Alaska to Antarctica...on a bike!

Each day I'm learning more about the exciting new group of people I'll be meeting on my next Antarctic adventure. Today I heard from Joost Notenboom of the Netherlands, who is currently en route to Antarctica...via Alaska...on a bike! He and Michiel Roodenburg started Cycle for Water and are raising awareness of the global water crisis. They are currently in Patagonia, on their way south to Ushuaia on their bamboo bicycles (promoting sustainable materials and limiting their footprint to the bare minimum). AWESOME! Can't wait to hear the stories from these two...

Third time’s a charm!

I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be joining Robert Swan and the 2041 team in Antarctica once again. On February 24^th I’ll depart for Argentina, where I’ll meet up with the rest of the team leaders. This year, an exciting new group of people will join us, including corporate leaders, journalists, energy experts, students, and two members of the Wounded Warrior Project. The most exciting news is that this expedition will be featured as a TEDx event. Those of you familiar with TED will know how awesome that is!

Stay tuned for more details. In the mean time, please follow me on Twitter, "Like" this page, and all that other fun stuff that will help spread the word and bring awareness to the mission of 2041.

“The biggest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Robert Swan O.B.E.

Inspired by...Costa Rica

I am not the only one that is experiencing a milestone birthday these days. My mom is turning 70 in October, and to celebrate our milestones we decided to go somewhere together. Since I’m really just a chip off the old block, my mom and I like similar types of adventures. She’s climbed Machu Picchu, rowed down rivers in Alaska, and she hikes and showshoes weekly in her hometown in Eastern Oregon. She’s my ultimate inspiration. I hit the gym for a month before the trip, just so I could be sure to keep up with her! I wrote the following while I was there, and now that I’m back “on the grid” as of yesterday, I’m sharing it with all of you…

We chose Lapa Rios on the Osa Peninsula as our destination. It’s won all sorts of sustainability awards, and is known as one of the top eco-lodges in the world.  It is completely off the grid just south of Corcovado National Park, high on a ridge in the rainforest. It’s a strange sensation, to have no television, no phone, no Internet, no walls. I am perched at the edge of a mountain in a bungalow, and can hear the ocean breaking a few hundred feet below me. The howler monkeys signal their bedtime with prehistoric-sounding wails, and, as the sun sets, I hear the rainforest come even more alive as the nocturnal population awakens. When I got here, I found an ant in the shower and killed it. Now, I think ants are spectacular. Have you ever watched an army of leaf-cutter ants at work? Incredible. We went on a night walk on our first night here…we saw snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions. In fact, I should probably put on some shoes, for there is a very real possibility that a tarantula or scorpion will crawl on my feet as I sit on my deck and write this. But this is the adventure I always desire…one that challenges me, encourages me to face my fears, and teaches me something that I don’t know. And they are doing amazing things here…composting, solar energy, biodiesel, hydro, everything is measured and accounted for, and everyone pitches in to make it happen. Their values are all about making this place sustainable. Right on, Lapa Rios, right on.

It seems strange, since it’s hot and humid, but I am reminded of Antarctica almost daily here.  For one, I am surrounded by people who chose this as a destination because of their love of nature and desire to preserve it. On a boat trip along a tropical fjord we passed untouched rainforest reaching all the way to the sky…it was just like the Lemaire Channel, but green, not covered with white ice.  When I jumped off the boat into the warm Gulf, it reminded me of my Polar Plunge (until I hit the water of course). And, the humpbacks I love to watch in Antarctica are expected here soon for their breeding season. It occurs to me that this is a perfect example of a world connected. Of balance. Of similarities and differences. It is a demonstration of how precarious the world is. Signs of climate change are all around here, even in what is known to be one of the most diverse and healthy ecosystems in the world. The rainforest, like Antarctica and the Arctic, is another canary in the coal mine.

So, as I reflect on what I’ve learned here, and what I learned in Morocco, I can’t help but wonder…perhaps there will be a day when more people look beyond only themselves, their house, their job, their town, their state, and their country….to find that there is actually a whole world out there. What stopped us from thinking of ourselves as global citizens?  Just because something is different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. After all, sleeping with ants and spiders certainly felt different a few days ago, and while I won’t be turning my apartment into a jungle anytime soon, I may think twice before killing the next critter I see.

This photo was taken by one of the Lapa Rios guides looking through a telescope with my camera..a howler monkey eating lunch in a huge tree behind the entrance to the lodge.

Inspired by...Morocco

Well, hello again. It’s been awhile. It’s not that I haven’t been “inspired”, it’s just that I haven’t written about it. So without further ado, I’ll pick up where I left off six months ago...

After my first expedition to Antarctica, I realized that a goal of setting foot on all seven continents was suddenly attainable, and, since I already had six under my belt, it was attainable before the end of my (insert an unmentionable milestone birthday here) year. Last fall, when a girlfriend of mine sent out an e-mail asking if anyone was interested in joining her on a camping trip in the Sahara the following month, I jumped on it. Africa? Check. Seven continents? Check. My favorite? Still Antarctica. BUT…Africa was amazing. Now, it wasn’t sub-Saharan Africa…I still need to do that…but riding on a camel at sunset, into the darkness of the Sahara, and camping out on the top of a sand dune under magnificent stars wrapped in wool blanket? Brilliant. Waking up at sunrise and watching the sand turn to movie-set red in front of my eyes? Magic. I wanted to stay in the desert for a week. I was sucked back into the Antarctica-like feeling of isolation that I love…the feeling that no one else existed in the world except for the few of us on that dune. Here we were, three American girls, with three Berber Moroccan guides, singing, drumming, laughing, and drinking tea. They tried to help us understand jokes in Arabic, we tried to teach them American campfire songs. We were all the same…people living life and enjoying it, learning about differences and respecting them. Learning about similarities and feeling dismayed that such judgment exists in the world between our two cultures. Not there. Not on that dune.

I’ll summarize my Moroccan inspiration with a story. Khalid, our new friend and talented guide, had patiently taught me to speak some of his language, answered my questions about his culture and religion, showed me how to eat traditional Moroccan food, and made sure I didn’t freeze on that dune. On the way back to Marrakesh, we stopped in the mountains to shop and I asked Khalid where I could get a tajine dish to take home. He told me that the best place would be coming up in a little while. I forgot all about it. We arrived to our riad in the old city and began to say an emotional goodbye to our new friend. Khalid reached into a bag and presented me with a tajine…a gift. A gift?? From my tour guide? That demonstration of heartfelt generosity will never be forgotten. You see, in Morocco I learned about true generosity, but also about family values, about the beauty and origin of the word “inshallah”, about discipline, and that most people who seem very different from me are, in fact, not at all.

COP16 begins today in Cancun, Mexico...so what?

Well, you won't see it on CNN's home page, and it's buried near the bottom of BBC's, but the COP16 climate talks indeed started today. While there is little hope for any real progress to come out of the first climate talks since the failed Copenhagen talks last December, there has been a shift in climate action strategy this past year, according to what I'm hearing at various events that I've attended. This article from The Guardian answers some basic questions about COP16, and mentions the big players who will be in attendance. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/08/cancun-cop16-climate-talks


In September I represented my company at the Carbon Disclosure Projects's Global Forum here in New York. The UN "Climate Chief", Christiana Figueres, is highlighted in this article and spoke to us at the Forum. She shared what's reported in the article today - that she holds little hope of significant action by governments at COP16 - but she added something that isn't in this article, and that offers a more optimistic view of climate action. In a nutshell, she and the other big players have now put their hope in corporations and in local government. In the last couple of years, many international corporations have identified “green business” as a huge opportunity, regardless of their personal views, and have restructured products and processes to be able show consumers that they are serious about sustainability and addressing the issue of global climate change. Financial institutions are also in the game, with top banks committing billions of dollars each in capital dedicated to climate change. Local governments, California being a prime example, have turned their back on the stalemate of federal government and moved forward with the most aggressive climate policy in the US.


All of this independent action confirms that what will ultimately drive climate action is, of course, money. The question is: who is going to be resistant to jumping on the bandwagon to capitalize because they’d prefer to point fingers at “activists, tree huggers, and alarmists”? While I personally wish that people would act because they understand the severity of the climate crisis, I’ll take the action any way I can get it.


One day I hope that the governments of the world will be able to agree to a binding treaty, but until then, I guess it’s up to us.


Lauren

Puttin' Solar On It: Breaking News from the White House!

Here comes the sun: White House to go solar

A huge boost was given to environmental activists this morning, particularly a group I work closely with, 350.org. Several weeks ago, Bill McKibben and some students from Unity College in Maine drove down the east coast with one of the solar panels that President Jimmy Carter had installed on the White House roof in the 70s. Ronald Reagan took them down in 1986, but this particular panel has been churning out power to unity college for decades. I signed it on it's way down to the White House, with great hope that a symbolic gesture would be made by President Obama and he would agree to install solar panels on his residence. Alas, Bill and the students were denied the immediate gratification of a "Yes", and were told the White House would "follow their deliberate process" and would look into it. I, like many, assumed this was just another way for the government to say "No".

I was wrong! Today, the White House plans to announce that it will be installing solar panels, and President Obama will join other world leaders who have agreed to do the same for 350.org's Global Work Party on 10/10/10. To learn more or find out how you can join the biggest day of climate action is history, go to http://www.350.org/. Currently there are over 6000 events planned in 184 countries.

Lauren

Climate Week 2010 Kicks Off

I just attended the kickoff event for Climate Week NYC...the launch of the Global 500 and S&P 500 Carbon Disclosure Project Reports - http://www.cdproject.net/. CEOs, UN negotiators, and government representatives were all saying the same thing: we have a moral imperative to act, and there is a business opportunity in the" green race". The key now is for industries and cities to move forward with implementing carbon reduction plans, since larger governments aren't rushing to set the targets they need to...we (the voters, consumers, companies) need to push them in the right direction by our actions.  Another key point...we have the technology, so let's use it!

More later...and if you are in the NYC area, be sure to check out the Climate Week action this week!

http://www.climateweeknyc2010.org/

Lauren