On January 19, 1971, two oil tankers collided in San Francisco Bay, creating an enormous oil spill. After seeing the devastating damage, John Francis decided to act.

For the next 22 years, he refused to ride in motorized vehicles. He also spent 17 years voluntarily silent. During this time he walked across 48 states of the USA as well as South America, and even managed to earn a few scholarly degrees along the way.

Watch his story above, and the message he learned from his self-imposed prison.

Learn more at PlanetWalk.org

What do you think of John’s story? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo: Leonard Low

The Best Job in the World promotion is a worldwide sensation: applications have been received from over 160 countries. Although only one person can win the position, the PR machine has been successful in attracting significant attention to the unique Queensland coast.

But environmental and cultural issues have been ignored by many in the frenzy of applications and paradisaical dreams.

What’s at risk?

The jewel in Queensland’s crown is the Great Barrier Reef.

Photo: Wibble Roisin

Covering 345,000 square kilometers, it’s the largest living structure on the planet. Changing weather conditions are threatening the existence of reefs around the world, but Nicole McNaughton, Tourism Queensland’s PR project manager, is positive about the outlook:

“…The Great Barrier Reef is one of the largest and healthiest reef systems in the world. While it can cope with stress better than most reefs, the Great Barrier Reef is not immune to climate change.”

Environmental concerns

Rising water temperatures cause coral to expel certain algae, destroying themselves in the process. The dead coral quickly become bleached and start to erode.

I was concerned that further promoting mass fly-in tourism could do more harm than good. Nicole, however, was quick to point out air travel makes up a very small percentage of carbon emissions– around three percent.

Reynaldo Ramos is a civil engineer applying for the Best Job in the World with the handle ““digital environmentalist.” He outlined three activities which impact the marine environment:

1. water-based activities (diving, snorkeling, fishing);

2. marine life interaction (watching of whales, turtles, seabirds, fish feeding);

3. ship/boat-related activities (anchoring, mooring, fishing, racing); and waste generation (liquid and solid wastes from the above activities)

These activities are likely to increase as Queensland heavily promotes the recreational opportunities available.

Green credentials

Ramos emphasized that these problems are not unique to Queensland and that the island ecosystems of his home, the Philippines, are under much greater threat due to large-scale commercial fishing and the illegal use of explosives by fishermen.

Can the winning applicant do anything to mitigate the environmental effects of mass tourism? Ramos believes:

“A six-month contract is not enough to focus on the environmental issues and challenges that this marine ecosystem is facing. But in my own little way, taking advantage of my position as the island caretaker, I will do my best to identify short term strategies to mitigate these impacts for Tourism Queensland; to implement [strategies] towards proper long term management of this heritage site.”

Tourism operations in Queensland do seem to have very respectable “green” credentials. Just under half their tour operators are certified under the Australian ECO system, which promotes guidelines for sustainable travel. This is a higher percentage of certification than any of Australia’s other states.

Marine research is also partly funded through tourism income and marine biologists are directly employed by some companies. Nicole McNaughton emphasises, “By showcasing the Great Barrier Reef to the world, we are actually helping protect it by building a love and respect for what is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders in visitors from around the globe.”

But recent public awareness of environmental issues hasn’t led to the drastic policy changes necessary for determined change.

A missing piece

Photo: spudmurphy

Prior to European colonisation the land and “sea territories” surrounding the Great Barrier Reef were used by over 40 Aborigine and Torres Strait Island groups.

Indigenous Australians have struggled with displacement and institutional discrimination to a much greater extent than neighbouring New Zealand, which was colonised just a little later.

Last year saw the first-ever apology from the Australian government for the atrocities of the Stolen Generation.

One year later, little seems to have improved. There seems to be little direct gain for indigenous groups from the best job in the world. I failed to discover a single mention or image featuring indigenous culture on the Island Reef Job site.

Questioning this, I was told that Tourism Australia,

“encourages the increase of Indigenous people in all facets of tourism in Queensland and to encourage economic and socially sustainable Indigenous tourism ventures. There are a number of indigenous tourism products within the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef region and the successful candidate will have the opportunity to visit many of these and experience indigenous culture first-hand.”

An amazing opportunity…

Whoever wins the best job in the world will be given a very large soap-box from which to speak. We hope they don’t stay silent regarding the urgent issues of the global environment or fair compensation for those who lived amongst the islands for thousands of years before video applications were possible.

Community connection

Want to know more about the best job in the world? Find out how to win, meet an applicant or find out what it’s all about.

Photo today is a good day

In places like Hong Kong, for example, people consume a ‘natural’ experience as easily as they consume iced tea and fish balls from the local Seven Eleven.

Many hikes in Hong Kong are designed to be as comfortable as possible. On one trail there are benches and rubbish bins, emergency telephones, and in the middle of the hike, a shop that sells noodles and sweet tofu.

At the end of the trail there’s even a drink machine that dispenses water and coke.

I enjoyed the convenience of Hong Kong hiking trails, but I couldn’t help comparing them with hikes in Australia. In particular, I remembered an experience of getting lost and spending the night in the bush, with no drink machines or benches.

That was a far less comfortable experience, but one that I will always remember.

If most people’s interaction with nature is an extension of their consumer lifestyle, something has gone wrong. A hike won’t lead to a reevaluation of one’s place in the wider environment or instill a greater respect for nature.

Nature For Sale

What happens when outdoor experiences are packaged and sold like any other commodity?

When the environment becomes a playground for people, the cost of admission to the playground equals the value of the place. According to this attitude, if the mountains are good for weekend walks, then they have value. If not, fire up the bulldozers.

John Muir said:

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Likewise, Lao Tzu echoes:

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

This view is to see nature as something that has an intrinsic value: whether people can get something out of the mountains or not, they should be respected and protected.

According to many environmental philosophers, this approach not only works out better for the natural environment, but is also a fundamental element of human spirituality.

This approach aims to challenge the traditional western dichotomy of man and nature as two separate things.

The Value of Humility

Photo bies

An intrinsic view of nature’s value makes us question who or what is in control of the experience.

When you start a day hike in many national parks that are off the tourist trail, you must submit to the surrounding environment.

It’s a time to respect the weather, your body and the sun, as you may be far away from help if anything goes wrong.

In these rare times we feel humbled, and remember how to work within the limits of our own bodies and the natural world.

For most people who enjoy hiking in remote or challenging locations, their sense of respect for the environment continues after the hike, and they remain conscious of their impact when they return to the city or workplace.

When you go hiking, make the effort to explore beyond popular trails and explore less familiar territory.

In this day and age, we must go out of our way to foster respect for the environment and experience the natural world on its own terms.

What are your thoughts on the commodification of nature? Share in the comments!

Watching the world burn / Photo Kwest

Petroleum is vitally important to each and every single aspect of modern human civilization. It not only runs our vehicles, but it’s also manufactured into our plastics and it’s what makes our huge factory farms possible.

Approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the U.S.

Pesticides are made from oil, farming implements such as tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil, and food is distributed across oil-powered transportation networks.

In the U.S., the average piece of food travels almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. As the peak oil website Life After the Oil Crash says, “in short, people gobble oil like two-legged SUVs”.

What can be done to turn the tide and become less dependent on oil?

Many pro-environment activists have this belief that if people were just educated, or if they were just taught morals at home, they’d behave differently. However, I don’t think that’s the truth.

Anticipating The End

What I’m about to suggest won’t win me many friends, but then again, for all of human history it’s been easier to look out a window and find faults with the world than it has been for us to look in the mirror and do the same thing.

I’m alluding to the fact that 44% of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. As New York Times best-selling author Sam Harris said in a recent article in TIME Magazine,

“Given the most common interpretation of Biblical prophecy, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly half the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world.

It should be clear that this faith-based nihilism provides its adherents with absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization – economically, environmentally or geopolitically.”

That is not to say that religion is the problem. But religion that is bought and sold for political purposes that reach no further than lining the pockets of those who use it as currency to get in power, that’s the problem.

Religious leaders who remain silent in the face of war profiteering, environmental devastation and health violations – that’s another.

Educate And Mobilize

What would Jesus do? / Photo EIRincon

I believe that religious leaders across the country and around the world have a moral imperative to educate and mobilize their congregations and constituents to not only vote against what they believe to be morally reprehensible – but also to vote FOR what they find morally responsible.

And what greater moral responsibility is there than taking care of the body you have, the land you live on and those you share it with?

Even if we are living in the End Times, (which I’m not convinced that we are), I cannot fathom how an almighty supreme being would view us giving up as being the moral thing to do.

Raping the planet where you live while knowing it will kill people in the process (yourself included), seems about as far from moral as I can possibly imagine.

The true litmus test of one’s moral character doesn’t come in the times of peace and prosperity. It comes when things are at their worst. And right now, the worst is just beyond our line of sight. BARELY.

Most of us can’t see the problem firsthand like we could if, for instance, a dust cloud from an approaching army was rising up over the horizon.

My goal is to educate people so that they can see the coming storm themselves. And so that they can see that it’s not too late to avert this. That hastening the apocalypse is NOT something that a supreme being would want.

That no matter what your religious stance, or lack thereof, it is morally imperative that we become the changes in the world that we wish to see before we usher in a terrible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Human Powered Future

I feel the siren’s call to live a life better examined and in doing so often question myself, my own beliefs and my own capability for irrational action. But it always comes back to one simple answer:

Even if global warming is a hoax, even if the peak in oil production is millions of years away and even if we are living in the End Times…there are more than enough political, financial, humanitarian and national security reasons to change our living and working habits right here, right now, this instant.

All of our problems are caused by human and thusly can be solved by humans.

The majority of problems have come from the divisions and distractions that the rich have perpetrated upon the poor. This power structure has been able to exist because of our lack of education, of resources, of technology, of communication and of organization.

But the leaps and bounds that we’ve had with the internet are leveling the playing field.

While many bad people around the world have pooled together their wealth and their political power to accomplish that which they wanted – it’s now time the progressives to do the same.

It’s time to write an agenda for a more perfect civilization and for all of us to do our part to help make that happen. It’s time to stop fighting weeds and to start planting seeds of social change.

It’s time for an organic revolution.

Do you agree that short-sighted religious doctrine is impeding environmental salvation? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Earth Day 2008 is just around the corner. Join the global celebration for a healthy planet!

On April 22, 1970, 20 million people celebrated the first Earth Day, the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson, one of the most environmentally aware men to ever grace the United States Senate floor.

Senator Nelson observed “teach-ins” on college campuses against the Vietnam War, and believed the same approach could work to bring environmental concerns to the forefront of American politics. He announced his idea during a speech in Seattle, Washington in 1969.

Over the coming months, with help of good advance press from the New York Times, Earth Day became one of the best examples of grassroots activism ever conceived.

How to Observe A Global Holiday

Fast forward 38 years. An estimated 1 billion people will celebrate this global holiday in ways as diverse and creative as the places where they live.

Magnificent festivals infused with music, healthy eats, information and workshops on eco-friendly living, are planned in places as diverse as Washington, D.C, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Shanghai, Durban and Tokyo.

This year’s Earth Day theme is “Call for Climate,” focused on how to abate global warming. But the range of ecological topics is unlimited, presenting a vast array of actions to encourage sustainable living.

Local Activism, Global Celebration

Here are some examples of Earth Day events around the globe.

The Community Broom Bash is not what most people think. Scotch broom, a nasty invasive plant, is taking over the Mayen Island Conservancy in British Columbia. Volunteers will work to limit its invasion in the reserve from April 19th to Earth Day proper.

Clean up a beach, then watch a dolphin show on Itaparica Island, Brazil. (If I were anywhere near South America, that’s where I’d be).

Expats in China are encouraged to purchase “environmentally friendly light bulbs and showerheads” in coordination with Shanghai’s International School at the Shanghai Zoo on April 19th.

The Green Festival of Israel at the Big Caramiel Centre runs concurrently with the High Holy days of Passover.

Polar Palooza, Rowdy Dogz Earth Day, No I’m Not a Plastic Bag. These innovative celebrations are testimony to the worldwide recognition Earth Day now receives. Find one close to you on the Earth Day Network.

If you’re unable to attend a formal celebration, there are intimate ways to help lower your human footprint.

For shopping enthusiasts in the States, go to the closest Buffalo Exchange Saturday, April 19th. This very hip second hand clothing store chain will donate 100% of their Earth Day receipts to ensure the continued presence of tortoises on Pinta Island in the Galapagos Islands.

London declares April 22nd “Bag Free Day” , discouraging use of those ubiquitous plastic grocery sacks. Don’t forget your recyclable tote when you go shopping!

So fire up that solar oven. Buy and eat organic. Pick up plastic water bottles on the side of the road, and then recycle them. Dance to the percussive rhythms of a band from another part of the world.

Earth Day is a time to recognize and celebrate our collective responsibility as residents of the third rock from the sun.

Community Connection!

Frogs appear to be a recurring theme for the Matador community this Earth Day. Tim Patterson plans to camp with peeper frogs back home in Vermont.

Lauren Lim will help the amphibians and their toad cousins safely cross the road in Bialovieza, Poland. It’s warming up here in Northern Idaho, so I may encounter a few frogs myself while cleaning up Rathdrum Creek.

What will you do for Earth Day? Leave a comment, inspire us, and share your plans!

Photo by murti utami

Over the last year, we have seen an incredible upsurge in ability to purchase anything and everything “green.”

The travel industry is not immune to the green phenomenon. Travelers are now urged to take photographs instead of souvenirs, to eat local, and of course, to offset the environmental impact of their cross-continental trip with carbon credits.

But are these efforts really making a difference? Or has green travel as conceptualized today become narrow minded, shallow and embarrassingly self-congratulatory?

It’s about time we ask ourselves what “green travel” really entails, and what it might mean to start traveling in a way that is healthy for people and the planet.

Right now, too many ‘green travelers’ are just missing the point.

A Visit To Paradise

During my first trip to uber-green Costa Rica, I did all the things that a good environmentalist does. I bought local produce, stayed at a sustainable hotel, and visited the wildlife refuges.

As I got to know the area better, the story became more complex. There’s an oft-touted 200-meter wildlife refuge on the Costa Rican coast.

From a biological standpoint, the refuge is a success story. It protects the nesting sites of the Olive Ridley turtle, and is important habitat for monkeys and iguanas.

But while the refuge looks great on paper, the rules that govern it aren’t enforced effectively.

People aren’t technically allowed to inhabit the reserve, yet concrete homes dot the protected area, connected by an informal network of roads that lack a septic system, building codes, running water or electricity.

This shoddy construction damages the biological environment, and the refuge shanty-town is now a notorious area to buy drugs.

The Green Dilemma

As an environmentalist, this is where my moral compass starts to go awry.

Squatting in a wildlife reserve is illegal, and so technically the people who live there must be evicted. However, rapid development that caters to wealthy North Americans has raised the cost of land in the area.

At the same time, the Americans who have moved to the area permanently or semi-permanently have improved the local schools, the quality and availability of health care, and started a program where you can donate your old surfboards to the local kids.

Some of the people in the refuge shanty-town have lived there since before the land was protected, and keep their houses freshly painted. Others deal crack.

But who am I to go to San Jose and lobby the Ministry of the Environment and Energy to evict the crack dealing squatters? Didn’t I go on vacation to relax? Can’t I just purchase some carbon credits and move on to the next beach?

Not So Easy Being Green

Photo by namida-k

Unfortunately, I think that there is a fundamental tension in the very concept of “green travel“.

Despite the plethora of perky headlines that read, “It’s easy being green,” anyone involved in environmental policy or environmental activism knows that living green isn’t easy.

Green means asking complex questions about what is right, and these questions get increasingly challenging in the context of an unfamiliar culture.

Plus, travel is about movement, which means you visit somewhere and then leave. Better travelers are environmentally and socially responsible, and make a genuine effort to learn about and appreciate the area they visit.

Some saintly folks volunteer on their vacations and make long-lasting changes to the area. At the same time, I have heard people talk disparagingly about volunteering overseas, arguing that it is another form of American imperialism.

One way or another, you won’t convince me that I’m improving the lives of sea turtles or Costa Ricans by buying a cute secondhand suitcase for my trip.

Finding A Balance

The problem with green travel as conceptualized today is that it seemingly absolves us from the important responsibility of deep engagement with sticky, morally ambiguous environmental issues.

We book a sustainable hotel with just a few extra clicks of the mouse, offset our carbon output when we pay for our rental car, buy a locally made figurine to bring home to Aunt Betty, and voila!

We’re given a get-out-of-jail free card. Our guilt has been offset.

But perhaps travel itself offers the best lesson here. Travel makes us see what we, the human species, are doing on a larger scale. It helps put both the high-impact Western lifestyles of the global elite and the lifestyles of the rural poor in perspective.

For example, if a large Costa Rican family is unable to buy land and is living in a wildlife refuge where they burn their own trash, I shouldn’t glorify my own eco-sainthood and look down my nose at them.

Our actions all contribute to the same collective environmental whole.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with making efforts to be green in our own individual lives, but we just need to be realistic about the actual impact or our behavior.

A Call To Action

So what’s a traveler with a conscience to do? Maybe we should visit fewer places, and sink more deeply into a place when we’re there.

We can read books about our destination that aren’t guidebooks. We can talk to local people. We can buy local products while traveling.

We can think about what it might take to positively impact a certain place in the long term, and perhaps commit to taking some action when we get home.

But be forewarned- when you actually dig into the environmental politics of an area, what green means gets more challenging.

Challenges like those presented by the Costa Rican wildlife refuge require humane and ethical solutions. In the end, travelers must act locally to help solve a global problem.

What do you think of green travel as it’s preached today? Share your thoughts in the comments!

The years I’ve spent traveling and living abroad have made a radical impact on my world-view and shaped me into who I am today: someone who strives to make the world a better place.

I don’t hesitate to say that this is a common occurrence, and if you’re reading Brave New Traveler, you already subscribe to the belief that travel results in a deeper understanding of our global situation.

But aside from the intangible awareness and enlightenment brought about by traveling, there’s now a new reality to contend with: the global tourism boom has contributed dramatically to global warming.

Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that aviation currently makes up 3 percent of global carbon emissions, but the rate is increasing.

Then there’s the nitrous oxide emitted by planes, which is twice as bad as carbon dioxide for global warming, and the vapor trails, whose contribution to climate change is still unknown.

Facing Hard Facts

The response to this report in Europe was dramatic: protesters converged upon Heathrow and other airports to demand that airlines take action on climate change.

Mark Ellingham, publisher of Rough Guide, pledged to take the train. British mogul Richard Branson is offering a $25 million reward to whoever “solves” global warming.

I consider myself in the upper percentile of Americans when it comes to concern over global warming. I strive to minimize my carbon footprint as much as one can while living in a major city.

Conservation International rates me an “Eco Warrior” scoring 81 out of 100 points (the average score being 44); though Earthday.net still points out that if everyone lived like me, we’d need 2.4 planets in order to survive.

The connection between global warming and flying didn’t truly hit me until this summer when I had the opportunity to travel. As I made my plans (last minute, as always), one question loomed in my mind: could I do this trip without flying?

Could I keep my carbon emissions low?

Now looking back on the summer of travel, the answer is sadly, but conclusively: No.

The Breakdown

I had every good intention not to fly, but here’s how those good intentions paved my own personal road to global warming hell:

• Leg One, Seattle to Minneapolis – Thirty-six hours by train, or a three hour flight. I have a deadline in Minneapolis. TIME. I fly.
• Leg Two: Minneapolis to New York City – I have time for the train, but it’s only $50 more to fly. PRICE. I fly.
• Leg Three: New York to Syracuse – My girlfriend surprises me with a train ticket, but the train is an hour late. This doesn’t bother us, but it highlights another shortcoming of rail travel: PUNCTUALITY. Amtrak is notoriously late, often by several hours. If they can time watches in Germany to the trains, why can’t they do so in the US? The answer is subsidies, but that’s a whole new article.
• Leg Four: New York to Havana – I briefly contemplate adding the logistical challenge of taking the train to Miami with the required puddle-jump to Havana before I find a flight to Cancun for $180. EASE: I fly.
• Leg Five: Havana to Mexico City – I was determined to fly back to Cancun and bus it to Mexico City, when I discovered that for only $45 more, I could fly all the way to Mexico City. Time, price and ease push me onto the plane.
• Leg Six: Mexico City to Seattle – I spend a day calculating that five days of travel and $300 will take me home overland. An hour later I find a ticket for $240.

The fact that flying will result in a ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, instead of a quarter that much by taking buses, won’t sink in for two more months when I analyze the environmental impact of my trip.

At the moment, I’m getting homesick, and once again opt to fly.

Hooked On Air Travel

The developed world has dug ourselves into a global warming hole: we’ve spoiled ourselves with ridiculously cheap air tickets and expect to travel inhuman distances almost instantaneously.

Furthermore, the US has somehow managed to squander its transportation infrastructure,
limiting options to flying, driving, and two monopolies: Amtrak and Greyhound.

Being a semi-urban hippy, the Nature Conservancy calculates that I emit just over the world average of eleven tons of CO2 a year. My summer vacation of flying, however, boosted that number to seventeen.

All this is well under the average for Americans (53 tons), but it’s more than enough to be part of the problem. And that’s the more positive of assessments.

Getting Serious About Climate Change

I hate using hyperbole: I think it’s unprofessional and turns people off instead of getting them to listen. But, when the IPCC is desperate enough to say that the effects of global warming are “irreversible” and “like a science fiction movie,” I know they’re at wits end – and these are the top scientists in the world.

At the same time, U.S. politicians are slowly beginning to wonder if maybe this global climate change thing is actually for real.

Looking into the impact of my travel has resulted in a lot of navel-gazing: I’m a selfish, piggish American who puts being pampered (ie. flying great distances for very little money) over the plight of the world. I’m everything I strive not to be.

But now I want to look on the bright side. We now know, Brave New Travelers, traveling has an undeniable adverse affect on global warming.

What can we do? Your thoughts are important. Let’s start a discussion below!

Chris LaRoche is almost a teacher, sort of a writer, and humbly an activist. He has written social justice articles for Real Change News and yuppie restaurant reviews. His summer in Cuba can be read at seattlecuba.blogspot.com. He lives in Seattle but will always call Montana home.

Since ditching the plane is the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint, we caught up with Mark Smith recently in between trips to get his thoughts on slow travel, free-cycling furniture, and one infamous bottle of vodka.

BNT: What’s your primary draw towards trains and ferries as a means of travel? Is it economics or are you just aviophobic?

MS: Trains and ferries allow you to see and experience where you’re going, making the journey part of your holiday.

They treat you like a human being, with space to move around, a bed to sleep in at night, and even a restaurant for your meals in some cases.

Flying has been described as “infantalising,” having to sit down and do what you’re told. On trains and ships you’re generally treated like an adult. For example, you’re over 18, so you can bring your own bottle of wine if you like. Try doing that on a RyanAir flight!

BNT: Like the slow food movement, people have begun to talk about slow travel, something that trains and other forms of ground/sea transportation dovetail into nicely. What are your thoughts on slow travel?

MS: I’m not sure I’d call 186mph “slow.” Indeed people are often surprised that you can leave London by train at 3:00 pm and be in Barcelona at 8:30 next morning, or depart London at 2:00 pm and arrive in Venice at 9:40 the next morning.

But if I’m sometimes uncomfortable with the “slow travel” terminology, the concept behind it is sound. We’re in danger of creating a world in which every journey is an identical non-experience at 30,000 feet. Flying has lost its glamor, and I think it’s time we put the interest, excitement and romance back into travel.

What could be more romantic than reaching Spain by sleeping-car or Norway by liner?

BNT: Why Seat 61?

MS: I took to asking for seat 61 (in cars 7, 8 or 11) whenever I treated myself to Eurostar first class. I’ve left London in seat 61 bound for Morocco, Tunisia, the Crimea, and even Tokyo via Moscow and Vladivostok.

So when I started a website “The Man in Seat Sixty-One” seemed the ideal name.

BNT: Do you live green in other aspects of your life/routine?

MS: We’re just an ordinary family trying to be more considerate towards the environment.

Our 20 month old son wears real cloth nappies or biodegradable disposable ones. We’ve equipped the house with low-energy light bulbs, we recycle what we can, we “freecycle” furniture and the like if and when we replace it, and use products such as Ecover washing up liquid and washing machine detergent.

BNT: How many people have you helped find ways to travel by train and ferry? Do you have any memorable experiences from “meeting” people via your website?

MS: The site now gets around 400,000 visitors a month and the e-mails keep me busy! I love e-mails such as that from a man whose Polish wife wouldn’t fly and thought she therefore couldn’t visit her family. Thanks to seat61.com, her husband booked train tickets from London to Poland and off they went.

BNT: What first made you want to travel? Is it safe to say you’ve read a lot of Paul Theroux?

MS: I’ve read Paul Theroux, but also T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame), Wilfred Thesiger, Fitzroy MacLean. Each writer is very different, but all evoke an image of the countries they write about which makes me want to go there.

BNT: What’s your favorite train experience? Least favorite?

MS: I’d argue that any experience, even one that at first impression is unpleasant, is better than having no experience at all.

Indeed, sometimes unpleasant experiences give rise to our fondest memories, or best travel stories.

Such as traveling on the filthiest and most decrepit slow train from Aswan to Luxor, but meeting a series of Egyptian locals en route-from schoolchildren who asked me to read out their English schoolbooks to a young man who worked on the Nile cruise boats whose opening line was “I like Whiskey. You like whiskey?”

And my best train experience? Well, that would have to be traveling to Italy aboard the superb Venice Simplon Orient Express and accidentally getting engaged to my now wife somewhere in the Brenner Pass!

BNT: What’s the most outrageous/memorable thing you’ve seen (train and/or ferry) that you’d never see on a plane?

Customs official at the Ukraine/Polish border dismantling my sleeping-car and finding a complete off-license of illicit Vodka in the paneling three feet above my head (not mine, I hasten to add!)

Watching a younger pupil shout “Solidarity! Solidarity!” out of a train window on a school trip; not usually controversial, but the year was 1982, the train was the Moscow Express, and the station was Warsaw Centralna! I’ve never seen a Russian train conductress go so berserk…

The full list would be too long!

To read more Mark Smith, visit his website The Man in Seat 61.

Olivia Giovetti has lived in and explored the better part of Europe on a bohemian budget. Freelance travel writing seemed like the next obvious step and her publishers include EuroCheapo, Paper Magazine, and Classic FM. A former New Yorker, she now lives in Los Angeles.

What are your thoughts on train travel? Leave a comment below!

Despite its rap as a collection of chic spas for wealthy, guilt-addled liberals who shell out $4,000 to commune with gorillas, green travel isn’t about giving a tour operator a month’s salary for some Disney-like attraction or consumer experience.

Traveling green is about finding and supporting destinations that have seen the light, and are already working to green-up their tourist offerings.

Seeking out green places to travel isn’t all that hard. Even New York City offers the possibility of an ecologically responsible vacation. Many travelers can get to New York by train, removing the need for a high-impact airplane ride. A tiny hotel room in SoHo uses less electricity than a deluxe suite in Aspen.

Plus, New York is a city built for walking, with solid public transport to boot. Time Out recently named New York the perfect place to “be green without doing crap.”

Here are 5 more eco-friendly destinations to put on your travel radar:

Mjølfjell, Norway

Norway is so eco-conscious it balks when a marketer calls a Prius or Tesla green.

While other European countries have aimed to cut their carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, Norway has upped the ante to 30%. Norway is also helping China come up with ways to combat climate change.

Get out of Oslo and head into the mountains and you’ll see a lot of sustainable housing, including the Mjolfjell Inn and Youth Hostel .

A destination in and of itself, the inn offers the standard outdoor fare (skiing, horseback riding, even a wildlife survival course) and also produces its own electricity.

Not bad for the world’s #5 oil exporter.

Luang Prabang, Laos

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has made it their mission to bring this Southeast Asian country (which is landlocked by Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand) to the forefront of tourism. It’s working – Laos was #1 on the New York Times’ list of places to go in 2008.

However, the Lao government is aiming to increase tourism sustainably so as to protect their native wildlife, lush land and clean rivers, and preserve their two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Ancient City of Luang Prabang and pre-Angkorian Vat Phou Temple Complex. Another Heritage Site-to-be is the Plain of Jars in the highlands of north-central Laos.

The Lao National Tourism Administration has a dozen award-winning eco-tourism projects currently in development, spreading country wide to encourage smaller provinces to set up sustainable tourism, help protect over-exposed areas, and begin programs such as homestays, eco-treks, and local art exhibitions.

What’s Lao for “rocking it?”

Belize City, Belize

Home to the longest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, Belize is deeply committed to eco-tourism. Offshore, Belize boasts a number of cayes, some of which have been turned into eco-resorts, but others that remain pristine homes for birds, lizards and marine life.

Whale watching is a popular attraction here, as is mountain biking, horseback riding, and cave tubing. Go outside of the sandy city into the Mountain Pine Ridge Area and Maya Mountains, which have amazingly-preserved Mayan ruins. You’ll also find plenty of local artists and artisans to support in town.

While the Caribbean and Latin America are full of eco-tours and spas, you can also appreciate their beauty and natural preservation by traveling independently. Be sure to check out the preservations in Tobago (Trinidad’s less commercialized sister), the diverse terrain of Guadeloupe, and the stunning rainforests of Costa Rica.

Zurich, Switzerland

Voted the city with the highest quality of life in the world, Zurich was also recently ranked by Forbes as number 8 on their list of Top 10 Cleanest Cities.

The city’s public transportation works like clockwork (no pun intended) to the point where very few residents own cars. There is also a large local foods industry, including cheeses that will make your deli’s Swiss cheese taste like plastic.

The world’s first four chocolate makers were also all Swiss, so you can take comfort in knowing you’re supporting local growers with those truffles and hot chocolates.

I single out Zurich here, but the rest of Switzerland is great for those who want to reduce their carbon footprint while still traveling Europe. Not only do you get the Alps and clean living, you can explore areas heavily influenced by the Germans, French, and Italians.

Thenmala, India

Surprised?

Even though India has some of the most polluted cities in the world, there are some areas that are working to green their environment. While other regions try to slap an “eco-tourism” label on what is really just nature tourism (”Over there is a rare flower,” “Look up there at the tree,” “Check out the elephant,” and back on the bus), Thenmala is taking green travel to heart.

The local Thenmala government, tourism office, and irrigation department are teaming up with residents to to make green tourism a coordinated effort. The best part? You’ll not only get to visit the Shenduruney Wildlife Sanctuary (part rainforest, part deciduous forest), but the tour guides are local youths who are trained in sustainable tourism. Now that’s something to feel good about.

Of course, there’s more than just this Fab Five. In fact, you can find plenty of eco-friendly destinations (from the transportation to lodgings to the cocktail hour) on every continent.

Check out the green guide series at the the traveler’s notebook for more cool destination ideas!

This is the second of a three-part piece on Green Travel for Brave New Traveler; now that you have the basics, take the next steps: travel to eco-friendly locales, and give some more thought to making the jump from air travel to rail and sea travel.

Leaf photo by Ryan Libre. Check out Ryan’s new photo essay, China Mobile.

Can international travel ever really be low-impact? Your thoughts are important. Leave a comment below!

Olivia Giovetti has lived in and explored the better part of Europe on a bohemian budget. Freelance travel writing seemed like the next obvious step and her publishers include EuroCheapo, Paper Magazine, and Classic FM. A former New Yorker, she now lives in Los Angeles.

The first time I rode a motorcycle, it took only five minutes for me to burn a hole the size of a grapefruit in my right calf. Mom drove me to the hospital. “Please, please don’t hitchhike,” she said.

But of course I did.

My first time was in the bed of a dusty pickup truck on a mountain road outside Vail, Colorado. “This sure beats pedaling uphill,” I thought, leaning against the frame of my mountain bike and watching the aspen trees breeze by.

The driver let me out at the trailhead and I sailed back to the valley on twisting loops of single-track. At the bottom, I stuck my thumb out again. I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve hitched rides with French hippies up the west coast of Japan, with Thai road engineers in the jungles of Cambodia and with park rangers across the Chic Choc mountains of Quebec.

Once, on the highway to Osaka, a taciturn man suddenly turned off on a mountainous back road and drove me into an abandoned gravel pit. I was praying for my mother to forgive me when he beckoned me out of the car and asked me to admire the beautiful sunset.

To Hitch Or Not To Hitch?

Hitching has always worked out fine, and led to memorable travel experiences. But am I pressing my luck? Are my mother’s fears justified? Is it really a good idea to stick your thumb in the air?

There are times when hitch-hiking is an appropriate means of transportation, and there are times when it would be extremely foolhardy to travel by thumb.

For strapping young males like me, hitching is fairly safe under most circumstances, but there is still a checklist of factors that are important to consider before soliciting rides from strangers.

Consider Your Location

In countries like Japan and New Zealand, where crime rates are low, people are hospitable and the standard of living is generally high, hitching is a very low risk activity. Just yesterday I met a young woman from Germany who told me all about her experiences hitching solo around New Zealand.

“Everyone couldn’t have been nicer,” she said. “Sometimes I would worry when the driver looked a little strange, but the oddest people were always the friendliest!”

Then there are countries like Cambodia, where most people live in poverty and the vehicles are often overcrowded and unsafe. It’s possible to hitch in the 3rd World – indeed, this is how many locals get around – but you should expect to pay for the ride, and only flag down vehicles that are relatively uncrowded and appear in good repair.

Even better, wait at a crossroads where vehicles tend to stop and approach the driver of your choice while he is getting gasoline or having a bite to eat.

Finally, there are countries like the United States, where hitching is safe in some places, but not in others. If you’re in a laidback mountain town, hitching is fairly normal, but the outskirts of larger cities can be dangerous, and trying to hitch in an expensive suburb will likely land you a ride in the back of a police car.

Are You Alone?

I do most of my hitching alone, but like I said, I’m a hunk of pure masculinity. Women can also hitch solo, and they’re likely to get picked up quickly, but they need to exude confidence.

Be mentally prepared to turn down sketchy rides and perhaps keep a bottle of pepper-spray handy, just in case.

In general, it’s a good idea to hitch with one – and only one – other person. A group of more than two people are unlikely to get picked up by anything except a public bus or Woodstock style hippie van.

With a trusted friend along for the ride you have backup in case things turn sour, and don’t need to bear the whole burden of interacting with the driver.

Why Do You Want To Hitch?

The act of hitching embodies many of my favorite elements of travel – going with the flow, adapting to situations on the fly and taking whatever comes with a smile and a laugh. The best reasons to hitchhike are to meet locals, get off the beaten track and give yourself up to the whims of the travel gods.

Ask yourself honestly why you are thinking about hitching. Do you want to save money? Do you want to chat with a stranger? Did the last bus of the week leave yesterday?

I find that hitching is rarely a good way to save money. Most of the time, I chip in for gas and often buy the driver a meal.

The best attitude is one of total openness – hitching for the experience, without a fixed goal in mind. If you aim for a specific city, or hope for a certain kind of ride you will be disappointed more often than not.

This is why it’s rarely a good idea to write your destination on a piece of cardboard – if you do so, only drivers bound for that place will stop, and you’ll miss out on potential adventures.

Thumbs Up!

So, was my mother right? When it comes to motorcycles, she knew what she was talking about. As for hitching, I’m not so sure. It’s a wonderful thing to talk with strangers, and it’s often rewarding to bum rides with them as well.

Hitching is a green way to travel – you’re creating an instant carpool. It also enables you to inject a little piece of spontaneous wonder into a stranger’s routine, fulfilling one of the most noble of a traveler’s roles.

The world isn’t such a scary place, and most people are friendly, generous and kind. Use common sense, trust your instincts, open yourself to the horizon of possibility and – if all seems right – raise your thumb up high.

You never know where it might take you. (Also be sure to check out this useful video on hitchiking techniques).

Have you ever hitched a ride? Is Tim’s Mom right to worry? Leave a comment

“You’re vegan? What do you eat? Can you eat rice?”

I try to imagine a universe where rice isn’t grown, but hunted – the wild rice beast, a dangerous prey…

“Of course I eat rice. It’s a plant.”

“And ketchup? Can you eat ketchup?”

There are a lot of people in the world who have absolutely no idea what being vegetarian or vegan really means. Some people think it means you don’t eat rice or ketchup. Some people think it means you DO eat fish and chicken. And there are people who think you’re a lunatic hell-bent on starving yourself to death.

It can be difficult to be vegan on your own turf, but at least at home you know the ropes-where you can shop, which ingredients to watch out for, and which restaurants can accommodate you.

But when you travel to another country, being vegan is suddenly a lot more complicated. You have to scout out new restaurants. When you explain to impatient waiters that you don’t eat chicken or fish, you have to do so in another language.

This is an intimidating challenge, but it’s not impossible. Here are some tips for finding your food on the road:

Scour the Web

There are literally hundreds of vegan and vegetarian hotel and restaurant guides on the web. Cozy up with Google for a night or two and search for websites and blogs specific to your destination.

A good place to start is happycow.net, where you’ll find hundreds of veggie-friendly restaurant listings from all over the world. If you discover a new place on your journey, you can add it to their archive.

Get the Right Guidebook

These days, most commercial guidebooks mention whether or not their restaurant listings include vegetarian options. If this isn’t enough, vegetarianguides.co.uk puts out a line of exclusively vegetarian guidebooks. They don’t cover any exotic destinations, but they do have a few standard locations available.

Call Ahead

It’s easy to forget that a staple food you eat every day isn’t necessarily the norm elsewhere, and may not even be available. Think about your diet and ask yourself how it will translate to a foreign setting.

Call your hotel or hostel and find out if there will be anything you can eat at the continental breakfast. If you are heading somewhere where the prospect of finding a veggie-friendly restaurant is low, find out if your accommodation includes a common kitchen area.

If you are staying with a host family, warn them of your dietary restrictions in advance, and be specific.

In most major cities, finding something to eat won’t be a problem. All of the same ethnic cuisine that caters to vegetarians at home-Chinese and Indian, for example-tend to be available. And in major European cities, you are never far from falafel.

Prepare Your Own

Organic food stores are becoming more and more popular in Europe, where you’ll find everything from vegan Nutella to faux Wurst.

Ingredient lists on packaged foods are hard to decipher overseas, and without a thorough understanding of the language, you could easily miss something.

If you’re planning on doing some serious grocery shopping while away, try to shop with a native speaker or contact a local animal rights organization for an animal ingredients list in the language of your destination.

Into the Wild

The further into the countryside you go-and this is true worldwide-the harder it becomes to find vegetarian options. But there isn’t a single country in the world that doesn’t have a market with a few grains and vegetables that you can prepare.

Speak Their Language

There are a lot of people in the world who speak English, but it’s not smart, or particularly polite, to rely on it exclusively – especially when doing so could mean the difference between eating a delicious vegan pasta sauce and losing your appetite because a piece of chicken flesh found its way to your mouth.

What people understand as vegetarian and vegan varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Some people will know all about it, and some people will say “OK, no problem!” and serve you beef.

Look up a few phrases before you venture abroad. “I have a dairy allergy” and “I don’t eat meat, chicken, fish, cheese or eggs,” are good phrases to master for starters. Perhaps advanced learners can supplement their vocabulary with “No, I don’t eat any f$%$ing cheese.”

The International Vegetarian Union has a pretty extensive phrase list to get you started.

Fly Vegan

There’s one last detail to consider: your in-flight meal. Most airlines have several veggie options, but ordering a vegetarian meal when you book your flight is often not enough.

Call the airline 72 hours in advance to confirm that you will in fact require a vegan meal. Shortly after boarding, a steward or stewardess should come around to confirm your meal choice one last time.

If this doesn’t happen, find someone and make sure everything is still in order. In any case, bring snacks – lots and lots of snacks – because vegan or not, airplane food is never particularly appetizing.

There’s no country in the world that doesn’t have some kind of vegetarian options-whether it’s a handful of restaurants, a farmer’s market, or a corner falafel stand.

With enough planning and a little flexibility you won’t go hungry anywhere. Just remember to tuck a few protein bars into your suitcase in case the locals have had trouble hunting the wild rice beast this season.

Nicolette Stewart lit her computer on fire in 2005, ran screaming out of an office building, and has been marauding around Europe ever since. She specializes in vegetarian travel, underground tunnels, buried treasure, and dark, narrow alleys. You can read about her further misadventures at www.clickclackgorilla.com

Henry David Thoreau.

“I have traveled a great deal in Concord,” said Henry Thoreau, a native of…wait for it…Concord, Massachusetts.

In fact, Thoreau traveled far and wide for his day and age, vagabonding to Cape Cod and the vast wilderness of the Maine Woods. However, the great prophet of enlightened self-reliance claimed to have done most of his traveling in his own hometown.

Thoreau understood something that many of us modern day nomads would do well to recognize: travel is a matter of perspective, not location. With curiosity, an open mind and a broad horizon of free time, it’s possible to travel in your own backyard.

I’m writing in El Calafate, a tourist boomtown in Argentine Patagonia. I am, admittedly, a long way from home. But, just the same, at the moment I’m not really traveling.

I’m in the common area of a hostel – two girls from Boston are shooting pool in front of me, and it’s hard to concentrate on writing when they bend over to take a shot. Sublime is playing on the stereo…Girl, Caress Me Down…. I’m wearing Patagonia brand clothes, but I’m not really experiencing Patagonia anymore than you are.

Neither, sadly, are many of my fellow tourists here in El Calafate. Every hour, buses segregated by wealth and nationality pull up to the viewpoint overlooking the Perito Moreno glacier.

Tourists disembark – they Ooh and Ahh in their respective languages, snap a few trophy photos, nap in the bus back to the hotel and fly thousands of miles back home on airplanes that belch carbon into the sky.

Meanwhile, the famous glacier shrinks, but that’s OK – I already have my ice-climbing photo.

What Makes A Traveler?

Now, the tourist / traveler distinction has already been beaten into the ground, and I’m not so sure of its validity in the first place. But it IS clear that coming all the way to Patagonia does not make one a traveler.

So what DOES make a traveler, I wonder? How did Thoreau manage to travel in Concord when so many of my fellow tourists here in El Calafate never leave their comfort zones?

Well, Thoreau rambled. He walked the country roads and stopped to talk to anyone he met along the way. He followed fox tracks through the snow, and wondered at their meaning. He approached the fields and homesteads of Concord with an open-ended sense of curiosity.

He looked at things, and thought about them, and tried his best to place them within the context of his broad experience. He moved slowly, and he paid attention.

Into The Hills

I remember one time, back when I worked an office job.

It was a Tuesday, and after work I just couldn’t take it any longer: with nothing but the clothes on my back I set off into the hills behind my house, trekked across the coal fields and into the valley beyond. The sun started to go down, but I just kept walking.

I came upon a small stream, which I resolved to follow until it led back to civilization. The night was dark, and there was no moon. I traveled by feel, my mind wide open, my nerves on edge. Once, I stepped on a sleeping turtle – and believe me, that was a shot of adrenaline on par with a virgin view of the Mayan Temples, the Egyptian Pyramids and even Angkor Wat.

Four times I came to dams, and had to scramble around them through thick bamboo grass. When I finally emerged into a village, covered in mud and cobwebs, it was past midnight.

The next day at work I couldn’t stop grinning. I had gone on a TRIP. Beyond that, I now knew what was Out There, over the hills, and by understanding what was Out There, I had a better appreciation for home and work – the comfortable routines to which I was able to return.

My carbon footprint for the journey? Zero.

A Sense Of Wonder

The truth is, we travel every time we open our minds to a new possibility, every time we open our hearts to a new emotion, every time we take a new track, read a new book or just look at a rock and wonder how it got there.

There is comfort in routine and stability, but when we stop traveling we lose the sense of wonder that equates to joy, that carves new channels in our minds and makes us feel alive. So go. Go on. Go.

Take a notebook and a pen and a camera – see what you find. Then come back, and tell me the story.

BNT contributing editor Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia and Traverse Magazine. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

You may even have switched to energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, started buying local from farmer’s markets, and are an iTunes devotee (not because of the instant gratification, but to reduce plastic consumption).

Whether you’re charging chartreuse or just green-curious, there’s no excuse to NOT think eco-consciously nowadays.

Even with only 4% of plastic bottles actually making it to the recycling bin, there is more being done today to help the environment than hybrid cars and solar energy. And even if you’re not Al Gore, you can still go green for low green, travel being no exception.

That includes you backpackers and families, regardless of whether it’s a day trip to Mount Rushmore or a month going around Southeast Asia. Here are some seedlings for environmental change:

Before you leave, unplug all of your electrics.

Even if they’re off, they can still run 40 kWh of electricity per hour while plugged in. And if everything’s unplugged, you won’t have that nagging fear that the coffee pot was left on or that the iron is going to burn down your building.

Go ticketless when booking your trip.

Companies such as Orbitz will send confirmations to your mobile phone on request, and Google Maps can now go from your web browser to SMS. It also frees you from the hassle of having to keep all of your papers organized. After all, if you’re traveling to escape the cubicle, why would you want to travel with printouts and manila folders anyway?

Offset Your Exhaust

Unless you own Boeing, there’s not much you can do about the carbon emissions that it’ll take for you to get from JFK to Heathrow. However, if you’re going to be hopping around on one continent, consider the more local forms of transportation.

Check out Mark Smith’s “The Man in Seat 61” to fuel your wanderlust with images of the Trans-Siberian Railroad coasting across a tundra full of history, an aura more full of its country than any Airbus, and with much better views than the tops of clouds. Or, go see The Darjeeling Limited; snakes on a train completely trumps snakes on a plane.

Fun Fact: In a new high for air travel, the EU recently announced that as of 2011, airplane emissions will be regulated in the European Union. Airplanes will be required to reduce their carbon emissions by purchasing additional credits or investing in international climate protection projects. This is part of the EU’s big picture plan to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by the year 2020, so soon you’ll be able to hop on RyanAir or EasyJet with less guilt.

Man Power or Mass Transit?

In general, travel like the locals: you’ll not only save a bit by eschewing cab services, you’ll also get to see the lifelines of a city. Use it as an opportunity to get off at a stop you otherwise would never have considered, see if any of your rudimentary French is still kicking, or take in the unparalleled beauty of some cities’ metro stations (Moscow, for starters).

And there’s nothing like some recreational voyeurism while on the U-Bahn or the tram. Even better, take advantage of bicycle-friendly cities. Vienna holds an annual Bike Festival; earlier in the year Paris set up a city-wide initiative that has brought 10,000 new cycles into the arrondisements for dirt-cheap rental (both short and long-term); and Beijing is best viewed from a set of handlebars.

If you long for the thrill of an organized tour, check out walking tours offered (who really wants to go all the way to Munich just to sit on a bus?) Sandeman’s New Europe tours have begun to take over much of the continent and, best of all, are free.

Eat On The Block

If you eat local at home, eat local abroad as well. Some of the best meals on the fly can be found at farmer’s markets (I still dream of a pulled pork sandwich I had in Spoleto, where everything came from a farm not ten miles away).

If you can grab your drinks in glass bottles (or, better yet, a reusable bottle), so much the better: glass can ultimately be recycled, though plastics are for the most part downcycled. I don’t have to tell you at this point to recycle while traveling, either.

Leave the Cheap Souvenirs

Your digital camera is your friend. It will give you some of the best souvenirs of any trip and, unlike that dubious gypsy lady hanging out on the Charles Bridge, won’t try to lift your wallet while selling you a rose or an artist’s portrait of Angelina Jolie.

If you really want that Machu Piccu T-shirt, then all the more power to you. However, if you’re just in the heat of the moment, step away, take some pictures, and enjoy yourself even more.

If you do want to bring home some goods from abroad, check out the local art scene for the region you’re visiting and bring home something from a local artist. You’ll be supporting their livelihood and, as a bonus, will leave with the satisfaction that you didn’t fall for a tourist trap.

Most of the things you can do to reduce the tourism footprint are things that you can do in general to help sustain the environment. It’s easy to take a vacation from real life when you’re exploring some place new (especially if no one speaks your native tongue), but green is an increasingly universal language.

This is the first of a three-part piece on Green Travel for Brave New Traveler; now that you have the basics, take the next steps: travel to eco-friendly locales, and give some more thought to making the jump from air travel to rail and sea travel.

Olivia Giovetti has lived in and explored the better part of Europe on a bohemian budget. Freelance travel writing seemed like the next obvious step and her publishers include EuroCheapo, Paper Magazine, and Classic FM. A former New Yorker, she now lives in Los Angeles.

Today I made a step towards moral and existential sanity. Today I stopped supporting a malevolent, inhuman and amoral force.

Let me back up a moment. Two years ago, freshly graduated from an East Coast status enclave, I took a job in Japan, where I lived in a mountain community that is rapidly fading into a coal mine ghost town.

Well paid, and with no student loans thanks to my industrious grandfather, I needed something to do with the portion of my salary that didn’t go towards food and beer. The local bank paid interest rates of about .001 percent.

Where to put my money? How to turn it into more? Why did I want more money so badly?

These were three easy questions.

I wanted more money so that I could travel the world and indulge my dream of becoming a great writer, living like Hemingway in Paris, Spain and Cuba, fishing and chasing pretty girls. Not a bad goal, really.

I’m not all that smart, but my education has given me a small sniff of how the world economy functions. I know how to make money. Buy stocks.

The technique of buying stocks came naturally to me as well. It was just like playing Fantasy Baseball. With a little research and the click of a mouse, I bought the stock of big mining companies that are headquartered in the United States, Australia, China and Canada, but have operations in countries like Peru, Cambodia and Sudan.

Why did I buy these particular stocks?

Simple!

Because buying stock in international energy and mining corporations is one of the quickest, most reliable ways for rich people like me to get even more rich – this was true two years ago, and it’s still mostly true today. The elite of Shanghai, Sydney, Manhattan and Moscow all know this.

I managed my stock portfolio the same way I managed my fantasy baseball team, and I made plenty of travel money. I made enough to fulfill my fantasy and take an extended holiday. I chose my destination the same way I chose my stocks. What place would give me the best value?

Another easy answer – go to the Southeast Asian countries of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. In Southeast Asia a young person like me can live like royalty for less than it costs to rent a studio apartment in Tokyo or Manhattan.

And I had a great time. For months, I sipped fresh mango juice on tropical beaches and managed my stock portfolio from Internet cafes. It was great. Except for one thing.

Show Me The Money

In Cambodia, there were people with no legs who dragged themselves across the sand. There were little metal bombs in the forest waiting to lash out and kill you. There were girls younger than anyone in my Facebook network selling their bodies in brothels.

There were businessmen, generals and politicians driving through the desiccated countryside in black Lexus SUVs with military license plates. There were luxury hotels with teak bars crowded with tourists like me, everyone sipping a taste of exotica.

Every day in Cambodia I saw injustice so obvious, so callous and so inhumane it filled me with a sense of guilt and rage.

So I did what my generation does best: I looked for entertainment elsewhere.

I left the beach, and took a bus way off into the boondocks, to a province called Mondulkiri that borders Vietnam. There, I nearly killed myself drinking Mekong Whiskey and rode elephants through upland forests that stretched far and green and pure for as far as the eye could see. I had adventures. I felt like the hero in a Graham Greene novel.

One clear day I was driving through the forest with a 24 year old Englishman named Jack Highwood, one of only a few foreigners who lives in Mondulkiri. Jack runs two projects: a bar called the Middle of Somewhere and an NGO that promotes healthy coexistence between people and elephants.

“It’s a shame all this is done for,” said Jack mournfully, reaching for his cigarette lighter.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“BHP Billiton bought the rights to this whole forest,” he said. “It’ll be stripped clean.”

BHP Billiton is one of the stocks I bought in Japan. BHP Billiton has given me over $12,000. Seeing the letters ‘BHP’ gives me a soft, warm, proud feeling. I tried to look on the bright side.

“Maybe you could work out some sort of partnership with them,” I suggested. “Get some money for your NGO.”

Jack braked for a pothole and looked at me sideways. “Maybe if there was a scrap of good in what they stand for,” he said. “But there’s not.”

Reality Bites

Deep down, I knew that what Jack said was true. But instead of selling my BHP stock, I bought more and went to Laos.

Laos…beautiful Laos. Laos was surely paradise. In Laos I ate tropical fruit and played in pristine waterfalls. I ambled through golden temples and drank cold beer by the Mekong River. But I also felt a certain tension. I sensed fear and desperate paranoia. I smelled smoke.

The smoke was easy to explain. Laos was on fire. It was the dry season, and the mountain forests were burning night and day. The hazy air made for spectacular sunsets.

But the tension…that was harder to account for, because the people of Laos could not have been more hospitable and kind. I met monks and farmers and earnest young students. I felt no animosity – only that vague and unsettling paranoia.

One day I learned that when my father was my age, an army captain in Vietnam, the United States haphazardly dropped millions of tons of bombs and deadly chemical weapons from airplanes onto Laos. They dropped 500 pounds of high explosives for every man, woman, child and baby in the country. They tried to bomb Laos back to the Stone Age, and they almost did. Many survivors lived in caves.

I wondered why.

The answer, I discovered, was that the Americans were nervous. They dropped all those millions of tons of bombs on monks and mothers and rice farmers living in bamboo huts because they were worried they might not be able to control them. For years, they kept the bombing secret from the American people.

Now, I know which people made the decision to bomb Laos and Cambodia. I’ve met some of them. I’ve sat down at a table and broken bread with former Defense Secretary and World Bank President Robert McNamara, who made decisions that are directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocents, vast ecological destruction and the hopeless, cringing poverty of entire nations.

And the thing I couldn’t get, the thing I couldn’t understand, was this:

Robert McNamara is a good man. He loves to go hiking in Colorado. He is deeply intelligent and sincere. When, on the day I joined him for lunch, a student asked Mr. McNamara how it feels to be one of the biggest murderers of the twentieth century, I thought the question was inappropriate and cruel. For the record, Mr. McNamara replied by saying, “I don’t think I am.”

How could upstanding citizens like Robert McNamara be responsible for the utterly inhuman apocalypse of mortal thunder unleashed on Laos? How could good people be responsible for such evil?

I didn’t have the answer to this question, so I bought stock in a company called Goldcorp and went to Thailand.

The Ignorance of Evil

By the time I got to Thailand, I had put so much money into stocks, I didn’t have much left in my travel fund. Instead of redeeming my precious stock, I went to a farm where I could live for close to free.

Life on this farm was strangely simple. Food came from the garden and was delicious. Sun came from the sky and was warm. Water came from the river and was laced with invisible poison – carcinogenic pesticides produced by multinational corporations and shipped by the ton to countries like Thailand.

The weirdest thing was that even though I spent almost no money while living at the farm, buying little more than bottled water, I have never been happier. I worked with my hands in the earth. I slept well and deep. My food tasted great and made my body healthy. I started each day with a sunrise. At dusk I listened to music while stars flickered in the purple sky.

But I still didn’t sell my stock.

I didn’t decide to sell my stock until today, when I was driving through the golden autumn hills of Vermont listening to an old man’s voice – loud and brave and clear: “Sing a sadder song of freedom,” he sang. “Slowly sinking like the sun.”

Next to me in the passenger seat was a beautiful young woman named Becky who I’m starting to like (although I haven’t told her so yet).

And I got to thinking – what if, someday, I marry someone wonderful like Becky? What if we have children? What world – what truth – do I want my children to know?

Knowledge and Morality

When a wealthy American like me buys a stock, or invests in a mutual fund, that action has a very real impact somewhere in the world. All too often, that impact is invisible, totally divorced from moral consequence.

The gap between action and consequence is the central problem of the global market based economy. There is no room for moral judgment in a system that only rewards profit.

Just as Robert McNamara and the men who incinerated Laos would never, could never, have torched bamboo huts and Buddhist temples by hand, so too would American stockholders recoil from the real damage inherent – but invisible – in their carefully managed stock portfolios.

When tons of bombs and rates of return become abstract numbers, we lose the qualities that make us moral beings. We become inhuman.

The refreshing news is that we have the potential to recapture our morality. Just as our money can do evil, poisoning water systems, displacing indigenous people and destroying the forests that are this planet’s lungs, money invested with care and attention can be a force for good.

The key is active, empowered awareness. When you travel, think about where your money is going, and what exactly you are supporting.

Likewise, when you invest in a stock, or a fund, or even just go shopping for a new pair of shoes, make the effort to consider the moral implications of your action.

These are exciting times in which to live. The possibilities are endless. We have more freedom than any generation before us, but that freedom is dangerous and destructive without moral awareness. We must not succumb to ignorance, fear and greed.

Our character is defined by the choices we make. Ultimately, the fate of the planet may depend on our ability to extend our empathy across oceans, to act with knowledge, and most importantly, to act with love.

BNT contributing editor Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia and Traverse Magazine. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

How to apply human morality to global issues? Here are a couple of articles that give us an idea: “The Journey Begins With A Single Step” and “Why The GDP Says Little About Authentic Happiness”

And please leave comments below!

“Vacation” is for people who find their vocation unpleasant, and desire to “escape” as often as possible.

For these folks, sitting on a beach is probably the most appropriate option, because the idea of working while on “vacation” would seem repugnant.

I would ask these good people why they despise their jobs and need to escape. I would also ask who and what are enslaving them and why they keep showing up to a job they dislike every Monday AM.

But that, perhaps, is the topic for a different essay.

Instead, I will explain why working on a farm beats sitting on a beach; or why slow travel is more rewarding than tourism of the conventional sort.

1. You can stay longer

If you’re working on a farm, you typically stick around one place longer than the conventional tourist.

You’re able to attain a deeper understanding of the environment and culture. You will come to appreciate a genuine and meaningful sense of place.

You will also have time to truly relax, and because you aren’t flying frantically around a country or region, you will not be responsible for unleashing tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Experiencing the natural rhythms of place is a great joy of slow travel and farm work.

It’s something most conventional tourists never notice, because they turn up and leave during the “tourist season,” which is when the weather is most conducive to the particular activities for which the area is marketed (e.g. skiing, golf).

2. You can travel cheap

Conventional tourists pay a huge premium for food, accommodations and entertainment, which are located in the tourist zones.

Sometimes, in places like Laos and Bhutan, the tourist zones are only 3 or 4 streets in the whole country – and it’s commonplace for tourists to spend more money in one week than most local farmers will see in one year.

If you avoid the tourist zones by living and working with a farming community, you will get room and board for next to no money, regardless of whether you’re in an industrialized or “developing” country.

Often you can arrange some kind of work-trade in exchange for a place to stay. This makes it feasible to travel for months at a time.

3. You can experience reality

Even though slow travelers are still tourists in a foreign land (and don’t be tempted to forget this), we get a deeper glimpse into what “real life” is like for the locals.

Mostly, conventional tourists experience the “show” that locals and foreign corporations put on to attract tourists. In tourist zones, food, lodging and entertainment are very much akin to what we’re accustomed to in the West.

In tourist zones like Bangkok’s Khao San, there are Irish Pubs and Internet cafés, sushi restaurants and hamburger joints, air-conditioned rooms and bookstores that only sell guidebooks. Khao San is in Thailand, but it could be anywhere.

Tourist guidebooks like Lonely Planet, while useful, aren’t helpful in avoiding these areas, since many tourists have the same book.

To find a more “authentic” experience, you have to make the effort to do what the conventional tourists aren’t doing, and go to places where entrepreneurs have not yet recognized the potential for snaring tourist dollars.

At least to-date, rural agrarian communities are one such haven from shallow commercial development.

When you get off the tourist trail, you MUST take great care to respect the cultural values of the local community. Flaunting material wealth or otherwise disturbing the peace is not cool.

4. You can enjoy a deeper, meaningful experience

When you work on a farm, you and the locals are working together.

You share a common purpose, whether it’s building or repairing a home, planting or harvesting a crop, foraging for edible plants and fungi in the forest or tending the animals.

You are participating in the ecological cycles of that particular place, and helping sustain livelihoods – your own as well as those of the community.

Slow travel promotes a sense of place and interdependence within the community and local ecosystem. When you share this experience with the locals, you come to know what is valuable to them, and what is valuable to that place.

You may directly witness changes that have taken place in the community and in the local environment due to the actions of far-away governments or corporations.

You will understand what “globalization” actually means, and what the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE actually measures.

Through your work and participation with the community, this knowledge will mean something to you, since you will bear witness and feel sympathy for the victims.

5. You can get an education

Slow travel promotes a deep, insightful kind of learning that you can’t get in school, a true education that is also denied to the conventional tourist.

Insights such as those gained from slow travel are what make for the “life changing experiences” that many people seek when they go abroad.

You will return home transformed, a new person with fresh insights into the world and a broader, deeper context and meaning for your life.

Resources

I have found the following resources helpful for engaging in productive and educational slow travel:

• The International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)

  ISEC conducts homestays with villagers in the remote Himalayan mountains of Ladakh in northernmost India. The villagers still practice ancient traditions of subsistence agriculture and enjoy a very high quality of life, although “development” and “modernization” over the past few decades have brought on some unfortunate changes. “Learning From Ladakh Farm Project” participants also benefit from thorough and interesting discussions on economic globalization and the effects of globalization on traditional cultures.

• The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, West Bengal, India

  The Center, run by ecologist and critic Debal Deb, maintains an agricultural biodiversity research station in rural West Bengal. The farm and attached seed bank strive to reestablish genetic diversity in rice and promote organic farming throughout the area. Working with the Center offers opportunities in farming, plant breeding and genetics research, as well as political activism to resist the malignant influence of corporate biotech operations in India.

• Pun Pun Organic Farm and Panya Sustainable Living Project, Chiang Mai province, Thailand

  Pun Pun offers 10 – 12 week internships during winter months in organic farming, seed saving, natural building and appropriate technologies. Panya hosts courses in permaculture throughout the year in addition to gardening and building internships.

  (Editors Note: Read about my experience at Pun Pun and Panya here.)

• Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF)

  An online database of organic farms around the world that offer internships and work exchange accommodation.

• Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), International Permaculture Directory

  Two more useful directories.

• MatadorTravel.com

  Connect with like-minded travelers and grassroots organizations.

Thanks for reading. Your comments are very welcome.

Josh Kearns is a bona fide hill-billy who currently lives in Oakland, CA. He’s been a researcher in environmental chemistry and ecological economics. Currently he’s into techniques for high quality self-reliant living like organic farming, natural building, permaculture and bluegrass music.

These days, everyone seems to agree the planet is warming up. What we don’t agree on are the reasons why: human caused or natural?

Personally, I figured the resounding consensus among the world’s scientists fingering humanity as the cause was reason enough, but what do I know?

Anyway, the short video above aims to silence this largely irrelevant debate in favour of the more pressing issue: what are the consequences if we choose a course of action…and we’re wrong?

BP PLC, the green-minded oil producer, in February chose the University of California at Berkeley to help lead low carbon research, starting with biofuels. BP plans to spend $500-million over a decade.

This is perhaps the biggest collaboration between the corporate sector and academia in history, all in the name of developing alternative fuels to handle the growing energy shortage. Or is it?

The real energy crisis is that we have too much energy. The way politicians, the media, corporations, economists, make it sound you’d think we don’t have enough now, and that we’re heading for greater demand because of population growth and economic expansion.

This is a good test for my rule of thumb about reality: whatever they’re saying on the TV news – on Fox, on CNN, – is probably just about the opposite. If you watch the news and play a game of “opposite day,” like we did in third grade, then you’ll have a better idea of the truth.

Uncovering The Issues

So we’re supposed to get excited that BP and UC are going to spend a lot of money (mostly public subsidies) on high-tech research and development to discover or invent technologies to solve the environmental and economic problems.

They will be able to (finally) apply technology to solve the problems created by technology. Talk about fighting fire with fire!

What this is really meant to do is allow us to continue conducting business-as-usual. The fundamental tenets of the faith of modern economics aren’t being questioned.

This UC-BP collaboration is just the latest and most ostentatious denial and refusal to address the only two rational questions regarding the so-called energy crisis:

1. “What are we doing with all the energy we have now?”
2. and, “Do we really need to do those things?”

To address the first question, I’ll offer a few examples.

For one, a ton of energy goes into the military. The military is fighting in Iraq and elsewhere to get more energy (such as oil). If we just stopped fighting so much we wouldn’t need so much energy. Fewer people would be hurt and killed and there would be less incentive for terrorism.

That solves many problems at once. But the military contractors, engineering outfits and weapons corporations don’t like this solution.

Also, a huge amount of our energy goes towards pumping water to service industrial agriculture, along with scads of energy for fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery and food processing and transport. In general, an all-around nightmare.

If we reformed our agriculture system and embraced small-scale, self-reliant permaculture and organic agriculture systems, we could use way less energy. But the big agribusiness corporations don’t like this solution either.

A Dead End

Where else do we use a lot of energy? We drive a lot. People in cities like Atlanta commute, on average, over an hour to work, one way. That’s a lot of driving time, a lot of gas burned.

Some very silly people, like me, use a lot of energy flying all around the world in airplanes to learn about and work for ecological sustainability. (I plead no contest. So it goes).

And we use a lot of electricity. In the average American home, the TV is on almost eight hours per day. And it’s a double wammy since what’s on TV is advertisements that cajole people to go out (in their car) and shop, shop, shop.

People going out to buy tons of crap they don’t need, because commercials have made them feel inferior.

You get the point. The energy we have now is used for destructive, wasteful, and/or unnecessary purposes. None of the stuff I listed makes our lives any better.

In fact, it makes our lives worse. Three hours round-trip commuting in Atlanta traffic sucks. I don’t care if you do it in an air-conditioned Lexus SUV.

The medium of television could make our lives better but it doesn’t. Most of what’s on there is garbage. The rest is advertisement – advertisement for garbage.

A Single Solution?

Sometimes people ask me, “Josh, what’s the one thing I can do to really make a difference in my life and the world?” First I give them a hard time for wanting the easy way out, for looking for the one thing, the conscience-cleansing “silver bullet” they can do for a better world.

Once I’ve dressed them down I tell them the best thing they can do is to stop watching TV. “It’s mind poison. Literally. Stop poisoning yourself.”

If I could do one massive experiment on the whole US I would take away TV for a month. Once a chunk of the population survived the mind-poison withdrawal I bet great things would start to happen.

People would shop less, exercise more, talk to their neighbors, maybe even, dare I say, read a book or plant a garden. You can bet the social and political landscape of the US would look mighty different.

The status quo assumes we need a lot of energy for a good quality of life. On the contrary, we have too much energy now and our use of it has damaged our quality of life and the environment as well, which is inextricably linked with our quality of life.

Accessing new energy sources will certainly exacerbate this problem, not ameliorate it.

As an example in support of my argument I offer myself – I spent the winter living fantastically abundantly with a very small Ecological Footprint in a locally self-reliant organic farming community in northern Thailand.

I can attest that the quality of life is very high, despite the relatively low (material and energetic) standard of living.

A New Paradigm

You can also see why the proponents of the big-money, high-tech R&D deals like the UC-BP collaboration will never get this. Because it’s hard-wired into their paradigm that quality of life and standard of living are positively correlated, even that they’re synonymous.

That’s how they can be so tremendously irrational in assuming that continually pursuing more and better technology will solve the problems created by technological expansion. You try to tell them that quality of life and standard of living for many people in the developing world (and almost everyone in the West), are inversely related and see how far you get.

It’s like trying to tell conventional economists that economic growth is making us worse off instead of better off. They just won’t get it, just can’t get it.

It means calling into serious question fundamental axioms of the whole modern paradigm. If they did they’d be out of a job and replaced with people who would more assiduously keep the dogma.

Over the past century, modern civilization has behaved like a ten-year-old with a fire hose when it comes to our energy use. We need to ask ourselves what really makes for quality of life.

Our rampant pursuit and use of energy for transport and to power all sorts of new techno-gizmos, not to mention the out-and-out destruction caused by militarism, economic globalization and industrial agriculture, is killing us and the ecosystems we depend on.

The win-win solution of embracing high-quality, low energy and small footprint lifestyles is there, it just requires a bit of swimming upstream in the current cultural milieu. You can start by turning off the TV.

This article was originally published on Josh’s blog. Reprinted with permission.

Update: No Impact Man wrote a powerful post on this topic as well. Be sure to check out “Can capitalism survive environmentalism?”

Josh Kearns is a bona fide hill-billy who currently lives in Oakland, CA. He’s been a researcher in environmental chemistry and ecological economics. Currently he’s into techniques for high quality self-reliant living like organic farming, natural building, permaculture and bluegrass music.

What do you think about the crisis of too much energy?

Travelistic recently sat down with Michael Mandiberg, creator of Real Costs, a web plug-in that hopes to raise traveler consciousness by defining carbon emissions resulting from air travel comparative to other forms of transportation.

For more information visit www.therealcosts.com. (via Gadling)

In the six years I’ve lived in Los Angeles, four of them have been without a car. This wasn’t an accident. Rather, this was a conscious choice that I gladly made after weighing all of the options.

For many, this decision would be tantamount to social suicide, especially in a town where everything is known to be “20 minutes away” regardless of actual distance or amount of traffic congestion.

But it’s nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It was a simple matter of shifting my priorities and aligning my lifestyle habits to match them.

So how does a metropolitan person in the 21st century go about ditching a car?

The first thing I did was move closer to my job and along the path of a major bus line. This diminished my commute from 35 minutes of stressful driving to twelve minutes of blissful “me time” – I was free to read or write or listen to music or just enjoy the scenery.

My gasoline expenses, car payments, insurance bills, maintenance fees, parking costs and possible traffic tickets evaporated like the fumes from the natural gas-powered bus I now rode. And the best part, beyond my ability to invest these savings, came in knowing I’d lightened my ecological footprint.

I can’t recommend enough how much better your life can be if you give up your car. In fact, this course of action may become necessity in the near future, as all evidence indicates petroleum will start to run out (for a primer, check out my interview about Peak Oil).

Stalled In The Driveway

However, there are roadblocks in the future of mass transit, especially here in Los Angeles. One simple truth is that in addition to running out of petroleum, we’re also running out of land.

We’re bulldozing houses and businesses to make room for our gas-guzzling cars (”eminent domain (pdf)“) and a 2001 report by the California Energy Commission for the State Legislature indicates that by the year 2020, California is expected to be home to 45 million people and more than 31.5 million motor vehicles (up substantially from the 35 million people driving 22.8 million vehicles in the State in 2000).

Where are we going to get the room for all these highways, vehicles and parking lots? Right now, we’re sandwiched between the two greatest enemies of any proposal: budget and safety.

That means we either take out massive Federal subsidy loans to pay for more light rails and subways or we wait for the next earthquake to destroy all our hard work when we double deck the 101 freeway — a terrifying yet serious proposal that’s been brought up time and time again – can you imagine the carnage of 50,000 motorists crushed to death?

I have to believe that there’s a better system. And what many people don’t realize is that an almost-infinitely expandable public transportation infrastructure is already 75% completed. One that’s much less expensive to implement and maintain, that’s much more environmentally-friendly and boasts a safety rate that other systems only aspire to.

And this infrastructure has the potential to move a comparable amount of people as the subway lines. But nobody has taken steps to utilize it…yet.

The World Of Tomorrow

I have a picture in my mind of the future of Los Angeles, plucked straight from the past and modified to help alleviate some of our current transportation woes. To see the future, all we have to do is look to the skyline…

Here in Los Angeles, we have the Metro Red Line, Blue Line, Green Line and Orange Line. What if we also had the Metro Skyline?

A fleet of airships that carried as many people as subway cars, that docked on the roofs of buildings that were converted to landing bays (parking garages, for example) and ran on green energy such as solar power? What if we had a system of buses and subways in the sky?

I know what you’re thinking already, and I don’t blame you because it’s hardwired into our collective consciousness…

The Hindenburg disaster was over exaggerated and wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t letting Nazi ships land on American soil.

See, that’s the part they leave out – that it only caught on fire because it was filled with hydrogen at a time when all other airships were filled with helium. Hydrogen is one of the most explosive elements in the universe (it’s found in the heart of most stars!), yet helium needs very rare circumstances to ignite.

And the only reason the Hindenburg was even filled with hydrogen in the first place was because the Nazis had acquired it and plastered it with swastikas, so we embargoed them on helium (the U.S. produces 84% of the world’s supply as a by-product of mining) and they were forced to use incredibly explosive hydrogen instead.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we should have given the Nazis helium. I’m suggesting that if we hadn’t let them into U.S. airspace, this tragedy might never have happened.

Some more quick facts about the “tragedy.” Contrary to popular belief, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of a total of 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers, 22 crew members and one ground crewmember died. Most deaths did not arise from the fire, but were suffered by those who leapt from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its gentle descent to the ground escaped unharmed.

But who could ever forget Herbert Morrison’s recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field of, “Oh, the humanity!”? Which, by the way, wasn’t even broadcast until the next day and had parts later dubbed onto the newsreel footage to give an incorrect impression that the words and film had always been together.

And I won’t even get into how the airline industry bigwigs, including Howard Hughes and Juan Trippe, helped to spread some paranoia about zeppelins in order to give their own fledgling airline industry a leg-up.

A Viable Alternative

The bottom line is that these things aren’t “widow-makers” waiting to explode. And they aren’t slow-moving turtles — they can go about 150 mph, actually. They can carry over 100 people in their gondolas. The hardest part is landing them, which could be solved easily if we gave them the same amount of research that we give to, oh, Viagra.

They could be made out of lightweight plastics and run off of solar power/hydrogen cell batteries. The infrastructure for landing pads is incredibly expandable, as all you need to do is convert existing rooftops.

Basically, airships just got some bad press and have sat stagnant for no good reason. It’s a technology that has rotted on the vine and been relegated to studying weather patterns or tracking animals in the wild or making an appearance at the Superbowl.

Pretty humbling for an entire field of aviation that once ruled the skies, if you ask me. The only real downside to improving them with modern technology is that you’d see an increase in lame rooftop advertisements.

I think the best way to turn this idea into a reality would be to start it as a tourist venture first. But there are a few factors that would keep the Skyline grounded.

• 1. The Federal Aviation Administration’s rules on lighter-than-air vehicles.
• 2. Investor hesitancy.
• 3. Public fear and misconception.
• 4. Rising petroleum prices.

In Part II of this article, I’ll address these issues, possible solutions, what life would be like for tourists who could see a city from above as well as from ground-level, the effects on people who live in cities with airships and other unconventional methods of mass transit.

Derek C Wallace is a conscious consumer and an advocate for organic reform. In fact, he’s embarking on a world-wide trip to learn about sustainability and share it with the rest of the US. Visit his website to learn more.

This question was essentially on display this weekend at Epic: The Sustainable Living Expo in Vancouver, BC.

I was able to secure a media pass and attend the event, held at Canada Place on the ocean, amid a torrential downpour that’s not out of the ordinary this time of year.

It was a veritable orgy of up and coming products that hope to save the world by enticing consumers to make better choices with their dollars: from recyclable clothing, organic beer, fair-trade coffee, eco-travel guides, hybrid cars, sustainable tabletops, low-flush toilets, personal compost bins, living walls, rooftop gardens, the list goes on.

I wandered from booth to booth, snapping photos, glancing over information materials, samples and booklets, inspired by the sheer range and ingenuity represented by these green companies and entrepreneurs.

Surely, with no limit to our collective potential, the future looked bright.

Fad Or Paradigm Shift

But I couldn’t help but wonder how much the glossy optimism, embodied in the latest Toyota Hybrid or trendy green smoothie, was just techno-utopianism in disguise.

Considering the impact constant growth has inflicted on the planet in the last few decades, can consumerism be harnessed to save the planet?

Chris Koscher, a friend and Atmospheric Scientist, remembers the previous earth friendly wave from his youth. “Earth Day was huge when I was kid,” he says. “Everyone was on the bandwagon. McDonald’s was even handing out fresh saplings with their happy meals.”

But then, almost inexplicably, the fervor slipped out of the media and everyone went back to their own lives, polluting more than ever before. Years later, the issue has resurfaced again, this time hitting the mainstream with a vengeance.

This begs the question: will images of stranded polar bears and millions of environmental refugees spur us to take meaningful action?

While skeptical, Chris hopes this time around it’s not just a fad. If the chorus of scientists around the world are even close to accurate in their predictions, we don’t have time to gamble with our future.

If We Imagine It, We Can Build It

Alex Steffen, editor for WorldChanging.com, eloquently posed the challenge we face in his closing talk of the sustainability expo that night, which he also echoes in the forward of his excellent book.

We need, in the next twenty-five years or so, to do something never been done before. We need to consciously redesign the entire material basis of our civilization.

The model we replace it with must be dramatically more ecologically sustainable, offer large increases in prosperity for everyone on the planet, and not only function in areas of chaos and corruption, but also help transform them.

And keep in mind, the rate at which we use the planet’s resources is increasing everyday.

Since we are already running an ecological deficit, and since that deficit is getting bigger, there is absolutely no reason to believe that we can try one thing for a couple decades, and then, if that doesn’t work, try something else.

The living fabric of the planet, once unraveled, will never come back, at least not for a millenia. There are no do-overs on a finite planet.

So that’s the bad news. But here’s the good news:

If we face an unprecedented planetary crisis, we also find ourselves in a moment of innovation unlike any that has come before. We find ourselves in a moment when all over the world, millions of people are working to invent, use, and share worldchanging tools, models, and ideas.

We live in an era when the number of people working to make the world better is exploding. Humanity’s fate rests on the outcome of the race between problem solvers and the problems themselves.

The world is getting better-we just have to make sure it gets better faster than it gets worse.

As I left the sustainability expo that night, I felt a little overwhelmed with the task.

Yet it was impossible to ignore the contagious optimism that characterized the event, and how willing the participants appeared to recognize the scope of the problem.

We cannot fail in the years ahead.

So if we believe that shifting our spending habits to more sustainable businesses will indeed save the world, we’d better be sure that’s the right direction.

Update: Alex Steffen wrote a great article addressing the issue of buying a better future.

Ian MacKenzie is editor of Brave New Traveler, and co-founder of the blogging community TravelBlogger. Aside from writing, he spends his time exploring the fundamental nature of existence and wishing he did more backpacking.

What do you think – can we buy ourselves a better future?

What Manhattan might look like if sea levels continue to rise. Photo illustration by John Blackford; original photograph by Cameron Davidson (featured in Vanity Fair)

With our current technological and economic models? Absolutely not. No doubt about it. Petroleum is a non-renewable resource, international wars are waged over it and the environment is decimated in the process.

However, there’s no reason in the world that we can’t change our lifestyle habits.

But we have to stop looking for heroes to lead us. We have to start acknowledging the true power we have within ourselves. And that power is conscious consumerism.

Every product we buy, every service we purchase, every morsel we consume and every vehicle we travel in has a real and undeniable effect on the world. My personal goal over the next decade is to raise the bar on my own living situation as high as possible, with the end result being “total sustainability”.

The Will To Change

At the beginning of 2006, I will have started as an overweight, out of shape consumer with an average amount of credit card debt and personal property. By the end of 2016, I will be a debt-free, in-shape man who produces his own food and actually puts more into the environment than he takes away.

And I’m going to document every step of this journey so that others can figure out how to do so for themselves.

If you take a look at all of the choices I’ve made over this past year (getting rid of my car, shopping at farmer’s markets instead of grocery stores, minimizing the amount of plastic products I’ve bought), I have reduced my carbon emissions and petroleum consumption to levels that will balance out with the amount of international travel I’ll be doing this year.

But airplanes are notorious for the amount of emissions they make, and I’m more than aware of this.

Calculating Your Carbon Footprint

That’s why I’m also using “carbon offsetting” on my trip, as offered by companies such as Be Green. There are many different ways to do this, but the ways I’ve found most effective are to plant enough trees to absorb the carbon emissions my trip will put out and to invest in solar energy companies so as to help create a surplus of renewable energy.

There are companies out there that can help you calculate your carbon footprint and then facilitate necessary actions to zero it out. Buyer beware, though, as many companies are falsely hopping on the bandwagon and “greenwashing” themselves to appear more eco-friendly than they actually are.

Now, I want to emphasize that carbon offsetting is by no means a catch-all, cure-all.

Balancing out our carbon emissions doesn’t stop the pollution which is caused by the mining and refining of petroleum. Nor does it stop the international wars that are waged over it. I’d hate to see people grow complacent and think that carbon offsetting is all that they need to do in order to continue traveling long distances.

That’s why I only suggest using this method as a stepping stone in the right direction.

I think it’s so very important for all of us to personally take stock of how much of an environmental footprint we leave on the world, so that we can focus on lessening that footprint every day, week, month and year – with the goal being total sustainability.

Think of conscious consumerism as your toolbox, and carbon offsetting as your hammer. However, you can’t just build a house using only a hammer, right?

Derek C Wallace is a conscious consumer and an advocate for organic reform. In fact, he’s embarking on a world-wide trip to learn about sustainability and share it with the rest of the US. Visit his website to learn more.

First do no harm. It’s a maxim I try and live by, especially when I travel. I keep my ecological footprint to a minimum-at home by cycling instead of owning a car and living minimally, when traveling by choosing environmentally sustainable activities and supporting local cultures and products so they’re not eroded.

So what happens when the act of stepping on a plane itself for your trip has already done so much harm?

I’m writing this aboard a flight from the west coast of North America to Argentina. According to one online calculator, my return trip will generate 2.7 tons of CO2. Driving a mid-sized car for a year in comparison will generate 3.6 tons of CO2.

Last year I took 5 one-way air trips (most of which also had connecting flights). Although this was less than in a typical year they still generated 2.8 tons of CO2. So my travel schedule pretty much negated my having no car, using a bicycle for almost all my local transport and living a simple non-consumerist life.

Is Flying A Sin?

A recent interview with George Monbiot broadcast on CBC’s The Current really hammered the point home. (Before you read further, I highly recommend spending the next ten minutes listening to this interview. Scroll down for the audio link for part 3 of the show).

The interviewer asks the question whether flying is not only harmful but actually sinful. Monbiot pulls no punches in saying that by continuing our behaviour we’re contributing to “the deaths of tens of millions of people in the tropics.”

He hammers the point home that air travel is a much more harmful generator of greenhouse gases than any other source for several reasons:

• It is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases.
• The type of greenhouse gases and where they are emitted is the most harmful.

In other areas of the economy there are technological substitutes which can substantially mitigate the impacts. For air travel, replacing every plane in the sky with the most fuel efficient would only lead to a 10 to 15% reduction in emissions. Even solutions like biofuels will just lead to growing conflict between growing food for people and for engines, a conflict in which the poor will lose.

Monbiot says the only solution is not just to slow the rapid growth of air travel but to actually cut the number of flights we make by 90%!

But travel is my joy. Along with long hot showers it is my guilty pleasure in life. It’s place where I’ve always allowed myself a little slack to make up for the other positive impacts my lifestyle choices make.

Are there other alternatives?

One alternative receiving a fair amount of press attention is the idea of making your activities “carbon neutral“. What does this exactly mean? Well fundamentally it means buying your way out of this moral quandary. Many websites offer this option.

How do these websites work? They work by calculating the CO2 emissions of your flight or other activity and then asking for a donation that will offset them. The projects to offset emissions work in one of three ways:

• Planting trees or similar projects which take CO2 out of the atmosphere,
• Funding projects that use fuel more efficiently. One example provides fuel-efficient cooking stoves to people in Ecuador at a subsidized cost.
• Subsidizing alternative energy projects and research so that it can compete with more polluting technologies.

It’s a great start. Although I also wonder perhaps if it’s mostly a feel good measure — akin to recycling our endless plastic containers instead of actually reducing the amount of them we buy.

I also see the quandary that if we continue our current level (and growth) of flying and other consumptive activities but all wholeheartedly embrace the idea of mitigation, we will run out of places to plant trees or stoves to replace. Each ton of CO2 mitigated would become progressively more expensive.

The hard truth is that we must support these programs. But if we want to turn this problem around, we must also reduce our consumption-including our air travel.

Resources:

CarbonNeutral.com: A comprehensive UK-based calculator and climate mitigation donation broker that allows you to calculate the impact of your various activities and choose among projects to mitigate them.

My CO2 emission numbers at the beginning of this article were calculated using this site. As an example, mitigating today’s flight and the return trip would cost between £19.98 and £ 25.16 depending on the mitigation project chosen.

Offsetters.ca: a Canadian-based, primarily air travel calculator and broker which allocates your donation among the different projects they support.

Of special note here to Canadians is that if you book your Westjet travel starting via a link on their site, Westjet will make a donation on your behalf to make your flight carbon-neutral. If I had wanted to mitigate my emissions from today’s flight, purchasing offsets from this site would cost $63.84 Cdn.

ClimateCrisis.net: the website linked to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth documentary which gives you many ideas on changes you can make to reduce your own impact on global warming.

Doug Dosdall is a travel writer and travel website designer based in Vancouver, BC but with an addiction to warm winters in Latin America. His web design company is DohMedia and his latest projects are www.PuertoVallartaSatellite.com and www.PuertoViejoSatellite.com.

What do you think about carbon offsets? Do you plan on buying them for your next flight?

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, the impact on the Cuban economy was devastating. The country lost approximately 80% of its exports and its Gross Domestic Product dropped 34%. Along with food and medicines that were imported, half of their oil came from the USSR and all oil imports trickled to a mere 10% of previous levels.

When this happened, Cuba’s transportation, industrial and agricultural systems were paralyzed. This time in the country’s history was known as the Special Period, when waiting for a bus could take three hours, power outages could last up to 16 hours, food consumption was cut up to 1/5th and the average Cuban lost about 20 pounds.

Before the crisis, Cuba used more pesticides than the United States. Much of their land was de-mineralized. Many crumbling buildings that could not be repaired were torn down. The empty lots lay idle for years until the food shortages forced Cuban citizens to make use of every piece of land.

It took three to five years of intensely “healing” the soil with amendments, compost, “green manure” and practices such as crop rotation and inter-planting (mixed crops grown in same plot) to return the land to a healthy state. Bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides replaced most of their chemicals, and today, 80% of Cuba’s produce is organically grown.

Initially, this was an ad-hoc process where ordinary Cubans took the initiative to grow their own food in whatever piece of land was available.

But the government encouraged this practice and later assisted in promoting it. Organic urban gardens sprung up throughout the capital of Havana and other urban centers on roof-tops, patios, and unused parking lots in raised beds as well as “squatting” on empty lots.

These efforts were furthered by Australian agriculturalists that came to the island in 1993 to teach permaculture and to “train the trainers”. The Cuban government then sent these teams throughout the country to train others. The shift from despair to hope is all beautifully captured in the documentary “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil“.

Living here in Southern California, I am often ashamed at all the wasted space we have lying idle. Rows upon rows of rooftops that could have gardens or solar panels on them. Buses and above-ground subway systems like the Metro Blue Line and Green Line could have supplemental solar panels on top (thankfully many of them use natural gas, but that too will peak in production approximately 10 years after petroleum peaks).

I see the beachfront communities that have no de-salination plants that could turn ocean water into a potable drinking and bathing source. I see the power structure that exists, the coal and oil monopolies, and I lay awake at night wondering when we are going to kick these gangsters out of power. When are we going to stop letting them run our lives and our businesses and our recreation activities?

I think we have much to learn from the incredible success Cuba had in dealing with its own artificial peak in oil production. As they proved, there is tremendous opportunity for urban centers to cut their oil usage and take up organic farming.

First and foremost, urban dwellers are the ones who need their food shipped in to them since they don’t have as much room in their apartments and condos. We’ve already seen them shifting their shopping trends to places like Whole Foods and farmer’s markets.

People are tired of the lacking standards the FDA has for what is considered “fit for human consumption.” They’re fed up with all the advertising and marketing gimmicks that the fast food industries keep trying to inundate them with. They’re sick and tired of not only being obese, but also FROM being obese.

A recent poll found that 77% of Americans said that a corporation’s environmental reputation affected what they bought.

In response to this phenomenon, the corporate world has gone to great lengths to market itself and its products as the greenest of the green – a tactic known as “greenwashing.” Greenwashing is a marketing ploy where corporations give a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices.

So as consumers, it’s up to us to start questioning what we eat, where it was grown and how it was transported to us. There are many great sites out there for educating yourself, such as www.corpwatch.org and www.knowmore.org, for example.

You can even find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably-grown food in your area through the interactive map at www.localharvest.org

As previously mentioned, Derek Wallace is a guy on a mission.

I caught up with Derek to interview him about organic versus factory farming, peak oil, the war on terror, and the future of sustainability.

BNT: First off, what exactly is organic farming?

Derek Wallace: Organic farming is about growing crops without the use of artificial pesticides which can have seriously harmful effects on our health and the environment.

Organic farmers emphasize the concept of “feeding the soil not feeding the plant” – but it isn’t just limited to consumables, though. The cotton in the clothes we wear, the grain we feed our livestock with and even natural pharmaceuticals (ginkgo biloba and aloe vera, for example) can all be grown organically.

In addition, organic farming emphasizes a desire to find an equilibrium with the surrounding environment, which is known as “sustainability”.

Sustainability can best be described as a moral and ethical design system applicable to food production and land use, as well as community design. It seeks the creation of productive ways of living by integrating ecology, landscape, architecture, agroforestry and green/ecological economics.

Taken to its purest form, it is known as “permaculture”, which aims to create human habitats by following nature’s patterns.

How is that different than factory farming?

Factory farming emphasizes quantity over quality. It’s the mass-production, assembly-line version of farming, which means is that many, many safety and health corners end up getting cut that hurt consumers.

For instance, the pesticides and ammonia-based fertilizers used by factory farms can cause acute health problems like abdominal pain, dizziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting as well as skin and eye irritations. And that’s just symptoms found in farmers who work around the chemicals. Just imagine eating fruits and vegetables that have absorbed them!

You just don’t find anything natural about industrial farming, whether the product is crops or livestock. Soil needs time to absorb nutrients and injecting animals full of anti-biotics because you’ve crammed hundreds or thousands of them into close quarters only breeds super bacteria that are immune.

What epiphany pushed you to start this project?

I actually know the date that it happened: it was the fourth anniversary of September 11th. Hurricane Katrina had just struck a week before and I was fed up, I mean absolutely sickened to my stomach, by my government’s response – or rather, lackthereof.

I logged on to MySpace and made a blog about how convenient it was for the Bush Administration that something like this came along to distract Americans from the harsh reality that four years had passed since the World Trade Center Attacks and there was still no sign of capturing Osama Bin Laden.

Either we were totally incompetent, or we weren’t looking. And so I started doing internet research. That’s when I stumbled upon Life After The Oil Crash and my heart skipped a beat.

The site explains very simply the issue of “Peak Oil” – that there is a finite amount of petroleum in the ground and that eventually we’re going to hit the halfway point, or “peak”. When that happens, resource wars will kick into overdrive.

At first, I thought, okay, so hundreds of years from now it’s going to be “Mad Max”. So what’s it matter to me? But then I read further and learned that the leading geologists, physicists and investment bankers agreed that, much like global warming, peak oil wasn’t going to happen in the far flung future – it was going to happen somewhere in most of our lifetimes.

This “War on Terror” was just a smokescreen to secure U.S. oil interests in the Middle East before that big crunch happened.

With that site as a jumping-off point, I gained a better understanding of how important petroleum was to each and every single aspect of modern human civilization. It not only runs our vehicles, but it’s also what makes our huge factory farms possible in the first place.

Approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the U.S. Pesticides are made from oil, farming implements such as tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil and food is distributed across oil-powered transportation networks. In the U.S., the average piece of food travels almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. As the website says, “in short, people gobble oil like two-legged SUVs”.

Over Christmas break of 2005, I did some real soul-searching and I decided that enough was enough.

I couldn’t keep complaining about the state of the world while I was contributing to the very problems that it was wracked with. Maybe I wasn’t as big or as influential as ExxonMobil, but dammit, I was still doing my part to pollute the earth and perpetuate international wars for oil.

And I figured that if enough of us changed our lifestyle habits, well, that would be like enough drops of water forming a tidal wave of positive change.

So I spent the next six months figuring out what I was going to do to in order to enact that positive change in my own life.

What are some ways you changed your lifestyle?

The first thing I did, the simplest thing, was I cut down on shopping at grocery stores and eating out at restaurants. I started getting my food from local farmer’s markets, where I could talk first-hand to the people who grew the food I ate. I could also barter on the price, which you’re just not able to do at Ralph’s or Piggly Wiggly or CostCo.

The next big step was getting rid of my vehicle – which is tantamount to social suicide here in car-crazy Los Angeles. But ya know what? It wasn’t that difficult, actually. Duane Elgin wrote an incredible book that has influenced me deeply and it’s titled, “Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich”.

Elgin gives the example of two people who have to ride their bike to work. One person couldn’t afford the payments, so it was repossessed. Now, every peddle turn is sheer agony to him, because he misses his car so much and longs for the freedom of mobility that came with it.

The second person was tired of sitting in traffic, wanted to get in better shape, hated polluting and preferred to save the money he’d spend on car payments/gas/maintenance/parking/etc. Now, every peddle turn is sheer ecstasy to him, because he loves all of the physical, social and financial freedom he has gained by giving up something that hew viewed as unnecessary.

Same end result but different perspectives.

Knowing what I knew of Peak Oil and global warming and filled with a strong desire to make a difference, I decided, I’m going to start documenting sustainable lifestyles and business for people who are unaware that Peak Oil is even an issue.

And in my research for that, I came across wwoofing and couchsurfing, two forms of social networking many people don’t even know exist.

What is the Wwoofing network and what kind of experience do you need to join?

WWOOF stands for “World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms“. The organization is a facilitation network that enables people to learn first-hand about organic growing techniques while helping farmers make organic production a viable alternative.

Many major countries have a national WWOOF network and those that don’t often have WWOOF independent groups that operate the same way as their larger sister networks. The great thing about these networks is that they provide safety for both the hosts and the guests, so that neither side gets taken advantage of. Think of it as eBay for farms, only the item for sale is your time as a volunteer!

As far as experience, none is needed! I myself have very little exposure to farming practices, yet I’ve been welcomed with open arms! The WWOOF organizations can help put you in contact with the right host for what you want to learn.

One example is the “chinampas” system of farming, which the Aztecs used in the shallow lake beds of the Valley of Mexico to help overcome the main limits to agriculture in the Basin of Mexico: variable rainfall, frosts and soil fertility. It is estimated that food provided by chinampas made up one-half to two-thirds of the food consumed by the 200,000 inhabitants of the city of Tenochtitlán until the destruction of the dams and sluice gates during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Now that’s something I’m extremely interested in and just wouldn’t get exposed to without the help of WWOOF!

You also mentioned you’ll be “couchsurfing” during your trip. Have you ever done it before or met someone who had?

Couchsurfing is something that most everyone is familiar with – sleeping on the couch of a friend or family member while visiting another town or country.

But the website takes it one step further and helps people offer this opportunity to kindred spirits they haven’t met yet. There are several safety features set up so you and your guest or host can make sure they know who is coming to stay with them and for how long.

Since August 1st of 2006, I have personally hosted over three dozen people for time periods ranging from just one night to an entire week. Sometimes it’s been just one person, once I had FIVE BELGIANS with me all at the same time! The whole living room was just filled to the brim with Europeans and backpacks and sleeping bags.

The beauty of couchsurfing is that you get to determine the level of involvement with your guests, whether that’s taking them on guided tours of your city and cooking meals with them or just giving them a place to sleep and saying “have fun!” while pointing them in the direction of the nearest restaurant.

Also, I can’t emphasize this point enough – each and every single person who came to stay with me while I was hosting was a sheer joy to be around. They were smart, funny, kind, courteous guests who made every day an adventure.

I had visitors from all around the globe – places like Australia, Denmark, England and even right here in the United States. I’m going to be doing some couchsurfing of my own over the holidays while I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina, Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California.

You quickly get over that initial fear of, oh no, what am I doing? I’m staying with a complete stranger in a foreign area! Especially once you realize that these people aren’t truly strangers after all, since the friend-of-a-friend phenomenon is happening.

What’s the longest trip you’ve been on in the past?

Believe it or not, I’ve never been out of the country! I lived here in Los Angeles for five years and never even crossed the Mexican border! And that’s a shame, a real shame.

I’ve spent a week here and there in cities like New York and Chicago and San Francisco, but never an extended time away from home like this. And especially not in a strange new country where I don’t know the language and the customs!

But I grew up moving around a lot, so I’m no stranger to travel. A lot of people are afraid to leave the confines of their homeland for fear of being ostracized, and that’s a valid fear.

But in my experience, I’ve found that it’s usually the other way around – people want to talk to you because you are new and mysterious and have experiences in far-away places that they can only fantasize about. And lemme tell ya, that’s a damn good ice-breaker!

You have quite an itinerary for your trip. Do you think you’ll have problems hitting every single country?

You should’ve seen my wish list itinerary! I think it was something like 35 countries, which would’ve equated to about five days each! After I realized, hey, there will be other trips, no need to go overboard, well, I started narrowing it down based upon countries with highly-regarded and long-established WWOOFing networks.

But, I’ve already hit a few problems along the way. As you can imagine, many under-developed countries in regions like South America, Asia and Africa have a hard enough time with subsistence farming, let alone organic farming. So I begrudgingly had to substitute in different countries that were nearby or cut their regions out of my route altogether.

One example I can give is Fiji. If they don’t sort their military coup out, it looks like I won’t be visiting there after all. Which makes me sad, because I’ve really wanted to visit Fiji for about a decade now, ever since I saw a National Geographic special about it. Something has always called out to me about a region that has over 2,500 uninhabited – yet habitable – islands.

You have a music section on your site. That’s a pretty cool idea to highlight the music of various musicians you meet on the road.

I thought that would be a neat touch to help give subscribers as much of an authentic feel for the areas I visit as possible. I want my website to be an all-senses adventure for visitors: there are pictures for the eyes, music for the ears, recipes for the tongue and for the nose and even an interactive GPS location system for the hands.

Music has always been this really fantastical thing to me that magically arrived on earth from the handiwork of wizards and sorceresses. I’d hear people talk about “backbeats” and “tempos” and I’d just scratch my head because all I knew was, “I like it” or “I don’t like it”.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been unable to control my desire to make it myself. I chalk that up to the time I spent making 5-minute-long independent television shows for www.channel101.com here in Los Angeles.

It’s this awesome group of indie writers, directors, actors, special effects artists and musicians who don’t sit around waiting for Hollywood to give them permission to make the kind of shows they want to see. They pick up a camera and just do it, man.

That was really inspirational to me and helped set me on the path to crossing over from being just a consumer into the realm of “creator”. I’m really hoping I’ll get a chance to work with some musicians on my travels, because that’s one area I haven’t really branched out to yet.

Why is re-learning how to organic farm so important today?

I think it’s so desperately important because if we don’t sidestep the big double-whammy of Peak Oil and global warming, a lot of people are going to suffer needlessly.

Many already do in this dog-eat-dog world of free-market capitalism and war profiteering. But the ever-growing chasm between the rich and the poor that’s eradicating the middle class of our economy means that we’re looking at Hurricane Katrina on a global scale.

If I can do something, anything, to help change the course of destiny and avert it from that outcome, I’m in. Sign me up. It’s go time.

So that’s Derek Wallace in a nutshell.

That’s me, the guy who wants to give up everything that is unnecessary before he loses everything that’s of true value. I want to eat healthy food, I want to be a conscious consumer, I want to leave this world a better place than it was when I came into it.

I want to be that harvester that Charles Read wrote about when he said “Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” Because that’s what it’s about, changing our habits and creating our own destinies, instead of just following what corporate advertising tells us is “right”.

None of this is “real” or “the way it has to be”. Change what you can, however small. There’s no reason not to and nothing holding you back but your own addictions and your own habits.

The reason I’m documenting my journey is so that I can help inspire others. Because if I can do it, you can do it.

Visit Derek’s website OrganicReform.org to learn more about his project and get involved. Also, keep your eye on this magazine for an upcoming guest post by Derek on peak oil, sustainability, and the fate of the human race. Sign up for your free updates now.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on this interview in the comments!

My friend has a sense of humour.

For Christmas, he gifted me a darkly hilarious “Global Warming Mug” – a mug featuring the world’s continents in all their glory. Except there’s a catch. When you pour in a hot liquid the heat alters the continents, revealing the edges of the world that will be swallowed in the future due to unabated climate change and rising sea levels.

My initial thought was the wonderfully depressing feeling the mug would invoke with every morning coffee, but then I realized it was an effective reminder; a “call to action” that climate change isn’t just going to go away if everyone ignores it.

If fact, the first casualties of rising sea levels appear to be the people of the Carteret Islands – living among the most beautiful and most remote corners of the world. These islands also happen to sit at their highest only 170cm above sea level. (watch video)

“The Carterets are a portent of catastrophe to come – not only for the other low lying atolls of the South Pacific, but for low-lying coastal communities across the world, from Bangladesh to New Orleans.

If environmental scientists and campaigners are correct, the rising seas are the result of global warming caused by the release of greenhouse gasses.

Some time next year the islanders will become the world’s first climate-change refugees; within a few years, barring a dramatic reversal, their home will literally go down in history as the first inhabited territory in the world to be swallowed up by global warming.”

Damn, that’s depressing.

But luckily, if anything, 2006 will be remembered as the year global warming finally hit the mainstream. No longer can the average citizen go about their day without having an opinion on climate change and whether humans have something to do about it.

So I’ve had enough bad news. If Al Gore taught me anything, it’s that we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves. Says Future Sea Level.org, a grassroots activist group dedicated to raising public awareness about climate change:

“Even though most serious effects of global warming are primarily going to affect future generations, the actions taken over the next decades will profoundly affect the world in which our children and grandchildren will live.

The challenge is to make the long term and gradual impacts of global warming the immediacy needed to help people make important decisions today.”

This year I bought a bike and ride it almost every day. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s certainly a start. Now with the year almost at an end, if you make any resolutions for yourself and the future, pledge to do your part in saving the world.

For a daily reminder, I suggest picking up a Global Warming Mug.

Technorati Tags: climate change, sea level, al gore, global warming

What have you done this year to combat climate change? Whether large or small, please share in the comments (seriously, it’s inspiring).

Derek Wallace is a guy on a mission. He’s embarking on a world-wide tour working on organic farms and in exchange for room/board through a network called “World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms” (”wwoofing” for short).

The purpose of his trip is two-fold: to write a book about how other cultures have tackled the issue of sustainability and to bring back methods of organic communal gardening that United States citizens can employ to help combat their addiction to petroleum-based produce grown on factory farms.

He’s put together a pretty comprehensive website, for which he’ll use to post blogs, photos, videos, recipes, and even music from the various interesting people he’s sure to meet on the road.

Visit OrganicReform.com to learn more.

Keep an eye out for an exclusive interview with Derek Wallace, which we’ll be publishing in the future. Not only is he wildly creative, he’s also a prolific writer.

For this reason, the interview will be divided into fascinating bite-size chunks, covering topics like peak oil, couchsurfing, terrorism, war, and yes, sustainability.

Technorati Tags: organic farming, peak oil, sustainability

Vancouver, Canada, where I live is a different story. Our tap water is generally quite drinkable. In fact, I’d always attributed our abundant water to the continual rain that we experience for most months out of the year. Water, water, everywhere.

The irony was not lost on me when, last month, a particularly powerful storm caused landslides into the Capilano Reservoir, and suddenly our health authority was asking 2 million people to stay away from the taps.

Destinations

Community Connection to Laos

Cue: bottled water frenzy.

On that first evening, all the local grocery stores and gas stations were quickly emptied of their water. I wasn’t worried. Most of us figured the ban would last, two or three days at the most.

The weekend arrived and neither did a reprieve. The Salvation Army handed out bottled water to the homeless. A fist-fight broke out at a big-box wholesale store. I counted the growing stack of plastic bottles building up under my sink.

The advisory remained in effect for 2 weeks.

I’m not sure how long the residents of Bangkok have been relying on bottled water, but it’s now easy to imagine the day when tap water is no longer readily drinkable in these parts. A resource this valuable should demand the cultivation of good habits before it’s too late.

Luckily, I came across this excellent guide from TreeHugger, entitled “How To Green Your Water.”

Have a read if you get a moment. What you find may surprise you.

What do you think about the whole bottled water phenomenon and the state of water world-wide?

The problem, using the US as an example, is this:

“According to Ecological Footprint calculations, the average U.S. citizen requires 24 acres (10 hectares) to produce enough food, shelter, energy, and other resources to sustain his or her lifestyle. Worldwide there are only 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares) of biologically productive land available for each person. Put another way, if everyone on Earth lived like U.S. citizens, the planet would need to be at least five times bigger…”

Basically, we have to figure out ways to tread lighter on the planet. Herein lies the traveler’s dilemma: we must travel to expand our horizons, but each flight pumps as much CO2 into the atmosphere as driving a car for three months. And as airlines compete for business, more and more people are taking to the skies.

There are two specific ways for you to deal with this problem.

1) fly less

2) purchase carbon offsets to neutralize the amount of carbon used in your flight.

This alternative is surprisingly affordable. While there are certainly a few places out there offering variations on this service, I visited two, both UK based. The first is Treeflights.com – a company started by a man named Ru Hartwell, who:

lives on the bare slopes of the Cambrian Mountains of Mid-Wales and his eco-powered smallholding is now covered with organic woodland. This young forest is steadily getting larger as more and more airline passengers choose to take advantage of the service.

Basically, you pay a modest fee and they plant trees. It’s a nice swap. Another larger carbon offset provider is The Carbon Neutral Company, who provide a number of useful C02 calculators to determine the carbon emissions for different activities. I used their Flight C02 Calculator to determine the amount of carbon I would contribute in a trip from Vancouver, Canada to Costa Rica – 2.4 tonnes.

They present you with a range of packages to offset this pollution, all surprisingly cheap (within $25 – 50). Considering the impact we’re currently having on the planet, it seems a reasonable price to pay if it allows our species to continue living.

Update: I found two more companies that offer similar services:

• Terrapass.com
• Go Zero

Have you found any other means of offsetting your carbon emissions? Please share your findings in the comments.