural History, a great magazine published in some relationship with the American Museum of Natural History here in NYC.  Mohlenbrock's blurb reads, "Robert H. Mohlenbrock is distinguished professor emeritus of plant biology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale."
   IMHO, I think he is fantastic.  He has been researching for decades the national, state and provincial forests of North America, and describing them carefully, mostly with an interest in flora but also in fauna, geology and hydrography.
   In each of his columns, he includes transportation information for the place that he has described.
   Really, his work is astounding.  And we must do much more to assure clueless young well-meaning Americans that there is plenty right here for them to look at and study.
   
   Chickens are our cousins!
   So are other sensitive animals!
   Enough is enough!
   No more factory farms!   ...read more

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10. 
    • amazingdrx 1744
    • 26 Apr 2007 9:03pm 1177646601 1177675401

    Copy itBefore you hit post Canis.  A glitchy computer can lose it anyway.
    Copy and paste into a "draft" in your email and it's safe even if the computer crashes.  Belt and suspenders.  
    It's the only way to be sure of preserving ones creation in the wacky world mr gates hath wrought.  I know, apple machines are not designed to facilitate commercial hacking and spying and thus frequent crashing.
    But most internet technology does run on the gates model.  Easy for corporate, goverenment, and just plain old vandalism to destroy.
    
    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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