The Unlikely Activist

Result of Poll #1: Your eConsciousness information preferences

Thank you to all who took time to respond to the first official theunlikelyactivist.com poll!

Your answers tell me that there's interest in a wide range of information pertaining to eConsciousness and sustainability, for even the lowest ranking category--Issues background--scored well enough to merit inclusion. How-to advice, earned the most mentions as the type of information you would find most helpful, pointing to a desire for practical tips and content ideas.

Here's a summary of the results:

Relevant links: 47.8% picked it as one of the two most helpful categories
How-to advice: 52.2% picked it as one of the two most helpful categories
Success stories: 47.8% picked it as one of the two most helpful categories
Issues background: 30.4% picked it as one of the two most helpful categories

Looking at the categories individually, this is how they ranked in terms of actual number of votes:

How-to advice: received 29.3% of the votes
Relevant links: received 26.8% of the votes
Success stories: received 26.8% of the votes
Issues background: received 17.1% of the votes

So much for my being able to focus on one issue or the other, eh? Actually, it's great news, for it gives me a chance to both delve into more detail, and keep the site diverse and interesting. I'll be posting new surveys in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned, and keep letting me know what you think.

Altitude with the right attitude...my interview with Barbara Washburn

Can you remember the thrill of flying in an open cockpit 2-seater, goggles and leather helmet strapped on, and hair tousled by the wind? Or that feeling of awe when your last punishing steps revealed what was over the horizon, and you stood breathless on top of the highest peak in Alaska?

Well…it’s really ok if you don’t. It simply means you’re not Barbara or Bradford Washburn, an amazing couple who’ve racked up adventures that could fill a book. Or several books, as they have.

It was the Washburns that I decided to focus on for my first Remarkable People interview, and their story is fascinating. But before I go on, please indulge me a commercial break. You see, the purpose of this blog is to inspire, and one of the most effective ways to do so is to tell our stories, and hear those of others who are traveling with us. So I intend to bring you, in the words of people like you, the moments that came to define their connection with the world around us, the core of their eConsciousness. I hope what you’ll see is that it happens many different ways. It is sparked by events that simply wash over and through you, or that make barely a ripple. It happens to people we all come to know, and to people we will never know. Each, in their own way, can help ignite the sustainability mindedness, the unlikely activist, in you. So enjoy.

Bradford and Barbara Washburn are remarkable people in many ways, known for their mountaineering exploits and lifelong pursuit of scientific understanding and communication. Bradford was Director of Boston’s Museum of Science for many years and during his tenure made numerous trips to Alaska, the Alps, and Nepal. You may recall seeing his striking large format black and white photographs, documenting expeditions to both explore and map places that few if any humans had ever traversed. Fortunately many of the Washburns’ exploits were recorded for all to see, in books such as Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life; Exploring the Unknown: Historic Diaries of Bradford Washburn’s Alaska/Yukon Expeditions; and Barbara's own The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley. But even more fortuitously, I recently had the chance to speak with Barbara herself and get a peek behind the scenes.

A petite and sprightly 92 years old now, Barbara captivated and charmed me from the first moments of our interview. Especially so when she recounted the days before she and Bradford were married. “Before Brad and I dated, I was a secretary at the Biology Department (at Harvard) and he was directing the Science Museum at the time. Well...I thought Brad was just a crazy mountain climber. I wasn’t impressed.”

Of course, this hit home with me, because I was once sort of a crazy mountain climber myself and took my wife-to-be up the Shawangunks on our very first date, and I realize now she may have shared the same sentiment with Barbara. But I didn’t take Ellen flying, which Bradford did. “He took me up in an open plane, with the flying suit and goggles and leather helmet. We would go into a dive, and I had a good time. I felt like I was Anne Lindbergh”, Barbara recalls. But that was not a true date, though, “because things were much more formal in those days.”

Well, eventually, after agreeing to work with Bradford at the Museum—“he kept pursuing me…he was very aggressive’’—they did unite and began a life of adventure together. The outdoors, especially places remote and unexplored became the basis for Bradford’s work away from Boston (when he wasn’t touring the country giving lectures). Barbara accompanied him on many of these trips. Together they climbed, and mapped, 13,832’ Mt. Hayes in southern Alaska—apparently a much more difficult climb than 20,320’ McKinley itself would prove to be. And there began, in Barbara’s words, “the feeling that getting up high was such a unique experience. Up there you get a feeling of the insignificance of yourself. It wasn’t about any sense of achievement, really.”

Bear in mind that this was back in the late 1940’s, before environmentalism and sustainability were the mantras they are today. Bradford Washburn was ‘in it’ to discover unmapped territory and share it with the world. And he leaves us with a startling body of photographs, maps, and writings that help us less adventurous types see for ourselves the tenuous nature that surrounds us. Seeing the world through his eyes is something you can hardly afford not to do.

Later in their work together, in June of 1947, Barbara and Bradford climbed the iconic Mt. McKinley. They had a family by that time. It was on the top of that remote peak that Barbara remembers a particular moment. “I think I had a funny kind of religious experience on top of Mt. McKinley. The beauty there is overwhelming…like looking out over a vast 3-dimensional map. I walked over to the edge. And I had a vision from my old Sunday school book. I know it was clouds, but I saw God up there, with a white beard. And all I could think to say was: help me get home to see my kids again.”

Of course, she did. And I’d like to believe Barbara found a bit of eConsciousness that day. Grounded in her own life experience. As she and I parted, I asked if she’d like to share one observation she had come to know about nature. And she said…

“I’m just a leaf on the ground.”

Thank you, Barbara.

Make room, Webster...here comes Ser-un-dipity

What would you call the opposite of "The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way"?

I'd call it serundipity. And I'd define it as finding out the morning after the evening before that you missed the once in a lifetime opportunity to meet your idol, who you'd only dreamed about ever seeing in person. Yep. That's exactly what happened when I discovered over my morning coffee that Dr. David Suzuki, renowned Canadian scientist and sustainability communicator had just been in town to collect the 2006 Bradford Washburn Award at Boston's Museum of Science.

I guess that's what happens when overblog-itis sets in and real life passes you by. Oh well. Better luck next time, eh?

A potential new tool against climate change ups the ante

Just when you thought you had global warming figured out, and were lining up your strategy for cutting emissions and greening your life, along comes this news. "Climate change", in the words of Brad Allenby writing in Greenbiz.com, "has never been inevitable, but a matter of values and political choice, a pricepoint issue." Allenby's comments follow recent claims that it may soon be feasible, using known technologies, to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere--essentially providing the same service as our hard-pressed forests and ecosystems.

Simple translation: we may find ourselves able to go beyond the reduction of new emissions and actually remove existing, historical CO2 from the atmosphere. And the even more far fetched part is that we could conceivably regulate just the amount of this greenhouse gas we want--taking it back to, say, the amount present when the industrial revolution began.

Allenby, however, issues a caution...and I heartily agree. Such a paradigm shift moves climate change from a challenging enough "simply stop what you're doing" mission to an even more globally challenging fix involving the "network of natural, human and built systems that define the world as it is today."

One can only imagine the nature of the push and pull between all parties--from scientists, to environmentalists, politicians, academics, architects, engineers, and industrialists--as such a capability ramps up and begs the question: who's in charge here?

p.s.: Stay tuned for more updates on this 'developing story'. Meanwhile, you may want to bone up a bit: take a look at the extremely informative Ph.D. dissertation by Joshuah Stolaroff at Carnegie Mellon University, entitled Capturing CO2 From Ambient Air: A Feasibility Assessment.

Three things you need to know about Biodiversity and why it matters

Here's my guess: if you were to list the major issues of our world today--even within the spectrum of sustainability that I focus on here--biodiversity is probably not at, or near the top. After all, there are enough tree huggers out there protecting the habitats of the endangered. There are plenty of 'other' fish in the sea to replace those temporarily in short supply. And with all the reforestation going on, what's to worry about the Amazon?

Unfortunately, it is all too easy to dismiss biodiversity. It seems so 'scientific'. It involves complex relationships within complex systems that are difficult to grasp. And of course, it's not nearly as sexy a topic as melting icecaps and glaciers.

But here's the rub: we remain ignorant about biodiversity and its role in our lives today at our own peril. While we often "feel ourselves to have escaped the limits of nature" (David Suzuki in The Sacred Balance), we have not, and we cannot--even with all the technical prowess we command. Biodiversity does matter. But how?

Here's where my notion of three things you need to know comes in. Three things I know we can all remember. Three things that capture the essential message of biodiversity, but will forgive you from having to memorize species and classifications, or study photosynthesis, or describe the carbon, nitrogen, and decomposition cycles...unless you want to, of course.

1. Remember that nature is cyclical. In natural systems there is no waste. In other words, species biodiversity assures that all waste products from one sub-process are the raw material for other sub-processes. This is important because it reminds us that continuous re-use of the planet's resources--the true natural state--has enabled many millennia of adaptable, robust life. Consider this when our 'civilized' societies choose to release amounts of greenhouse gases far in excess of that which our forests and soils have evolved to absorb.

2. Remember that nature is balanced. For as long as there has been life on Earth, there have been interdependent cycles at work providing essentials like water, oxygen, and nitrogen (needed by all organisms to live). Ecological biodiversity, with its delicately balanced, co-evolved systems and services that we take for granted runs like advanced, precision machinery. Consider this when we choose to despoil or otherwise change the conditions of our natural estuaries or intact forest ecosystems.

3. Remember that nature is resilient. Indeed there has been much change in our physical and biological world over the ages, including 'naturally caused' extinctions. But nature has prevailed, and adapted. Genetic biodiversity, enabling species to cope is behind this survival. Let us consider this when we choose to forego genetically diversified, native crops for those which we breed to be overly specialized, and often turn out to be poor adapters to changes in temperature, sun, and moisture.

So there it is...my overly simple take on biodiversity, though I must credit the likes of David Suzuki (The Sacred Balance) and Paul Hawken (Natural Capitalism) for the facts and inspiration behind it. Use it, if you will, to help choose the things you decide to do. And the things you decide not to do...in your home, your business, at school, with your vote, and with your wallet. I don't know about you, but I don't think we can mess with biodiversity and get away with it for long.