20th Anniversary of the Trans-Antarctica Expedition

Twenty years ago yesterday one of the most amazing and ambitious expeditions to Antarctica, or just about anywhere else for that matter, came to an end, when a team of six explorers, from six different countries, completed a 3741 mile journey across that continent. To commemorate that anniversary, Jon Bowermaster posted an interesting article on the expedition.

Elk River Energy Expo a smash hit

by Elizabeth Nelson

The Christopher Columbus of our time.

That’s how Dave Hauer, the principle of Meadowvale Elementary, described Arctic explorer Will Steger - the guest speaker at the Feb. 27 Elk River Energy Expo.

Polar explorer sees economic opportunity as driving force on global warming

By ROB CHANEY

Arctic explorer Will Steger, beside Nicky Phear, discusses climate change, jobs and national security during a lunch gathering at the University of Montana on Thursday afternoon. “I can’t think of anything more patriotic than self-reliance,” says Steger.

Researcher to address climate woes

Tori Norskog

Earlier spring thaws, disappearing glaciers and increasing insect population are just a few of the harsh realities of global warming that veteran environmental researcher Will Steger will address at the Urey Lecture Hall on Feb. 11.

Cycling For Carbon: Biking to a Better Tomorrow, One City at a Time

liana BALINSKY-BAKER

Whether being chased by a mountain lion or battling hypothermia, Reed Aronow will stop at nothing to fight climate change.

Will Steger has been places very few others have seen, exploring and pioneering since his childhood in Minnesota, always “seeking the edge.”

By MICHAEL GIBNEY

The renowned arctic explorer has spent some 45 years traveling more than 10,000 miles by kayak and dogsled, through some of the world’s most extreme terrain at both Poles.

“The edge is where you can have a true learning experience,” Steger said Wednesday talking about clean-energy issues with business and environmental interest groups.

Legendary adventurer Will Steger, a crusader to fight global warming, is showing photos of the Arctic. It's on thin ice.

By Amy Linn

Polar explorer Will Steger, one of the most accomplished Arctic adventurers of all time, has seen and done things that most mortals can’t imagine. In 1986 he led the first dogsled expedition to the North Pole without resupply; in 1988, he traversed Greenland by dogsled, a 1,600-mile trip that was the longest of its kind ever; in 1989 he launched the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica, a seven-month, 3,471-mile journey.

Polar Explorer Sees Warming Threat

by Brett French

For the average Montanan who likes the outdoors, Will Steger has seen danger on the polar horizon.
“Habitat changes, all our hunting for pheasant and other wildlife, that’s what’s threatened” by climate change, he said.

Steger, 65, of Ely, Minn., has spent 45 years of his life as a polar explorer, making monthslong trips in cold as harsh as 70 below zero. Yet now, he couldn’t retrace his own routes because of the loss of sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Many of the Arctic expeditions now need a canoe or some other flotation device to get across breaks in the ice. That warming trend is affecting Montana, too, he said, pointing to the loss of glaciers in Glacier National Park as evidence.

American and Kenyan Youth Deliver Environmental Messages in Copenhagen

by Kalpen Modi

As President Obama called world leaders back to the table in Copenhagen to work on an agreement, the White House Offices of Energy and Climate Change and Public Engagement helped facilitate a meeting between White House aides and young environmental leaders from the United States and Kenya. The American coalition hand-delivered hundreds of letters-to-the-President from a wide spectrum of young Americans: from high school students in Illinois to young leaders in Michigan to young sportsmen in South Dakota.

Recent graduate marches in UN climate negotiations

By Molly Waite GVL Staff Writer

Most Grand Valley State University graduates spend their graduation day celebrating years of academic achievement with family and friends. But for graduate Danielle Ostafinski, the big day took place during the world's largest march on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, with 100,000 of her closest friends.
Ostafinski traveled to Denmark as part of Expedition Copenhagen, a team of U.S. Midwestern youth leaders who work within their communities to raise awareness of the international climate negotiations discussed by the United Nations in December 2009, an annual conference that has been meeting since 1992 to find solutions to global climate change. The Lanthorn sat down with Ostafinski to find out about her experience in the negotations.

Local students take part in Copenhagen climate conference

By CHAD DALLY

Published: Monday, January 4, 2010 10:42 AM CST
Catherine Cogger and Aurora Conley never crossed paths in Copenhagen during the recent climate change summit. But the two bay area students are both working on how some of the planet's least-represented populations are, and will continue to be, impacted by climate change.

Cogger, who graduated from Washburn in 2006, is studying environmental anthropology at Michigan Tech University, and is currently spending a semester in Norway.

Conley, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was one of 12 delegates from the Midwest who traveled to Copenhagen with the Will Steger Foundation, started by the polar explorer. While there, she also worked with the Indigenous Environmental Network, and is currently working toward a renewable energy certificate at Lac Courte Oreilles Community College.

Local Student Attends Climate Conference

by CHRISTINIA CRIPPES

College student Holly Jones sees solving climate change as a complicated puzzle filled with thousands of interlocking pieces.

One hundred ninety three of those pieces came together in mid-December for the Conference of Parties climate change summit in Copenhagen. The delegates from those 193 countries, then, put their heads together to join more pieces.

Jones, 21, a senior at the University of Iowa, represents one of the most valuable pieces of the puzzle: the youth movement.

"We all have these different components that we focus on; we all have our own strengths, but then when we come together we can create a pretty great picture of what needs to be accomplished and how we can go about accomplishing that," Jones said.

Knuth Promotes Clean Energy at Copenhagen Climate Summit

Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:29 PM CST COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — State Reps. Kate Knuth, DFL-50B, and Jeremy Kalin, DFL-17B, traveled to Copenhagen the week of Dec. 7 to participate in the historic United Nations climate change summit. Both are members of CLEAN (Coalition of Legislators for Energy Action Now), a group of energy leaders from more than 40 states working closely with the White House on federal clean energy jobs legislation.

Expedition Copenhagen Delegate Writes for Canadian Geographic

by Liana Baker

Liana B. Baker is an editorial intern at Canadian Geographic. She was first published in the magazine this past winter in a story about Canada’s most Northern Jewish cemetery. She wants to cover energy and environmental policy as a writer and has interned at Platts, a news service which covers energy in Washington, DC and at The Media Line in Jerusalem. She attends Northewestern’s journalism school, Medill, and will take part in the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December as a youth delegate.

S.D. Is Part of Climate Change Solution

Jamie Horter

I was the South Dakota youth delegate with Expedition Copenhagen, a partnership between the Will Steger Foundation and Stonyfield Farm, to the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

WSF is a nonprofit organization committed to creating local and global environmental solutions through advocacy, education and outreach. Will Steger, an Arctic explorer and Minnesota native, led our delegation of 12 youths to Copenhagen to provide a voice for the Midwest at the international negotiations.

The two weeks gave me a great opportunity to work with youths around the world as well as discover the leading role of the Midwest in shaping the futures of people around the globe.

There was no rest for the weary in our delegation. Working almost round the clock, delegates tackled multiple responsibilities. We worked on drafting policy for submission to the U.N., attended plenary sessions to report on the negotiations, hosted news conferences and panel discussions, interviewed governmental leaders and non-governmental groups, and led educational presentations.

S.D. Voices Heard Amid Fray: 

Biofuels, Ag Touted at Climate Conference

Thom Gabrukiewicz
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As the nations of the world try to come to consensus on climate change - amid protests that turned violent Wednesday - South Dakotans who flew to Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference say an accord is vital for the planet.



South Dakotans who are in Denmark, or recently returned from the conference that began Dec. 7 and concludes Friday, include South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke, University of South Dakota graduate student and Iraq War veteran Leighann Dunn, Augustana College senior Jamie Horter, Poet Chief Executive Officer Jeff Broin and USD environmental law professor Elizabeth Burleson.

"I felt like agriculture, which I went there to represent, got a very good chance to explain what we can offer to address the issue," said Sombke, who returned from Denmark on Monday. "And I believe the countries of the world were made aware of the role agriculture can play in climate issues and food security."

SD Student Blogs From Climate Conference

A South Dakota college student is attending the the Global Climate Conference in Copenhagen and is writing about her experiences online. Augustana College student Jamie Horter arrived in Denmark last Friday and has been on her feet ever since.

From Copenhagen to South Dakota, it appears the youth movement is grabbing most of the headlines this week. Horter updated her blog Wednesday morning. She writes about attending a presentation by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Horter also sat-in on a presentation from James Balog, a photographer for National Geographic, who spent a year producing his "Extreme Ice Survey."

Youth Leaders Talk Truth to Power in Copenhagen

by Brendan DeMelle

COPENHAGEN—Students, youth environmental advocates and other “YOUNGO” interests are busy here this week, pressing world leaders and delegates to reach a real deal to protect their future against climate change.

The Young and the Restless: Youth leaders make an impact in Copenhagen

by Brendan DeMelle

COPENHAGEN—Students, youth environmental advocates and other “YOUNGO” interests are busy here this week, pressing world leaders and delegates to reach a real deal to protect their future against climate change.

National Geographic BlogWILD with Will Steger

Contributor: Ford Cochran

Will Steger occassionally contributes to National Geographic's BlogWILD site on nationalgeographic.com. This month, Will submits his blogs about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen Denmark. Will and 12 youth delegates are attending the two-week conference with 192 world leaders as they attempt to strike a fair, ambitious and binding treaty that will reduce carbon emissions.

See the online BlogWILD site from National Geographic - Dec 10, 2009

Letter to the Editor

On behalf of the Will Steger Foundation's Expedition Copenhagen, I ask you to join me in calling for a strong global climate agreement in 2009. We are currently setting the course for our country and for the world for many years to come. The United States Senate will soon vote on the climate bill, and we are mere weeks from the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The growing youth climate movement is calling for swift and bold action to address climate change and jumpstart the transition to a clean energy economy worldwide. I urge you to add your voice to support action that will determine the health of the world we inherit.

Racine Gets a Voice at International Climate Change Negotiations

Penguins danced and the crowd kept a giant inflated balloon of the earth aloft, as Racine rallied for sensible stewardship of our planet's environment this afternoon in Monument Square. The rally was one of perhaps 5,200 similar events taking place in 181 countries, during an international day of climate action.

To the stirring opening fanfare of Richard Strauss' Thus spake Zarathustra (better known as the theme of the "dawn of man" sequence in Stanley Kubrik's movie, 2001, a Space Odyssey), about 150 people, mostly Racine high school students, expressed their support for a new treaty on CO2 emissions they hope will come from the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

Leading the Climate Charge: Student to be S. Dakota's voice at U.N. conference

Jamie Horter is in love with the world - it's an infatuation on a molecular level, the adoration for the overall masterpiece.

In less than a month, the Augustana College senior - she's a dual major in chemistry and art - will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark, to be part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. As a member of the Will Steger Foundation's Expedition Copenhagen delegation, she will attend meetings and then disseminate information about what climate change will mean to South Dakotans.

MU student attends Copenhagen climate summit

by Rebecca Prybell

For two weeks representatives from countries around the world, including a Marquette student, are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Chalie Nevarez, a graduate student in the College of Engineering, is the Wisconsin delegate for the Will Steger Foundation Expedition Copenhagen. She also received her bachelor’s degree from Marquette in environmental engineering.
“Throughout my career, I have seen that there is a disconnect between the science and the policy written to make changes occur,” Nevarez said in an e-mail from Copenhagen. “I decided to get involved with the Will Steger Foundation, where I have had the opportunity to engage with youth from the Midwest and talk about climate change.”

A Global Call for Climate Action
Thousands of organized rallies in more than 150 nations called for gloabl policymakers to make cutting carbon emissions down to a level of 350 parts per million a priority, 50 days prior to the United Nations conference on climate change.

350GR - City Participates in International Day of Climate Action On Saturday, October 24th nearly 60 activists gathered at Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the 350.org International Day of Climate Action. Overall 5,200 events in 181 countries happened on the 24th, marking it as the largest day of global climate action in the planet's history. The number 350 represents the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide (CO2) in parts per million in our atmosphere - currently we are at 389ppm and rising. Dr. James Hansen of NASA has been researching climate change for decades, and he has determined that 350ppm of CO2 is the number we need to achieve in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

RACINE - A high school student dressed as a penguin wiggled to blaring dance music atop one of those stone blocks at Monument Square.
"Keep the ice under my feet," read the sign in its hands, or, um, flippers.
There were six penguins altogether, plus a giant blow-up globe and students holding up blue cardboard numbers as big as people, all of it contributing to an atmosphere of purposeful ridiculousness. Yet it was to bring serious attention to an issue - climate change.

Expedition Copenhagen Youth Delegate, Danielle Ostafinshi of GVSU,  gives viewers an inside look at the people who are making significant achievements in their academic life or professional field or in the community. Examples include: prestigious teaching and research awards, award-winning academic programs, prestigious admissions to graduate school, compelling private/public partnership initiatives, unique study abroad or cultural exchange programs, etc..

Racine Students Rally for Sensible Climate Change

Penguins danced and the crowd kept a giant inflated balloon of the earth aloft, as Racine rallied for sensible stewardship of our planet's environment this afternoon in Monument Square. The rally was one of perhaps 5,200 similar events taking place in 181 countries, during an international day of climate action.

To the stirring opening fanfare of Richard Strauss' Thus spake Zarathustra (better known as the theme of the "dawn of man" sequence in Stanley Kubrik's movie, 2001, a Space Odyssey), about 150 people, mostly Racine high school students, expressed their support for a new treaty on CO2 emissions they hope will come from the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

by: Jason Kopp

A horde of bicyclists arrived at the state Capitol on Saturday to rally support for global climate change action alongside lawmakers.
Hundreds of local students, community members and lawmakers gathered on the Capitol lawn with picket signs and posters in a demonstration for global climate change as part of the International Day of Climate Action.
“You are not the future, you are the present — you are the now, you are the people who are leading the way,” Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., told the young crowd. “Keep your voices loud.”

By Andrew C. Revkin

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/a-global-focus-on-a-hot-number/

I have a story running on the effort under way today, prompted by  Bill McKibben and building on  conclusions of NASA’s James E. Hansen, to focus the world on  350 parts per million as the long-term target for stabilizing carbon dioxide. Here’s the lede:
Campaigners against global warming have drawn on an arsenal of visually startling tactics over the years, from posing nude on a Swiss glacier to scaling smokestacks at coal-fired power plants.
As Saturday dawned, they tried something new with the goal of prodding countries to get serious about reaching an international climate accord: a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef, all centered on the number 350.

SAM BRANSON, the 22-year-old musician, sometime male model, friend of Princes William and Harry and son of the Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson, was on familiar turf: ordering Kobe beef tartare at Ono, an elegant Japanese restaurant in the meatpacking district.

That is where his responsibilities ended. Mr. Branson’s dinner companions, Will Steger, the polar explorer, and Sigrid Ekran, the rookie of the year at the 2007 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska, took over from there.

By Maia Dedrick | Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009

On Oct. 10, Reed Aronow set out in the snow for a two-week bike trek around Minnesota. I joined him for the four nicest days of the trip, while most of his days were filled with sleet and snow. Nothing was going to stop Aronow, the Will Steger Foundation's Minnesota delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December. In fact, his snowy travels seemed true to the spirit of Will Steger's expeditions, the inspiration for this trek. 

Aronow was on a mission to learn from people around the state about clean energy, sustainable agriculture and solutions to climate change. As he and I set out on the Gateway Trail in St. Paul, I quickly realized that we were not just going on a bike ride. Along the trail, Aronow stopped anyone willing to talk about climate-change solutions to take pictures, conduct interviews, or simply discuss the future of our planet and our role in sustaining it.

ST PETER — Reed Aronow is on a 350-mile bike trek to de-politicize one of the most politically divisive of issues — global warming. “There are people who want to politicize it, but if you make it solution-based, people want to talk about it,” said Aronow at a stop at the St. Peter Food Co-op Sunday evening. “It doesn’t matter your opinions on climate change, it’s talking about how do you make energy cleaner and American-based, how are farmers making agriculture more sustainable. People want to talk about that.”

By Bryan Walsh/Time Magazine Online

You think you know climate change. You've seen An Inconvenient Truth. You've noticed the changing and warming weather patterns in your part of the world. You're beginning to suffer from acute ecoanxiety. But to really see global warming in action, you'd need to travel to the Arctic, where climate change is already kicking into high gear. Temperatures are increasing faster in the far north than they are in the more temperate zones in the world, and recent studies indicate that the North Pole could be underwater in the summer in less than 10 years. But seeing the Arctic firsthand isn't easy, unless you're handy with a dogsled — so Will Steger is going to take you there.

By Bryan Walsh:

About the Project
In March 2008, explorer Will Steger and an international team of emerging leaders will embark on a 1,400-mile (2,250-kilometer) dogsled expedition across Ellesmere Island, the northernmost island in the Canadian Arctic. The Ellesmere Island Expedition team will conduct studies examining the impact of global warming on polar environments in an effort to bring worldwide attention to an international crisis.

The extent of summer ice covering the Arctic Ocean has diminished significantly in the past 25 years, and as global warming continues, forecasters believe the ice will keep shrinking. The Arctic region has already borne the burden of rising temperatures. Massive Arctic ice shelves, including the Ward Hunt and Ayles shelves, have lost hundreds of square miles of area due to calving.

DENNIS and STACIE WOODS, a married couple from Seattle, choose their vacation destinations based on what they fear is fated to destruction. This month it was a camping and kayaking trip around the Galápagos Islands. Last year, it was a stay at a remote lodge in the Amazon, and before that, an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.

“We wanted to see the islands this year,” Mr. Woods, a lawyer, said last week in a hotel lobby here, “because we figured they’re only going to get worse.” The visit to the Amazon was “to try to see it in its natural state before it was turned into a cattle ranch or logged or burned to the ground,” Mr. Woods said.