Hallett Peak in Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park

This week, President Obama signed into law a bill that makes me happy. It will create millions of acres of new wilderness and hundreds of miles of rivers, save natural areas from oil and gas leasing, and expand trails. It’s called the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.

In doing so, he protected two of my favorite spots on the planet, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and the adjacent Indian Peaks Wilderness.

The law will designate nearly 250,000 acres of backcountry within the park and next to the existing wilderness area as wilderness. This tract includes 94 percent of the park.

This new act will save Longs Peak, the first Colorado 14er I ever climbed and on which I met a great friend, and sister peak Mount Meeker, a 13er that’s high on my wish list. The law also will add 1,000 acres to the adjacent Indian Peaks Wilderness Area in the Arapaho National Forest, a beautiful, rugged place full of sharp summits and smooth lakes.

This news has been a long time coming; President Nixon first recommended the acreage for wilderness designation in 1974.

Mt. Meeker in Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park

Not much will change, and that’s the point. The wilderness designation protects the land and makes sure the character and awe-inspiring views of this land remain the same for future generations. According to The Wilderness Society, “while permanently protecting and solidifying the wild character of the park lands in perpetuity, wilderness designation will do little to change current park management and function.”

You’ll still be able to hike, backpack, climb, snowshoe, ski, fish, and ride horses along the 355 miles of trail there. You can still drive up Trail Ridge Road–which tops 12,000′ and lets you see miles of peaks over open tundra–and the more-burly unpaved Fall River Road.

The wildlife there will gain protection, too, including the bears, mountain lions, and the herds of hundreds of elk that emerge from the forest in the fall belting out the haunting bugling sounds of their rut.

Wilderness designation will clarify park management procedures, prevent roads from cutting up the landscape, and allow scientific research to continue there. It also will mean more clear air, clean water, and open spaces that benefit public health in Colorado.

To me personally, and I suspect to many other hikers and lovers of mountains, this law means protection of some of what is nearest and dearest to the heart. The Rockies give my body a place to spend days full of hard, honest, energizing exercise; my eyes a place to see pure natural beauty; and my spirit a place to fly.

To see more scenes from some of these areas, view my photos of Mount Audubon and Pawnee Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Ypsilon Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. May this special, newly saved place make your spirit fly as well.

Just out this week was the news that the number of people taking public transportation is at a 52-year high.

Ridership in 2008 increased across all modes of public transportation, including light rail (8.3 percent), commuter rail (4.7 percent), subways (3.5 percent), bus service overall (3.9 percent), and bus service in communities with populations under 100,000 (9.3 percent).

This meant a 4 percent rise in the number of trips on public transportation in 2007, and a 3.6 percent drop in vehicle miles traveled by road in 2008, says the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Why is this?  Those who took trains or buses saved money.  At least that’s the opinion of William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, which released the report. “Given our current economic condition, people are looking for ways to save money, and taking public transportation offers a substantial savings of more than $8,000 a year. That’s quite a savings.”

I’m not sure how he figured his math, but when you consider a couple hundred bucks a month for parking and 55 cents per mile, his price seems plausible for those with longer commutes.

What are the other, non-green benefits of ditching your car? You don’t have to fight traffic–or circle endlessly for a parking spot. Instead, you can read a good book, or listen to your iPod, or text your friends, or take a nap.

Of course, I also like the idea for environmental reasons. Millar had some good stats on that: “Every year, public transportation saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline and reduces our nation’s carbon emissions by 37 million metric tons. ” This could help in efforts to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

And saving fuel puts us closer to weaning ourselves off foreign oil, which ultimately would help the economy and increase our national security.

What do you think? Have you jumped from the station wagon to the bandwagon and started taking public transit?

At the time, I was having a perfectly nice run near the river, enjoying the soft snowflakes as they sifted past white-barked sycamore trees. I felt relaxed and happy. And when I passed a woman gabbing on her phone, I felt the familiar urge to grab it out of her hand and toss it in the C&O canal.

Frankly, I hate seeing those things in the woods. Of course I, too, have occasionally carried one when I’m biking somewhere to meet someone, or when I’ve needed to catch up with a friend about evening plans. They can be darned convenient.

So why do I find them so annoying?

From an environmental standpoint, it really doesn’t matter where a cell phone gets used. It’s no less friendly in the woods than in the mall. And cell phone conversations make even less noise than a group of friends laughing and chatting on a trail.

But a cell phone has another effect. It breaks people’s focus on their surroundings. It drags them back into the manmade world. It enables them to be in the woods without fully seeing the beauty around them.

The woman this morning sounded formal, as if she were talking to a client or boss, doing business from the convenience of the muddy towpath. Her eyes were staring at the ground. She was physically present outside, but her mind was far, far away.

For a few minutes after that, mine was too.

We as a society are astonishingly disconnected from the natural world. We’ve paved and covered, erected steel and stacked cinderblocks until we no longer recognize the earth that gives us life. As a result, many people think of the environment as that place out there for the birds and the trees and those strange crunchy hippie folks in Birkenstocks.

But all of us live in and because of our environment–it’s the air we breathe, the soil from which we grow food, the water we drink. We depend on it for our very existence. For some of us, it’s a source of spiritual strength as well.

If we can’t fully unplug, even for an hour, we lose the ability to connect with nature, to relax, to really feel the wind on our faces, the snowflakes brushing our cheeks, and our lungs taking in the cold fresh air.

Without connectedness, we lose quality of life. We lose the wonder of the outside world, and the first-hand understanding our how our planet’s delicate systems work. We also lose respect for nature.

I fully believe that this loss of respect and understanding is the reason we’re clear cutting our forests, exploding our mountains, pouring chemicals in our rivers, filling our air with carbon dioxide and poisons. We need to connect to care, and we need to care to make the world a better place.

Call me starry-eyed for this. Call me out of touch. Call me what you will.

But if you call me on my cell phone when I’m out in the woods, please be ready to leave a message.

His comments reminded me of those made by futurist John Petersen, whose remarks Leafing Out discussed in the Jan. 15 post. Petersen predicted that we’d soon see exponential change in many areas, including the economy, oil, and climate. To cope with these mind-boggling new changes, he said, we need to radically change the way we live. In particular, we need to move to a way of life that’s sustainable.

I see parallels here. Let me say first off that I have deep compassion for the many people hurt by the faltering economy, and in no way am I suggesting that high unemployment is the answer to the world’s woes. But if the new economy means that we no longer can afford to buy the volume of products we’ve bought in the past, ultimately this outcome could have a positive environmental effect.

Roll with me. Suppose I and my friends and my friends’ friends and their friends’ friends decide not to buy new flip flops this summer. What happens if enough people skip buying flip flops? Well, the people who create the plastics, those who assemble the shoes, those who ship the shoes around the country, those who work at the retail store, those who do the marketing–anyone connected to the production and sale of flip flops–ultimately may be out of a job. And again, that’s not an outcome I desire.

At the same time, though, without flip flops we’re not using as much petroleum to make plastic or releasing toxic chemicals into the air or water during plastics production. We’re saving the fuel needed to transport the shoes to stores. We’re also saving the fuel needed months or years later to transport worn-out flip flops to a landfill or incinerator, where their destruction will produce even more greenhouse gases. (For more on the lifecycle of things, see The Story of Stuff.)

That part works for me. Really, how many pairs of flip flops does a person need? How many video game consoles, thumb drives, or USB cup warmers? How many made-in-China plastic doodads in the shape of smiling bears? Especially if we’re pumping toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases into the air to put these items in our homes?

While I admit to sometimes catching the shopping bug myself, I have to ask–how many of our purchases are useful or meaningful, and how many quickly become clutter? Might this new need to save money change the mindset of some Americans? Might we, under financial duress, draw differently the line between what we want and what we need?

A study released earlier this month said, not surprisingly, that experiences cause more pleasure than possessions. This news is not surprising, but it is encouraging. Perhaps we will have a value shift, where after a few money-strapped months, people discover they would rather have a home-cooked dinner with the people they love than buy a new computer that will tempt them to spend more hours online, alone. They’d rather go for a walk outside than sweat in their basement on a new treadmill. They’d rather read to their kids than to buy a toy that will tell the story in an electronic voice.

Perhaps this act of getting back to basics, if combined with growing awareness of environmental issues and the true costs of the things we see at the mall, will open their eyes to the beauty of our planet, and encourage them to protect it before it’s too late.

True, this is an optimistic view, and I’m not holding my breath. But if there’s a silver lining in the current economic situation, perhaps it’s to take us back to what really matters in life. And it isn’t the latest iPhone.

What do you think? Do Americans shop too much? Will the recession ultimately help the planet, or will tight costs push consumers’ environmental concerns to the back burner, especially given the sometimes-higher cost for environmentally responsible products?

The "Wall of Love"

Valentine’s Day is on the way. What do you love best about life on this big Earth? Share it with the world!

The “Wall of Love” shares pictures of what people cherish–and what inspires them to care about climate change.

At Leafing Out, we talk a lot about how a green lifestyle confers other, non-green benefits–a perfect complement to the I Heart Clean Energy site.

How might climate change affect you, and the people and places you love?

Please upload your own photo to the Wall of Love and, if you like, send a copy to your legislator through the same site so that he or she will know what’s most important to you.

You’re also cordially invited–encouraged, in fact–to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

You might hear the issue of whether and how to act on global warming couched this way, pitting environment against economy. The good news is that we can have both.

Last week, the 2,500 of us who attended the sold-out Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington, D.C., spent three days learning how.

What I noticed first at the conference was the wide mix of people there–members of United Steelworkers and other labor unions, members of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, activists from the coalfields in states such as Kentucky and West Virginia, Native Americans, advocates from the inner cities. It was most diverse and excited group I’ve seen since inauguration day–and before that, ever.

This was part conference, and part revival. At the general session on the last morning, the D.C. Labor Chorus began singing loudly and energetically at 8 a.m. Then Native American activist Winona LaDuke gave an uplifting speech on the importance of reverence and humility in defining this new economy. A very cool hip-hop music video of Green Anthem by Tem Blessed and Ben Gilbarg had people standing up dancing. (Did I mention this was 8 a.m.?)

Green for All founder Van Jones talked about how our ancestors lived close to the earth, and how in America a new conversation is starting, people wondering how we can find our way back to our great-great-grandmother’s wisdom. He also posed an interesting question: Are we locusts, or are we honeybees? Near the end, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, was firing up the crowd. He had the audience standing, holding hands, a thousands-strong line to stand fast for change. Wow. We’re awake!

So why all the fuss about green jobs? And how do they benefit such a broad range of the population?

Labor groups see the connection between a transitioning economy and opportunities for American workers–in building parts for and assembling wind turbines and solar panels, in hauling and processing recyclables, in designing and constructing energy-efficient buildings, and in building cleaner transportation options, to name just a few. During the conference, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced that it is forming a new Center for Green Jobs in D.C.

Those who live in coal-mining towns see the opportunity to build clean energy wind farms that create permanent jobs, save their community residents from pollution-related illnesses, their workers from mining accidents and diseases, their heritage and mountains from being destroyed, and their drinking water being colored and contaminated by mines. For an example, see what Coal River Wind is doing.

Similarly, Native Americans want to see jobs that are cleaner and safer than the ones they currently take in an attempt to counter soaring unemployment rates, such as mining for uranium and coal, drilling for oil, and operating coal power plants. Instead, they’d like to harness the abundant wind and sunshine present on the reservations to bring health and good wages to their residents, and to live their values of respecting Mother Earth.

Residents of the inner cities need more good jobs, too. Low-income urban neighborhoods have a vested interest in stopping global warming, as they are among the hardest hit by climate change (for starters, think Hurricane Katrina, and hot summers without the means to pay for air conditioning). As they traditionally have not been among the leadership of the environmental movement, they also want to ensure that eco-apartheid does not take place, and that they are included in the push to create new jobs.

Good Jobs, Green Jobs makes a strong case that what’s good for the environment is good for all of us. How can going green help you? Please share your thoughts.

Apparently, a lot of Americans.

“The latest in an annual series of polls from the Pew Research Center on people’s top priorities for their elected leaders shows that America and President Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming,” wrote reporter Andrew C. Revkin in his Jan. 22 posting of the New York Times Dot Earth blog. “Mr. Obama stressed the issue throughout his campaign and several times in his inaugural speech, mentioning stabilizing climate in the same breath as preventing nuclear conflict at one point,” Revkin said.

So President Obama did–and to a cool reception, at that. I joined the million or so people on the National Mall on inauguration day, and despite widespread cheering during many parts of Obama’s speech, the crowd was mysteriously silent whenever he mentioned fighting climate change.

Revkin’s post goes on to say that the 1,503 adults who took the survey ranked global warming as the last issue out of 20. Not surprisingly, 85 percent listed the economy as the highest priority; global warming captured only 30 percent of the vote.

So the inauguration cheers–or lack thereof–were representative. Why aren’t people concerned about the environment?

I have some theories:

• First, on the surface, everything looks fine. The weather is variable, but weather always is, so why worry?
• Second, the previous administration, under the influence of powerful fossil fuels interests, mixed policy with science for years, funding scientists who refuted humans’ influence on global warming and spinning the science in government environmental reports. The lack of true information has cast unfounded doubt on the science surrounding climate change, and confused the public.
• Third, most environmental communications aren’t doing the trick. Most of the environmental messages we hear are feel-good messages: “Here are 10 easy things you can do to save the planet.” While well intentioned, these messages do not convey the seriousness of the situation. They don’t say how climate change affects you and me, nor do they share the co-benefits of a lifestyle that’s friendly to the planet. So people view environmental action as optional, charitable efforts, to which it’s easy to say, “No thank you; I don’t feel like giving today.”

Why should we be cheering President Obama’s plans to address climate change? Because climate change is real, it is manmade, it is serious, and it will affect all of us.

Changes in weather patterns don’t just give us the possibility of a good tan in January. They also bring the possibility of drought that makes land uninhabitable, crop failure and food shortages, lethal heat waves, intense hurricanes, increased risk of disease, and more.

What’s the benefit to you and me of slowing climate change? Life on a planet whose weather behaves more or less the same for us, our children, and our children’s children as it did for our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Cheers to that.

Petersen, author of A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change and president and founder of The Arlington Institute, spoke last week in D.C. at a meeting of the Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SB NOW).

One thing’s for sure in Petersen’s mind: Change is a’ comin’. Lots of it, and soon.

He said exponential change is on the way in a variety of areas: population, economics, oil, climate, technology. All the charts he shared on these topics looked eerily the same–they showed us positioned at the bottom of an Olympic-caliber ski jump, looking up.

Petersen supported the charts with compelling tidbits. The world’s population has grown more in 50 years than in the 4 million years before and is still growing. Oil production is now peaking and will soon decline. Economic woes are spreading worldwide. Climate change is barreling down, with expected effects on agriculture.

These factors, said Petersen, threaten the system. And they all point to a single concept–the way we’ve been living is not sustainable.

In an unrelated but fascinating video, The Story of Stuff, activist and international sustainability expert Annie Leonard said the same thing in examining the entire life of the products we buy, from their creation through their disposal. She said we have a linear system and a finite planet, which isn’t sustainable. “This system looks like it’s fine. But the truth is it’s a system in crisis…. All along the way, it’s bumping up against limits.”

Both Petersen and Leonard believe we must fundamentally change the way we live. Our problems are the product of what we think and do, said Petersen. If we don’t change our ways, we’ll continue to get the same outcome.

In fact, said Petersen, if we ignore the coming exponential changes to the systems that govern our lifestyles, we may be in for a sudden surprise. We’ll be like the Thanksgiving turkey described by Nassir Nicholas Taleb in the Black Swan. The turkey awakens the day before Thanksgiving and, basing all its perceptions on the past, thinks today’s going to be just like every other day.

Perhaps this point is best pondered at times other than 2 a.m., but it’s an interesting one.

Even our ethics will be outdated soon, Petersen said. Soon we will have computing power equal to a human brain, with which we can create the equivalent of 10,000 Ph.D.s working 24/7 on anti-aging research, he said. Already we’ve cloned fingers and made human organs using ink-jet printers. What do we do with this?

Currently, we don’t have the basis to deal with these issues, Petersen said. “All of our rules, values, laws, and ethics come from the past. This is a different world, a different time.”

“This is like life before the Web,” he said. “We’re walking into space we’ve never known before.”

So what does his predictions mean to you and me?  And what should we do next?

“It’s like a storm coming; we’ve got to prepare for it,” Petersen said. “We’ve got to build a new world.” Doing so requires perspectives and approaches that are radically different from what we’ve relied on in the past.

To expand on his point, Petersen showed a picture of a person carved from ice. Suppose we were made of ice, he said; we need to contemplate the world with a 1 degree temperature rise that turns everyone into water. That is the scale of change we need.

Making this change, said Petersen, will take three C’s–cooperation, communication, and community. We need interconnectedness and interdependence. “If you decide we’re interconnected and what hurts one hurts another, problem solved.” We also need foresight, innovation, resilience, and sustainability, he said.

Those who are already working in sustainability, according to Petersen, are well poised to help imagine this new world. “In sustainability, you see the world in different ways than you did 10 years ago.”

He ended with a call to action: “Let’s go become the new human beings, the new world.”

Leonard’s video echoes his sentiments: “When people along this system get united, we can reclaim and transform this linear system into something new, a system that doesn’t waste resources or people.”

I’ll be honest; in practical terms, I’m not sure how personally to create this new world. I’m pretty sure I won’t be the one to design a new mode of transportation or pluck energy from the air. Maybe my next step should be to read Petersen’s book.

But sustainability I can get behind. Anything that reduces waste, from reusable shopping bags to wind power and more, moves us in the right direction.

What do you think? Do you buy what Petersen is saying? And if so, how would you create a new world?

It seems all bridges from Virginia into the District will be closed to private vehicles on Inauguration Day, blocking all direct access from the commonwealth and preventing residents from even attempting what at best would have been an epic journey into the city by car. And some Virginians are ticked.

An article in today’s Washington Post, Virginians See Bridge Closings As Dose of Northern Hospitality, shows just how high passions–and imaginations–are running.

My favorite quote is this: “It’s all just an old Civil War snub. The Yankees are no quicker to forget the past than are any of the dyed-in-the-wool Rebels.” I’m not sure I understand how the Civil War got dragged into this, except that we are talking about Virginia here, but the irony is not lost on me that on the first time in 44 years that Virginia voted blue, the doors to the inaugural party were slammed in its face. Modern-day followers of General Robert E. Lee might have had nothing to do with this, but what about bitter McCain fans?

All jesting and speculation aside, the fact remains that three of the five Virginia bridges do dump drivers out at the Mall. Apparently the others would feed traffic onto closed roads.

While I think the plan to close all bridges is over the top, I can accept the reasoning. So go ahead, shut ‘em off–but in fairness, let’s close all the roads in from Maryland and other parts of the District as well. This will complete the effect, described so aptly by Ben Rome of We Love DC, of making D.C. a castle with a moat called the Potomac.

Doing so will have a benefit–it’ll be green.  Take out the traffic, and imagine the greenhouse gases prevented without millions of cars idling for hours in gridlock!

But how’s an Obamaniac to get to the inauguration?

If you don’t mind crushing crowds and hours-long waits, you can make your own history by braving Metro when it’s way above capacity. (Won’t be me!) You can take a shuttle bus into the city with a couple million of your closest friends.

Or, you can walk or bike. Now there’s an idea that hasn’t been floated much during the Big Bridge Brouhaha! True, you’ll need to get close enough to make this feasible, or to be in good enough shape to walk or bike a few miles.

Still, the Memorial, Key and Chain bridges will be open to pedestrians. WABA has set up two bike valet locations where you may safely leave your bike and, according to the friendly staffer who answered the phone this afternoon, you will be permitted to take a bike on the sidewalk of any bridge. (She did caution to check back closer to Inauguration Day, as this information may change.)

Barack Obama already has demonstrated substantial leadership in the environmental arena and has urged people to take personal action to reduce global warming. What better tribute to our soon-to-be 44th President than to take clean, green transportation to his inauguration?

So lace up those tennis shoes, pull out that bike, grab your warmest gloves and hat, and get thee to inauguration under your own power. You can avoid the traffic, burn off some leftover holiday calories–and to the new president’s environmental efforts, be part of the collective “Yes we can.”

Yesterday, in the midst of a sunny morning, the sky suddenly turned dark and unleashed a fury. Sheets of snow spun, frenzied, before crashing down; the air bleached white. Just five minutes later, the snow subsided. There was a flash, and thunder cracked above the house. Then it was over; blue sky appeared. In the distance, a large cloud moved away, wind currents whipping curved gray lines up its height.

The storm left thousands without power, snarled traffic, and sent a two-year-old boy to the hospital; he was struck by a branch tossed down by the wind.

Just four days before, it was 70 degrees here.

This weather is bizarre. I’ve seen plenty of sudden weather changes while hiking in the Colorado high country. Mountains are notorious for making their own weather. In Virginia, where I’ve lived my entire life, though, this kind of sky behavior isn’t normal. Neither were the numerous strong thunderstorms spawning tornado warnings that rolled through this area last spring.

Frankly, the weather is starting to frighten me. Not in its range of temperatures–in fact, we had an unusually mild summer–but in its volatility. I think it’s a preview of what’s to come.

Talking about global warming doesn’t always serve us well. While the term is technically correct, it doesn’t convey the seriousness of the problem. Thomas L. Friedman, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author who wrote Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How it Can Renew America and recently spoke at a National Council for Science and the Environment biodiversity conference, said that really what we’re facing is “weather weirding.” The increase in temperatures will change our weather patterns, often in unpredictable ways. We’ll have more-severe heat, droughts, and floods; storms will become more intense.

Weather is always unpredictable, of course. But what we’re seeing now backs up what the world’s top scientists have been saying for years.

It’s a fairly common occurrence these days to turn on the TV and see the banner “Extreme Weather,” whether it introduces a piece on floods, blizzards, heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, or other weather events that cause natural disasters.

So when I see a 70-degree December day quickly followed by a quick, freak snowstorm, I have to wonder about the cause.

A working group that contributed to the Fourth Assessment Report (pdf file) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental body that includes hundreds of scientists all over the world, says that between 1970, when I was little, and 2004, greenhouse gas emissions rose 70 percent. While there’s some debate over exactly when human-induced global warming began, the burning of fossil fuels took off at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

So what I–and possibly everyone alive today–consider “normal” weather is in fact weather influenced by man. Geologically speaking, all of us have been on the earth for a very short time. If we’re noticing changes in weather patterns, those changes must be happening all too rapidly.

Why go green? That same IPCC report says that changes in lifestyle and behavior patterns can help mitigate climate change. Make no mistake–there’s a big effort needed. Yet if we take steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions–changing our own lifestyles and urging our leaders to enact laws that reduce these gases–we can ward off at least some of the weird weather that’s otherwise heading our way.