Whole Travel Blog

The Obama administration released a report last week that outlines anticipated temperature, rainfall, sea level and other environmental changes for the rest of the century. Not only does the report cover the usual agricultural and food production problems, it discusses heat-related illnesses and deaths, weather patterns, wildfires, and flooding. What is currently predicted as a 100-year storm will likely occur every 10 years, significantly overcoming our engineering safety designs. One section reads:

“Escalating exposures to catastrophic weather events, coupled with private insurers’ withdrawal from various markets, are placing the federal government at increased financial risk as insurer of last resort.”

Every 10 years instead of every 100??

With all the political noise-making recently about global climate change, let’s hope the world gets a plan in place to help mitigate these risks and potential impacts. You can download the entire report here.

Because the past 8 years has left public land managers and forest managers with meager funds to maintain trail management teams, search and rescue teams, and more, there has been limited access to some of the country’s most beautiful and precious outdoor recreation resources, for activities such as hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing and camping. Understandably so, since without the infrastructure to support this type of land use, the land managers have no choice but to restrict the activities. This is something that the Access Fund specifically targets and works on with these land managers, however the Federal Government has made it extremely difficult because ultimately they are the ones providing the lack of funding.

BUT NOW THE GOOD NEWS….

Barack Obama, along with promoting an excellent energy plan, and making the oil companies use their windfall profits to help consumers, is also planning on increasing appropriations for public land….and therefore will most likely help to give access to many, many areas.

Their administration needs our support to get this done. Please visit Outdoor Alliance and choose to Take Action, and send letters (via the website) to Barack Obama, to help open up access to these public lands.

Along with a better energy management and energy use system, the funds that are going to be provided to these land managers will help conservation of our natural resources, including “roadless areas” that will be protected. This country is taking a turn in the right direction!

Thank you and Happy Climbing

Brandon Hensinger

Ascent Adventure Consultants- Sustainable Rock Climbing in North Carolina

Yesterday, TechCrunch mentioned BusinessWeek’s CTO article which discusses Obama’s plan to hire a CTO of the United States should he win the presidency race come November.  Among the names in the mix for this job are internet evangelist Vint Cerf, CEOs Steve Ballmer and Jeffrey Bezos (of Microsoft and Amazon, respectively), as well as Princeton professor, Ed Felton.

Tasked with the responsibility of overseeing “a job-creating national broadband build-out,” another key element of this job is a green one: to create and manage a federally-backed $50 billion green tech fund.

Read more about Obama’s CTO plan at BusinessWeek here.

There has been a huge amount of media buzz this past week and a half surrounding the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. There have been rumors, scandals, debates and comparison - all typical signs that a presidential race is rapidly approaching. This year, however, much attention has focused on the Democrat’s highly publicized goal of producing “the most environmentally sustainable political convention in modern American history.”  For an environmentalist–skeptical, pessimistic and distrusting–this might seem like just an attempt at securing the votes of a gullible electorate, but a seemingly good-faith effort was made at “greening” most every part of the convention, from energy sources and waste reduction to transportation and community support.

To me, the question that arises from the convention is: How does Barack Obama’s campaign make the same effort as the Democratic National Committee at achieving carbon neutrality and environmental benignity? Needless to say, Barack Obama and John McCain are both logging plenty of miles in their campaign airplanes, traveling from one end of the country to the other rallying members of their respective parties. But from what I’ve been able to find online, there have been only three presidential campaigns ever to make the promise of carbon neutrality: Tom Vilsack, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton after Earth Day. With these three candidates starting the trend, it doesn’t make sense that Obama wouldn’t follow suit. Making a statement like this would raise awareness that the impact of plane flight can be mitigated. Besides, I’m sure Obama would sway more than a few fence-sitters by declaring his campaign to be carbon neutral.

There has been a huge amount of media buzz this past week and a half surrounding the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. There have been rumors, scandals, debates and comparison - all typical signs that a presidential race is rapidly approaching. This year, however, much attention has focused on the Democrat’s highly publicized goal of producing “the most environmentally sustainable political convention in modern American history.”  For an environmentalist–skeptical, pessimistic and distrusting–this might seem like just an attempt at securing the votes of a gullible electorate, but a seemingly good-faith effort was made at “greening” most every part of the convention, from energy sources and waste reduction to transportation and community support.

To me, the question that arises from the convention is: How does Barack Obama’s campaign make the same effort as the Democratic National Committee at achieving carbon neutrality and environmental benignity? Needless to say, Barack Obama and John McCain are both logging plenty of miles in their campaign airplanes, traveling from one end of the country to the other rallying members of their respective parties. But from what I’ve been able to find online, there have been only three presidential campaigns ever to make the promise of carbon neutrality: Tom Vilsack, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton after Earth Day. With these three candidates starting the trend, it doesn’t make sense that Obama wouldn’t follow suit. Making a statement like this would raise awareness that the impact of plane flight can be mitigated. Besides, I’m sure Obama would sway more than a few fence-sitters by declaring his campaign to be carbon neutral.