While most of us are lucky to travel to another country in our lifetime, there are some who are taking the concept of a vacation to an unprecedented level.  For those with enough money (approximately $20 to $30 million dollars) and a need for adventure, space tourism offers a once-in-a-lifetime vacation opportunity.  Beginning in 2001 with American Dennis Tito, space tourism company Space Adventures began marketing this amazing opportunity.  To date, the company has provided the opportunity for seven individuals to spend up to 15 days traveling to and from the International Space Station. 

A recent study in Geophysical Research Letters has many questioning the practice of space tourism.  The authors of the study assumed “using current business models” that “by 2020 there will be 1,000 suborbital space tourist flights every year.”  Just last month, the world saw the first spaceport established in New Mexico.  Richard Branson has been one of the most stalwart advocates of space tourism and his company, Virgin, funded the New Mexico spaceport.

Because combustion from rockets is a large contributor of black carbon emissions in the atmosphere, many have begun to question the value of space travel in general, and space tourism specifically.  While most would agree that there is value in exploring and understanding space, critics of space tourism see little to no value in allowing individual private citizens to take a space vacation – even for $20 or $30 million. 

According to scientists, space tourism will wreck environmental havoc on the earth’s atmosphere.  Black carbon, often in the form of soot, is the leading cause of environmental pollution associated with the practice of space tourism.  Black carbon is produced from the incomplete combustion of burning fossil fuels or biomass.  This substance absorbs sunlight and emits it as heat, warming the planet in the process.  Though black carbon has only recently been added to the list of emissions in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers have been examining the environmental implications of black carbon for several years.  As early as 2008, researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego and University of Iowa concluded that “black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that of any greenhouse gas besides CO2.” 

As Jeremy Hance explains in a recent article on the news website Mongabay.com, “When produced on terra firma, say from burning forests or diesel, black carbon particles stay in the atmosphere for a few days or weeks.  However, soot particles emitted from space rockets would have a longer-term impact, since they remain in the stratosphere for years.”  Many scientists argue that the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to combat climate change is to reduce black carbon emissions.  In a 2009 article in Time Magazine, Bryan Walsh notes that if the world could “reduce black carbon emissions soon, it could help blunt [global] warming almost instantly.”

Though the price tag associated with space tourism will surely serve as a limiting factor for the large majority of the world’s population, if the assumptions published in Geophysical Research Letters are correct, enough individuals could be traveling to space in the near future to make the practice a legitimate cause for concern.  Considering the environmental implications of space tourism, the entire world will be negatively impacted by every space tourist’s dream vacation.

Photo taken from Discovery Magazine article: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/055

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) explains that “the Arctic is global warming’s canary in the coal mine.”    This environmentally sensitive area of the globe has been in danger for decades but recent images provide visual proof of just how dire the situation is.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado provides a daily update on the declining volume and size of Arctic sea ice.  The daily images show where the sea ice boundary currently is with an orange line showing where it was in 1979.  The NSIDC reports that as of August 16, “Arctic ice extent was 5.95 million square kilometers.”  This may seem like a massive amount of ice but as NSIDC notes, this represents a decrease of some 1.68 million square kilometers below the 1979 to 2000 average for the season. 

Though Arctic sea ice does melt during the Arctic summer (a time when the region experiences 24 hours of sunshine), this season’s melt has been dramatic.  A recent Washington Post article explains that “After going into the melt season with more ice over a larger area than recent years, sea ice extent plummeted by a daily rate of 26,000 square miles per day during May, which was the highest rate of loss ever observed for the month since satellite records of sea ice began in 1979.”  On his blog, Nick Sundt, Director of Communications, Climate Change Program at the World Wildlife Fund, put this figure into perspective writing, “That is an area roughly half the size of the entire United States (including Alaska)…”  As if the analyses from satellite images was not startling enough, however, researchers studying the region are finding that the situation is worse than even the satellite images are showing.  In a Time Magazine article earlier this year, David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba, describes his experience in visiting the area:  “Some of what satellites identified as thick, melt-resistant multiyear ice turned out to be…’full of holes, like Swiss cheese.  We haven’t seen this sort of thing before.’”

An overwhelming volume of evidence shows that Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate that outpaces the melting in previous years.  What may be less obvious, however, is the long term impact of so much melting ice.  The most obvious and discussed impact of melting sea ice in the Arctic region is the impact on polar bears.  In May 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior classified polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, a move that many researchers had been encouraging for years.  There are other, less obvious consequences, however.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides some thorough information on the anticipated impact of this situation.  For example, melting Arctic glaciers contribute to rising sea levels around the world which in turn creates a tenuous situation for wildlife and people living on the shorelines surrounding the Arctic region.  Further, melting Arctic ice “will have implications for biodiversity around the world because migratory species depend on breeding and feeding grounds in the Arctic.” 

As the Natural Resources Defense Council points out, the Arctic is global warming’s “canary in the coal mine.”  With this in mind, one must consider the situation in that region from the perspective of what it means for the rest of the world.  If the Arctic is experiencing such dramatic consequences of global warming, it stands to reason that it is perhaps only a matter of time before the effects of this phenomenon begin to leave their mark as dramatically on the rest of the world.

This past December, more than 120 Heads of State and Government traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15).  The Conference, lasting for close to two weeks, was intended to be the launching point for a comprehensive worldwide agreement on how to most effectively combat climate change.  Even with the best of intentions, however, few who attended the Conference have expressed much satisfaction with the progress made and eventual outcome of the meeting.

The proceedings were plagued with administrative and logistical difficulties and contentious moments between some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters.  For example, as estimated by one attendee, some 45,000 people attended the Conference – great turn out except that Copenhagen’s Bella Center where the event was held can only accommodate 15,000.  Aside from the obviously cramped quarters into which Heads of state, their delegates, journalists, representatives from NGOs, and others were overcrowded, even greater difficulties hindered the progress of the discussions. 

Most notably, in the months since the conclusion of the event, media outlets reporting on the outcome have discussed the often indiscreet confrontations between the United States and China, the world’s two largest emitters of carbon dioxide.  Britain’s Telegraph reported that “…the UN Summit teetered on the brink of collapse amid a row between China and the US” noting that the disagreement between the two nations “effectively paralysed [sic] the summit.”  Time magazine reported in the midst of the Conference that “Discontent is only escalating as talks remain stalled three days before the end of the summit over an impasse between the two countries with the most influence: the U.S. and China.”  The two nations disagreed, it seems, on several points but most vehemently on the issue of measuring emissions reductions.  The United States insisted that any actions taken by the Chinese to reduce carbon emissions be “independently verified and proven.”  For their part, the Chinese took a staunch stance against such a process.  In the end, it seems that the one point that almost all in attendance can agree upon is that the disagreement stalled at the least, and derailed at the worst, the entire Conference. 

In the end, after nearly two weeks of meetings, very little came from the Conference.  According to US officials quoted in the Telegraph article cited above, “developed and developing nations [agreed] to ‘list national actions and commitments.’”  In addition to such lists, participants agree on a mitigation target of two degrees Celsius – exactly how to reach that target, however, remains unresolved and yet to be seen. 

Many Heads of State and Government are openly expressing their discontent and dissatisfaction with the less-than-impressive progress made at the Conference.  Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, for example, stated to an English-language Indian newspaper that “’We were able to make only limited progress at the Copenhagen Summit and no one was satisfied with the outcome.  And yet, there is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficient development path.’”  English-language Malta newspaper The Independent conveyed the intense disappointment of Malta’s Prime Minister, Dr. Lawrence Gonzi, soon after the Conference’s conclusion.  Dr. Gonzi noted that as an island nation, Malta is especially concerned over issues related to rising sea levels and hoped that the world would begin to understand the plight of such nations as they consider how to address the issue of climate change on a worldwide level. 

While finger-pointing and blame continues to be assigned to various nations for their perceived lack of commitment to the conference in Copenhagen, environmentalists realize that the world and environment is still the biggest loser in the failed outcome.  L. Hunter Lovins provides an eye-opening editorial in the February 2010 edition of Sustainability: The Journal of Record.  She notes that even if the Conference did not achieve its intended outcome, a legally binding commitment to effectively combat climate change, it did leave a lasting footprint.  With some 45,000 people in attendance, the emissions associated with the event will surely have an impact on the environment even if the discussions that took place during may not.  She reminds readers that, “The ugly reality…is that the Earth doesn’t care who emits carbon, when it got burned, or who pays for mitigation,” and concludes that given the political infighting on the world stage today, effectively addressing climate change will likely continue to fall into the hands of local and community groups, individuals, environmentally-conscious corporations, and NGOs.