Cool Planet

By Ben Lake
Climate Fellow,
Clean Air-Cool Planet

 
 
 

Ben Lake,  a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and a resident of Portland, Maine, is a Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Fellow this summer.  He is working on Municipal Energy Efficiency and Cooperative Purchasing Planning with municipalities in the Greater Portland Council of Governments to help them identify and reduce their energy use and emissions.  A biology major at Bowdoin, involved in campus energy and sustainability issues, he is interested in addressing climate change and environmental sustainability by conserving resources through waste reduction and energy efficiency improvements.

Most people go on vacation to forget about work.   However, for many folks in the environmental field, the wide-reaching connections to climate change aren’t easily left at the office.  I recently departed Maine for a week of backpacking in California, and three experiences during the trip reminded me how much climate change is intertwined with so many aspects of our lives.

The first hit me while traveling across the country.  Over the course of my trip I took a bus to the airport, three planes to California, a rental car with four occupants to the mountains, and a packed shuttle bus to the hiking trailhead (then repeated all of it on the way back). 

Fossil fuel-based transportation is responsible for nearly thirty percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions, so I knew this trip would have a sizeable “footprint,” and I figured the planes would mostly be to blame.  As it turns out, driving in an average car by yourself actually has a bigger long-term climate impact than covering the same distance in a jetliner.   Luckily, traveling by carpool, bus or train are still much better options than either planes or single-occupancy vehicles – so, interestingly, driving with my party and our gear in that little rental SUV was probably less emissions-intensive per person per mile than the airline trip out.  

Unfortunately, even with public transit and alternative transportation, it’s really hard to move yourself and your things quickly over great distances without putting carbon into the air.  Breaking news, I know – but it’s an especially cruel pill to swallow when you’re heading to a remote, beautiful outdoor location that’s threatened by climate change, and your travel is contributing to it.

Which brings me to my second climate change connection –the snowfields of the High Sierra.  We were headed to the Minaret region of the California Sierras (map), and given the depressingly-regular news about receding arctic sea ice and worldwide glacial melting, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  As it turns out, this year’s snowpack was about forty-percent greater than average, and the snowfields were big.  Bigger, in fact, than 16 years ago, when my father and uncle were hiking through the same area:

Snowfall and snowpack are highly variable on year to year basis – snow patterns in Donner Pass in the northern Sierras over the last century illustrate this nicely, and help to remind us that weather is not the same as climate.  For me, this was a good reminder of the following: just as you can’t use a below average snow year to prove that climate change is occurring, you also can’t use a single above average snow year to claim that climate change isn’t happening.

Finally, while killing time between flights in H-J Atlanta International airport during my return, I went looking for a recycling bin for the little #5 plastic water cup I’d received on the incoming flight.  Given recent research showing that the life-cycle emissions of what we buy and dispose of may account for over forty percent of total US emissions, I wanted to do my part to reduce them.  So, I became a little frustrated when all I could find were large trash compacting bins interspersed throughout the terminal.

It turned out these are for both trash and recycling.  The airport’s collection service separates the recyclable material from the waste, and sends them each on their respective way.  It sounds like it has the potential to decrease the portion of the airport’s refuse sent to landfill by 70%, which is great.  I’m not sure if I’m a convert yet (apparently contamination of recyclables by waste is a challenge) but it’s an intriguing idea, and hopefully may help spur innovation to reduce the waste we produce, and its contribution to climate change.    

In conclusion: 1) Yes, climate change has connections to many parts of our lives; and 2) no, thinking about them didn’t ruin my trip.  Ultimately, I hope that being aware of these connections helps us all to be a little more mindful about our own daily choices and their impact, and make better choices in the future.  That’s a kind of change I’m happy to support.

Explore posts in the same categories: Advocacy, Arctic, Climate, Climate Change Skeptics, climate education, Climate Science, environment, fossil fuels, Fuel Efficiency, Global Warming, Recycling, sustainability, travel, waste

This entry was posted on August 9, 2010 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Advocacy, Arctic, Climate, Climate Change Skeptics, climate education, Climate Science, environment, fossil fuels, Fuel Efficiency, Global Warming, Recycling, sustainability, travel, waste. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Arctic, arctic warming, California, carbon footprint, Carbon Management, clean air-cool planet, Climate action, climate change solutions, climate fellows, CO2, Donner Pass, environmentalism, global warming, H-J Atlanta International, Minarets, Northern Sierras, recycle, Sierras, snow, snowfields, sustainability, transportation, waste, weather and climate

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