Bill McKibben and Will Steger are encouraging climate change solutions through
public policy, education and leadership

Join author and climate activist Bill McKibben and polar explorer and Minnesota native Will Steger for a free public forum as they share their experiences and perspectives on climate solutions from the global to local level.

DELEGATE TO UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE TO BIKE 350 MILES ACROSS MINNESOTA TO SPOTLIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS

Delegate to Cycle Across Minnesota in Outreach for Clean Energy and Swift Action

Reed Aronow, a Minnesota youth delegate to the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December with the Will Steger Foundation, will launch a 15-day bike tour on October 10th in honor of the 350 International Day of Climate Action (www.350.org). As the ride progresses, Aronow and other riders will visit organizations, farms, and businesses around Minnesota to discuss clean energy and the importance of upcoming federal legislation and the U.N. conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December.

RENOWNED EXPLORER WILL STEGER LEADS YOUTH ON ARCTIC EXPEDITION TO EXAMINE GLOBAL WARMING IMPACT

Steger and Six Young Explorers Make Final Preparations for 60-Day, 1,400-mile Dogsled Expedition

MINNEAPOLIS – March 18, 2008 – Today famed polar explorer Will Steger announced he is departing on an international expedition to document the impact of global warming in the Arctic region. Steger will be joined by a team of six young explorers – from Norway, Great Britain, Canada and the United States – on a 60-day, 1,400-mile dogsled expedition across Ellesmere Island, which is the northernmost part of the North American continent.

By Will Steger: Published Wednesday, December 10, 2008 MINNEAPOLIS —This past year I had the unique opportunity to return to Ellesmere Island and Greenland in the high Arctic to see firsthand the impacts of global warming and to bring a large online audience of educators, students and media along.

What I found was no surprise: the ice is continuing to melt and the temperatures continue to rise. This summer, two major ice shelves of Ellesmere Island at the northern tip of North America broke up. About half of the summer sea ice on the Arctic Ocean is gone.But climate change isn’t just melting the summer sea ice in the Arctic — it’s being felt right here in Minnesota. We’re seeing changes in vegetation and habitat that threaten to erase our Minnesota treasures and forever alter our important industries like farming, recreation and tourism.

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.

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.

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.

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 Steve Marsh

Will Steger's Arctic Spacesuit

April 1, explorer Will Steger leaves for a seventy-day sub-Arctic expedition to Ellesmere Island in Canada. He won't forget to pack his Wild Things high-altitude one-piece.

"This is how I survive in the Arctic, where teh temperature can range from -55 to 20 Fahrenheit," says Steger. "I wear it whenever I'm outside the tent."

A Hundred Twin Citians Who Make Things Happen.
Will Steger, Environmentalist

No one, with the recent exception of Al Gore, is more closely or widely listened to on environmental topics than the sixty-three-year-old polar explorer and educator. After several decades of Arctic expeditions, Steger, a Twin Cities native headquartered in Ely, has dedicated his life to spreading the word about global warming and its attendant perils. His global standing is unquestioned - his many honors include National Geographic Adventure magazine's lifetime achievement award. Here at home, his audience continues to grow, most notably in corporate and political circles not historically associated with urgent environmental concerns. In October, Steger joined by Tim Pawlenty at a Duluth conference on climate-change-related threats to Lake Superior. The governor had earlier announced tentative plans for a 2008 fact-finding trip to the Canadian Arctic with Steger, whom he compared to Paul Revere "issuing a call to action".

Edited by William Swanson, With Melissa Colgan, Katie Derdoski, Erin Gulden, Sarah Howard, Steve Marsh, Adam Platt, Abby Van Ness, and Megan Wiley.