Despite the stark realities of global warming, a cautious optimism permeated the first full day of the Aspen Environment Forum, which is running at the Aspen Institute through Saturday night.
During presentations by the world’s leading ecological thinkers and doers on topics ranging from climate change to deforestation, one theme ran through them all: People are finally listening — and worrying — about environmental issues and the detrimental impact humans have had on earth.
“The people of the earth are greening,” said two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning naturalist Edward O. Wilson. “It’s a wonderful and exciting trend. We may be reaching a tipping point.”
Both the 21st-century environmental zeitgeist and the long history of environmental programs at the Aspen Institute prompted this inaugural forum, said David Monsma, executive director of the Institute’s Energy and Environmental program.
“There is a lot of excitement about energy and the environment right now,” said Monsma, who began putting together the conference more than a year ago. “A day doesn’t go by that people aren’t talking about a new report. But it’s also a continuation of what we’ve always done at the Aspen Institute.”
Chris Johns, editor of National Geographic magazine — which is co-sponsoring the forum — struck a similar note. “The environment is making headlines these days, as the reality of climate change hits home,” he wrote in the forum’s program. “But for National Geographic magazine, the environment has always been headline news.”
Governor touts energy initiatives
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter addressed the convocation Thursday morning, saying that in the year-and-a-half he’s been in office, support for climate change efforts statewide has risen 20 points in polls.
“People in this state took up the challenge,” Ritter said. “It was a seismic change.”
Addressing a standing-room-only crowd in the Doerr-Hosier Center, Ritter highlighted Colorado’s recent progress on renewable energy, and focused on the successful marriage of clean energy and economic development here.
“There is the ability to change the conversation,” he said. “We did it in Colorado and we can do it as a nation.”
Ritter told the story of his 2006 election, when he campaigned heavily on energy development.
“I kept seeing people nod their heads when I said we have enough renewable energy in Colorado to build a new energy economy,” Ritter said, later adding: “If I had talked about this 15 years ago, it would not have had support and might have been laughed at.”
The governor championed recent energy successes in Colorado — noting that 250,000 Colorado homes are powered with wind energy, that Boulder’s energy grid has been integrated with both traditional and renewable sources, that his carbon-offset incentive programs for farmers have been a success. And that his climate change plan includes reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050.
Ritter also advocated developing clean coal-burning technology. When that brought some rebukes from the audience, he held fast, saying tapping mountaintop coal would be necessary to transition from dwindling petroleum sources to renewable ones.
“If we are going to meet energy demand while putting renewable energy on the grid,” he explained, “we have to utilize coal and we should make sure we can burn it in a clean fashion. Our economy could collapse without it.”
He added that developing clean coal-burning technology could have a global impact, if it spread to coal-utilizing nations like China.
Tree troubles, ice troubles
Following the governor’s speech, the day’s seminars and public interviews were disseminated throughout the Institute campus, with concurrent sessions on a panoply of topics from oceanic resources to rain forest habitats, by presenters as diverse as Princess Basma Bint Ali of Jordan to Alexandra Cousteau.
Even Aspen’s aspens got a panel of their own. A seminar led by Auden Schendler, the Aspen Skiing Co.’s executive director of community and environmental responsibility, focused on Colorado’s tree troubles. Experts explained how tree epidemics are killing hundreds of thousands of acres of aspens, while beetles brought into the mountains by warmer, dryer conditions are taking out even more spruce and mountain pines.
Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said the current situation in Colorado mirrors a study he conducted in Homer, Alaska 10 years ago, when they faced the same problem. There, he said, the community fought against cutting down the dead and dying trees. Once they relented, he said, they planted lodgepole pines — which are indigenous to historically warmer, lower-elevation areas — and they thrived, outgrowing native species.
Photographer James Balog presented the results of his Extreme Ice Survey, a project he started last year to chronicle the earth’s melting glaciers. Balog placed 26 time-lapse cameras on glaciers around the world last year, and shared his results in a lunchtime slideshow presentation.
“You can see geological history happening right before your eyes,” Balog explained, showing a time lapse progression of an Icelandic glacier melting and forming a river.
Balog said he agrees that people have been more receptive to the idea of global warming, but noted that some are still holding out.
“Some you just can’t convert,” he said. “It’s an emotional, visceral reaction to say ‘That’s not the paradigm of the world I believe in.’”
E.O. Wilson on life and soccer moms
In a wide-ranging public interview, naturalist Edward O. Wilson and National Geographic executive editor Tim Appenzeller discussed the importance of science education and wilderness experience for children.
“I believe the Soccer Mom is the greatest enemy of a proper biological education,” Wilson said, eliciting laughter. “The worst thing you can do is walk a child through a botanical garden where trees and plants are labeled.”
Wilson also discussed The Encyclopedia of Life, an epic undertaking to catalogue all known information about every known species on the planet and store it online. He began the project at Harvard University in 2003. In a decade, he said, he hopes his team can catalogue more than 1.8 million of the planet’s species, “then launch a new era of exploration.”
Forum organizers partnered with Aspen City Hall’s Canary Initiative program to minimize the forum’s environmental impact. They offset carbon emissions from the 370 forum participants’ travel to the conference and the energy use at the event itself. It is among the first ZGreen-certified events held in Aspen, meaning it met the Canary’s highest standards.
“It’s the first time the Institute has partnered with the city as far as greening a conference,” said Canary Initiative project manager Kim Peterson. “We’re already talking about doing the same for Ideas Fest (in July).”
They’ve taken a number of other measures, like not serving bottled water, composting all their trash on site and printing conference literature on recycled paper. They are also shuttling people to the Institute campus from downtown Aspen in hybrid-powered sport-utility vehicles.
But Thursday morning the Institute parking lot still overflowed with cars, onto Meadows Drive and blocking fire zones, which prompted organizers to admonish participants to take advantage of the shuttles for the rest of the conference.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
