According to an AP article published yesterday, the Arctic ice cap will melt completely within the next 20-30 years. In about 10 years, the Arctic may be considered open sea. This is not the first time anyone has read some article about the Arctic or about environmental destruction. People have been talking and writing about it for years, and it just seems now that there is so much noise out there, people are tuning out.

All the while, countries and companies are rushing in to carve up the Arctic Sea in anticipation for deep sea drilling. Oil, profits, higher equity value, better return on investments – businesses and politicians are happy. Dying polar bears, fishes, whales, rising sea levels, erratic climate patterns – all this becoming punch lines and spectacles to mask the greed behind. In our present democratic form of government and capitalistic economy, we probably won’t do anything to make a difference until we are very desperate. We are like a kid who studies at the last minute, when the prospect of failing an exam is imminent.

So the choices we make in travel are becoming both ironic and precarious at the same time. Do I want to waste fossil fuel and resources to travel to the Arctic while disturbing the environment further, so I can see the magnificent, fierce, defiant polar bears in the wild now? Or do I wait 5-10 years, putting faith on us to do something drastic to save the environment we are rapidly destroying, and knowing full well that in 10 years, I’ll be touring oil platforms and drills instead? I would love to visit the Arctic, or every last place on Earth where nature still reigns supreme. I’ve been to Maasai Mara, the Amazon, and the Galapagos Islands, so I know how powerful that connection and that feeling of utter awe and wonderment can be. But I also knew that my very presence contributed to demise and destruction.

I have a 2 year old daughter now, so I don’t travel like I used to. But one day soon, I would like to travel to the places of my dreams, places like the Arctic, with her by my side. So that the animals she see on Planet Earth would come to life. Yet, we could be very well watching documentaries of the Earth’s past, and of things and beings that would never exist again. This is when environmental messages get personal. This is when they hit home. When I realize that we now live in a watershed moment in history. Will my child grow up learning animals and nature in nature, or from the Discovery Channel? Hopefully as my daughter grows, she will know the difference, and that this difference between nature and TV will actually persist.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 11:32 AM and is filed under Community Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.