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By Simmons Buntin, January 26, 2012 11:59 am

Well, okay, not a personal letter really, but I just received this email and thought I’d post it here to help get the word out:

Dear Simmons,

Last September, millions of you joined us for 24 Hours of Reality, when we connected the dots between the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme weather events happening with greater frequency all over the world. Together, we saw that most of us don’t need to travel far to see the impacts of climate change. We are already feeling those impacts close to home — with bigger downpours of rain (and snow), bigger floods, and simultaneously longer and deeper droughts. Stronger wind storms have also taken a toll.

Yet the climate crisis is also causing momentous changes in remote regions far from major population centers, in places like Antarctica, Greenland, and the North Polar Ice Cap. Consider that Antarctica, the massive continent at the southern tip of our planet that is about the size of the United States and Mexico combined, holds 90% of all the ice in the world. In fact, it is covered in ice that, at some points, is two miles thick. As global warming increases the melting of that ice — and the movement of vast ice sheets from the continent into the ocean — what happens to the rest of the world?

To better understand the changes taking place near the South Pole and the impacts those changes will have around the world, I will be returning to Antarctica this month with The Climate Reality Project. A large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries will join me during this voyage with many of the world’s leading climate scientists and Antarctica experts to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.

Learn more about Antarctica and our other expeditions to discover the reality of the climate crisis. Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters now:

http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/

I first traveled to Antarctica in 1988. At the time, it was already clear that our southernmost continent stood at the frontier of the global climate crisis. Scientists expected that as climate change accelerated, Antarctica would be one of the fastest warming areas of the planet. This prediction has proven true: Today, the West Antarctic Peninsula is warming about four times faster than the global average. In many ways, it is the biggest “canary in the coal mine,” signaling one of the largest impacts of climate change for the entire world.

Even though Antarctica is thousands of miles distant from the rest of the world, the melting ice on this continent should be of paramount concern to all of us. As our planet’s ice melts, sea levels are rising steadily. This increases the risk of storm surges, coastal floods, diminished supplies of drinking water for billions of people, salination of agricultural land near low-lying coastal areas, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees — many of whom will cross borders and may carry with them an increased risk of political instability in the nations to which they move.

To better understand these impacts, we are encouraging our partners and supporters to organize their own “expeditions” close to home. Over the next few weeks, members of The Climate Reality Project will document how the melting of the world’s ice is having an impact on people from Brooklyn to Bangladesh and from the Arctic to Ecuador.

I hope you will join me and The Climate Reality Project as we explore how changes on the most remote continent of the world have become a part of our shared climate reality. And I hope you’ll take the time to explore the impacts climate change is having on your own community.

Learn more about how we are all “living on thin ice.” Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters, and check back again in a few days as we begin to report back about what are learning:

http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/

Thanks for all you do,

Al Gore
Founder and Chairman
The Climate Reality Project

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By Simmons Buntin, January 19, 2012 3:31 pm

In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama Administration today released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change on species, ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them

The draft National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, available for public review and comment through March 5, 2012, can be found on the web at www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov.

The strategy represents a draft framework for unified action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants, as well as the important benefits and services the natural world provides the nation every day, including jobs, food, clean water, clean air, building materials, storm protection, and recreation.

“The impacts of climate change are already here and those who manage our landscapes are already dealing with them,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. “The reality is that rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice and changing precipitation patterns – trends scientists have definitively connected to climate change – are already affecting the species we care about, the services we value, and the places we call home. A national strategy will help us prepare and adapt.”

Congress called for a national, government-wide strategy in 2010, directing the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of the Interior to develop it. CEQ and Interior responded by assembling an unprecedented partnership of federal, state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation agencies to draft the strategy. More than 100 diverse researchers and managers from across the country participated in the drafting for the partnership.

The partnership is co-led by Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, representing state fish and wildlife agencies.

The strategy will guide the nation’s efforts during the next five years to respond to current and future climate change impacts such as changing species distributions and migration patterns, the spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species, the inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels, and changes in freshwater availability with shifting precipitation and habitat types. The strategy does not prescribe mandatory activities that agencies must take nor suggest regulatory actions; rather, it provides a roadmap for decision makers and resource managers to use in considering climate change implications to their ongoing wildlife and habitat management activities.

Elements of the draft strategy include:

• Descriptions of current and projected impacts of climate change on the eight major ecosystems of the United States, the fish, wildlife and plant species those ecosystems support and the vital ecosystem services they provide;

• Goals, strategies, and actions to reduce the vulnerability and increase the resilience of fish, wildlife, plants and the communities that depend on them in the face of climate change;

• Collaborative strategies and actions that agriculture, energy, transportation and other sectors can take to promote adaptation of fish, wildlife and plants, and utilize the adaptive benefits of natural resources in their climate adaptation efforts; and

• A framework for coordinated implementation of the strategy among government and non-governmental entities from national to local scales.

“For more than a century, state fish and wildlife agencies have been entrusted by the public to be good stewards of their natural resources. To do that, we constantly are called upon to address threats to our natural resources,” said Patricia Riexinger, Director of the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “Today’s pressures on fish and wildlife and their habitats are exacerbated by climate change and together they emphasize the need for increased conservation and science-based management. The strategy is our nation’s insurance for managing healthy and robust ecosystems in uncertain future conditions.”

“This strategy provides a framework for safeguarding America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources and the valuable services they provide over the long-term,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA is committed to working with federal, state, tribal and local government agencies, non-government organizations and the public in this process because we all have important roles to play in preparing all regions of our nation in a changing climate.”

Leading the development of the strategy is a Steering Committee that includes government representatives from 16 federal agencies, five state fish and wildlife agencies and two inter-tribal commissions. The Steering Committee includes representatives from the California, Washington, Wisconsin, New York and North Carolina fish and wildlife agencies to ensure that all 50 states’ fish and wildlife concerns are considered. The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies is providing staff support for developing the strategy.

Public comments can be submitted online through the strategy website via a special link. Written comments may be submitted via the U.S. mail to the Office of the Science Advisor, Attn: National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 222, Arlington, VA 22203. In addition, there will be five public information sessions in various locations around the country and two webinars to provide details and encourage dialogue on the strategy and its development. To register for these meetings and for more information on the public comment process, visit http://www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov/public-comments.php.

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By Rafael Otto, October 17, 2011 7:26 am

In an age where nature deficit disorder is a growing problem (albeit not a verified medical condition) among America’s youth, it’s refreshing to hear about young people leading the charge for environmental awareness and action. The recipients of the 2011 Brower Youth Awards are between the ages of 15 and 21, and they’ve been chosen by the Earth Island Institute for their work on projects that support the environment — from raising awareness to raising funds and developing sustainable projects that yield tangible results.

Named after prominent environmentalist David Brower, the awards are meant to honor young people leading the way in environmental activism. Brower served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club (1952 – 1969) and founded the Earth Island Institute in 1982. What’s even more encouraging is that hundreds of young people applied for the award, a promising sign that the next generation hasn’t entirely left the great outdoors for the seemingly limitless possibilities available to us behind glowing rectangles.

These environmental leaders were selected by a panel of eight judges, including Dr. Vandana Shiva, an author and environmentalist honored by the UN, May Boeve, Executive Director and Co-Founder of 350.org, and best-selling environmental author Paul Hawken. The award ceremony will take place on October 18 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Meet these environmental leaders:

Victor Davila (17) of New York teaches environmental and health education through skateboarding.

Alexander Epstein (20) of Pennsylvania empowers communities in New Orleans and Philadelphia to develop sustainable projects from the ground up.

Tania Pulido (21) of California nourishes her community through urban gardening.

Junior Walk (21) of West Virginia challenges the coal industry in his Appalachian community.

Rhiannon Tomtishen (15) and Madison Vorva (16) of Michigan lobbied the Girl Scouts to green their iconic cookies.

Kyle Thiermann (21) of California created surf videos that created millions of dollars in environmentally responsible investments.

Recipients of the Brower Youth Award have, over the past twelve years, raised millions of dollars for environmental causes and have become involved in advocacy, policy, politics, and film-making.

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By Simmons Buntin, October 16, 2011 11:01 am

Oregon's Blue River. Photo by W.F. Gates.

The Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth is a statement of environmental ethics put forward by the Blue River Quorum, which met in October in the ancient forests of the Blue River watershed in Oregon. Participants include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Kathleen Dean Moore, Michel P. Nelson, Fred Swanson, and many others. The Quorum was convened by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, with funding from the Shotpouch Foundation, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Blue River Declaration begins:

A truly adaptive civilization will align its ethics with the ways of the Earth. A civilization that ignores the deep constraints of its world will find itself in exactly the situation we face now, on the threshold of making the planet inhospitable to humankind and other species. The questions of our time are thus: What is our best current understanding of the nature of the world? What does that understanding tell us about how we might create a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and thus imagine an ethic that is of, rather than against, the Earth?

What is the world?

In our time, science, religious traditions, Earth’s many cultures, and artistic insights are all converging on a shared understanding of the nature of the world: The Earth is our home. It will always be our only source of shelter, sustenance, and inspiration. There is no other place for us to go.
The Earth is part of the creative unfolding of the universe. From the raw materials of the stars, life sprang forth and radiated into species after species, including human beings. The human species is richly varied, with a multitude of persons, cultures, and histories. We humans are kin to one another and to all the other beings on the planet; we share common ancestors and common substance, and we will share a common fate. Like humans, other beings are not merely commodities or service-providers, but have their own intelligence, agency, and urging toward life.

Read the full Blue River Declaration at www.alisonhawthornedeming.com/docs/events/TheBlueRiverEthic_Nov2011.pdf.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 16, 2011 2:53 pm

The Union of Concerned Scientists is once again holding its annual scientific integrity cartoon contest — 2011 marking its Sixth Annual Contest. The winner makes the front of the UCS 2012 calendar, but all of the finalists are worth a gander, for here a picture is not worth a thousand words, but just one: truth.

Here’s a sample (and, dare I say, my favorite?):

Check out all of the entries and vote for your favorite at:

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/science_idol/2011-science-idol-contestants.html

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By Simmons Buntin, August 12, 2011 10:17 am

Each issue of Terrain.org includes the UnSprawl case study, a close examination of a development that strives to put people over automobiles, reduce resource use, and create a sense of place though vernacular architecture, plazas and parks, and more. For example, check out the latest UnSprawl: Rockville Town Square in Rockville, Maryland, which creates a new, dynamic and transit-adjacent town center in place of a failed 1960s-era shopping mall.

Working with Planetizen Press, Terrain.org is putting together a full-color book of 11 updated UnSprawl case studies, plus a new one — with interviews, additional resources, and exclusive online content. To make that happen, however, Terrain.org editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin (who is writing ten of the case studies, alongside architect Ken Pirie, who is writing two) must travel to the communities, meet with the bright minds behind the innovative projects, and photograph the developments. And to make that happen, he needs to raise funds to offset travel costs.

That’s where you come in:

Using Kickstarter’s secure platform, Simmons is hoping to raise $2,500 toward travel costs through September 5th. If he doesn’t reach the funding goal, then he doesn’t receive any of the pledged funding.

What do supporters get for pledging? Depending on your pledge level, you can receive anything from a Terrain.org sticker to an electronic or print copy of the book once published, to a limited-edition photograph by Simmons, to an onsite tour of one of the projects.

Please take a moment to learn more and pledge today:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/635178095/unsprawl-case-study-book

Thanks for your consideration.

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By Simmons Buntin, June 22, 2011 9:32 am

Terrain.org is pleased to announce — and invites you to read and follow — the new blog of editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin: One-Car Town: Logging the one-car lifestyle in new suburbia:

http://onecar.terrain.org

One-Car Town tracks Simmons’s experience living without a car in suburban Tucson, Arizona. He and his family live in the community of Civano; he works full-time about 16 miles away, at the University of Arizona, though also edits Terrain.org. Recently he and his wife sold their two cars, dumping their monthly payments in favor of a trusty used Honda Accord. That’s the family ride.

Simmons now carpools and takes the bus to work, a big switch after driving solo for the last eleven years. Why the change? That’s
what this blog is about: to explore the social, economic, and environmental factors of pursuing simplicity in a one-car-per-family lifestyle.

Won’t you come along for the ride?

http://onecar.terrain.org

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By Simmons Buntin, June 21, 2011 12:47 pm

By Brian Thomas

People judge risk badly. We worry too much about minor hazards and are nonchalant about more serious ones. We’re especially inept at judging chronic long-term risks – like climate change.

Insurance is a major part of how we deal with risk – can it lead us to more viable ways to address climate issues? The picture is mixed.

When we manage risk by buying insurance, we endure the slow, small pain of insurance premiums in exchange for a big compensation should something ugly happen. The insurers profit from our lack of knowledge about risk. Buying insurance goes against the grain, but paying our premiums gives us a little more security against fires, earthquakes, business interruption, and the numerous other events against which we can buy an insurance product.

Insurers review their policies annually and change their terms if they see a change in the probabilities. When no major losses occur, the industry pats itself on the back for judging their risks correctly for that year. They’re happy and profitable.  If the risk landscape changes, they absorb the payouts and adjust the terms accordingly.

The optimistic point of view is that insurance can play a major role in guiding businesses and individuals toward more climate-friendly decisions. In theory, insurers study the real probabilities of known hazards, figure out a viable premium that gives themselves a profit and the policyholders the agreed upon protection against the risk. When climate change raises the risks of flooding, business interruption, and other insurance hazards, the premiums go up, which can lead their policyholders to change their behavior. Financing for a new factory can be prohibitive or even impossible to get, if insurers won’t cover it.

In practice, though, this theory is faulty for several reasons. Climate change poses special challenges to insurers, not merely because they are on the hook for many weather risks such as hurricanes.

First, to single out one kind of insurance, many factors combine in extreme weather events. A hurricane has many causes, and global warming might only be two percent part of the overall risk. If that part grows from two percent to five percent, it seems negligible, but in fact it’s quite significant. As one insurance executive said, “Even a minor increase in a risk like that can mean billions of dollars in additional losses to insurers.” If the winds are a few miles per hour stronger, and the storm takes a path through a heavily insured area, insurers can be overwhelmed.

The same is true for other climate impacts. There have always been floods, extreme weather, and times when the water cycle intensifies. But if climate change is turning up the dial, these familiar events may break out of their boundaries and become more frequent, more intense, or changed in unexpected ways.

Second, insurers are people too, and the cognitive blind spots that afflict individuals also affect the risk business. In practice, the insurance industry’s grip on certain probabilities often relies on seat-of-the-pants methods that are subjective, and whose over-optimistic assumptions are sometimes rudely corrected by ugly surprises, especially when risks are constantly changing, as they are with climate change.

Like all of us, insurers want certainty, even when they know that certainty cannot be attained. At a 2007 conference about hurricane science for an insurance audience, the world’s top climatologists discussed various topics in modeling and hurricanes. The head of underwriting at a major North American insurer snorted at the hedged, qualified way the scientists state their conclusions. The underwriter then complained, “Why don’t the scientists give us numbers we can use!  These probabilities are too nebulous for us to write business with them!”  His impatience is widely shared, but the answer is no.

Third, insurance functions well when the risks of various hazards are truly independent of each other, and truly random. One trouble with climate change is that climate instability tends to make floods, windstorms, and other extreme weather more interrelated.

One force binding all these factors together more tightly is land use, which in the US is often part of a highly entrenched political juggernaut promoting the worst possible policies, such as building heavily in flood plains, or on beaches very prone to hurricane damage.

Consider Florida, where the laws, business practices and general culture are geared to developing every square inch of land near water – oceans, certainly, but also lakes, streams, wetlands. Even in the absence of climate change, this is an obviously dangerous policy. It’s also very popular. John Coomber, former CEO of Swiss Re, once grumbled that every American wants to live on the most vulnerable beaches they can find in Florida.

Governments occasionally try to buck the pro-development tide, but the political pressure against the anti-development forces is swift and merciless. Certainly no politician can withstand it. Rather than resisting, many property and casualty insurers have pulled away from vulnerable coastal property in Florida.

In response, Florida created its own public insurance pool. Result? Development continues, and the state fund is actuarially unsound – a major storm hitting a developed area would bankrupt the fund in short order. A few more storms would bankrupt the state of Florida, which would then call on the Federal government — as the stand-in for taxpayers in all other states — to bail them out.

These three factors mean that the insurance industry is weaker than it appears when in matters of changing social and economic policies. The only way to change these entrenched policies would be for other social forces to align with the insurance point of view. That will require energetic political leadership and vigorous regulation. The market alone cannot save us.

~~~

Brian Thomas left Swiss Re in 2006 and became a sustainability consultant with a focus on communications. He has developed green-themed projects for clients including Merill Lynch Global Markets and Investment Banking, Cofra Holding, Good Energies, Zurich Financial, Edelman, the City of Chicago, the City of New York, and others. He is currently a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, EnviroComm, and the Association of Green Technology Auditors, to name a few. Thomas started his blog, Carbon Based, in 2007, after requests from contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the author of Climate Change Adaptation in 2010 and currently resides in West Cornwall, Connecticut, where he is an activist member of the Conservation Commission. For more information, please visit www.carbon-based-ghg.com, and his blog, http://carbon-based-ghg.blogspot.com.

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By Simmons Buntin, April 20, 2011 12:35 pm

Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard.

The Center for American Progress released two reports on the one-year anniversary of the BP blowout: “The Gulf One Year Later: Beyond Rhetoric?” by Michael Conathan, which discusses the Congressional response to the economic and environmental catastrophe, and “One Year Later BP Still Not ‘Making It Right’” by Jorge Madrid and Kiley Kroh, outlining the lack of accountability and responsibility on the part of BP to restore the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

In “The Gulf One Year Later: Beyond Rhetoric?,” Michael Conathan discusses the congressional response to the BP spill, which claimed the lives of 11 men and set off an 87-day environmental nightmare. The explosion also triggered an equally ferocious barrage of rhetoric in the nation’s capital. A frantic burst of congressional hearings emerged as the immediate oversight response. As usual, they were full of sound and fury—sadly but not surprisingly—signifying nothing. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that 101 oil-spill-related bills were introduced in the 111th Congress, which came to a close in 2010. Exactly zero were enacted into law. Another 15 have been introduced so far this year—none of which has been acted upon by their committee of jurisdiction. This article explores past efforts and current efforts within the legislature and the administration and why this legislation has not been promulgated a year later.

Members of Congress should work toward passing legislation that would:

• Mandate that 80 percent of BP’s Clean Water Act fines be sent directly to the Gulf Coast to repair environmental and economic damage
• Strengthen provisions ensuring local stakeholders have a voice in prioritizing the use of the funds

For the full article, click here.

“One Year Later BP Still Not ‘Making It Right’” by Jorge Madrid and Kiley Kroh outlines the lack of responsibility and accountability by BP to fully compensate for the damage done to individuals, businesses, and the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf region. Despite the administration’s insistence that BP bear the entire cost of the unprecedented cleanup, it looks like taxpayers will be picking up half the bill. The galling payouts don’t end there, either. Transocean gave its top executives safety bonuses in December 2010 and Ken Feinberg and his firm, Feinberg Rozen, which was hired by BP to manage the claims process, negotiated themselves a raise, now receiving pay of $1.25 million a month. BP has made clear that it will be ending compensation proceedings for individuals and businesses by 2013 and is exploring a loophole in the wording of the Clean Water Act that could dramatically reduce its liability for significant penalties under both the Clean Water Act and NRDA.

To provide proper oversight and strategic spending, the following steps should be taken:

• Establish an independent citizens’ advisory council to ensure the money goes to appropriate projects
• BP and other responsible parties should be required to make an immediate down payment on the NRDA process
• Responsible parties should be prevented from using the court system to further delay payment while legal challenges are pending

For the full article, click here.

To speak with CAP experts on this topic, please contact Christina DiPasquale at 202.481.8181 or cdipasquale@americanprogress.org.

###

The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

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By Rafael Otto, March 31, 2011 12:43 pm

Jeff Alt, an avid hiker and outdoor enthusiast, offers great tips and strategies for families to head outdoors. In addition to walking the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail, Jeff Alt has walked the 218-mile John Muir Trail with his wife, and trekked across a 50-mile path of Ireland with his wife, young daughter, and extended family. He and his wife emerged from the church doors on their wedding day with backpacks. His son was taken on his first hike at 8 weeks.

Check out his advice for getting the kids outside.

Best Tips for Teaching Your Kids to Enjoy Hiking

“Getting kids outside is more important than ever,” says outdoor enthusiast and author Jeff Alt. “TV, computer and video game addictions are replacing outdoor play time and contributing significantly to the national obesity epidemic! Get the kids outside!”

Start Early-Develop A Routine:

• Start hiking with your newborn.

• Let the child lead.  This helps you focus on what they’re interested in and keeps you from leaving them in your dust.

• Take a family walk once a day.

Prepare your family for your adventure:

• Research the destination & activity.
  • Maps, guidebooks, websites, local experts, rangers, lectures.

• Choose a trail that offers easy access to domesticated amenities.  Be a parent, not a Sherpa.

• Check into transportation options.  Have a plan for what to do if you need to get off the trail.

• What kinds of wildlife can you expect?  Will water be available? What are the weather and terrain like?  Avoid hiking in freezing temperatures, lightning storms, and extreme heat.

• Get everyone fitted into boots and packs.

• Clothing- NO COTTON! Dress in layers (synthetics, fleece, wool, and waterproof breathable items).
  • • Rain jacket
    • Hat
    • Shirt
    • Socks
    • Shorts/pants
    • underwear
  • Deet Free bug repellant
  • Children’s sunscreen

• Train before you go. This will help you adjust to carrying the pack, and your child will acclimate to the routine.
• Bring plenty of water.

Think Food – Think Fun:

Pack your kids favorite snacks to encourage your kids to eat and stay energized.

Bring items that are easy to prepare or ready to eat.

• Freeze-dried meals
• Pasta/rice/beans
• Foil-wrapped meats such as tuna or chicken
• Dehydrated fruit and veggies
• Sliced apples, grapes, bananas, carrots
• Energy bars or granola bars
• Peanut butter
• Cheese and sausage
• Bagels, tortillas, crackers, candy bars, nuts
• Oatmeal and dried cereals

Learn First Aid and be prepared for trail emergencies:

Carry a first-aid kit, and brush up on child first aid and CPR. Learn about the dangers of hypothermia, and monitor children for signs. Pack your child’s medication.

Learn how to use a compass and map or GPS. Learn how to make a shelter. If you get lost, make yourself as visible as possible. Place a bright item (e.g. item of clothing or gear) in the open. Make distress signals and make noise. If you brought a cell phone, see if it works. Leave a copy of your itinerary with a friend or family member.

Keep the journey fun:

Whatever animal or rock your child takes interest in, stop and explore with them. Talk to your child about what you’re seeing.  Label the animals, rocks, trees, and flowers. Tone down your mileage goals to the comfort level of your child.

Engage older children with trip planning, animals, local history, or anything that applies to what they are learning in school.

Let your older child bring along a friend.

Entice the computer kids with gadgets (e.g. GPS, pedometers).

More on Jeff Alt:

Alt is a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA). His adventures have been featured in media nationwide including: ESPN, Hallmark Channel, the AP, CNN-Radio, NPR, and more. Alt’s award-winning books, A Walk for Sunshine and A Hike for Mike, have been reviewed in Library Journal, Chicago Sun Times and more.

For more information visit www.jeffalt.com