![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.johnpaulcaponigro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/BraaschANTPalmerinIce.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n.<\/span><\/h2>\nGary Braasch<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Visit the artist website.<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nGary Braasch is a world caliber environmental photojournalist who creates remarkable images and documentation about nature, environment, biodiversity and global warming. His images and assignment articles<\/a> have been published by Time, LIFE, Discover, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scientific American and the United Nations among many others.<\/p>\nHe received the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club and the Outstanding Nature Photographer citation from the North American Nature Photography Association. In 2010 he was named as one of the Forty Most Influential Nature Photographers by Outdoor Photography magazine. Gary Braasch is author of Earth Under Fire<\/a>: How Global Warming is Changing the World, which Al Gore calls “essential reading for every citizen.” He is a founding executive committee member and Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers, and is a Nikon “Legend Behind the Lens.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n<\/div>\n\nJPC<\/strong>
\nTell me about climate change.
\nAnd, tell me about your book \u2013 Earth Under Fire.<\/p>\nGB<\/strong>
\nIn June 1997 I was stuck in a cold tent on the Alaska tundra\u00a0with fellow nature photographer Gerry Ellis.\u00a0\u00a0We had come to photograph caribou and other tundra animals, but for these weeks, anyway, we saw very little.\u00a0\u00a0But while we read our books in the tent and talked of life and photography, we also chatted about the major issues in nature and conservation.\u00a0\u00a0What were we going to do in coming years: what locations, what species, what issues were going to be the most important to photograph?.\u00a0\u00a0And also, who was going to hire, publish and pay us for this?<\/p>\nAs it turned out, that otherwise really boring time on the tundra was partly a turning point for both Gerry and me (he had started a stock agency but had his eyes on education and the protection of baby animals in Africa; that work, \u201cWild Orphans,\u201d became his NGO, Globio). \u00a0\u00a0I generated lists of environmental issues and realized that climate change was possibly going to be really important, but no one was photographing it.<\/p>\n
Before I left Alaska that year, I had not only found a huge herd of caribou to photograph, but I also talked to some scientists about how Alaska was warming. \u00a0And I went out by way of Prudhoe Bay, seeing and smelling the industrial oil field. \u00a0I also met the crew of a Greenpeace ship that was bird-dogging a drilling platform offshore. \u00a0They were already committed about the connection between fossil fuel and global warming. \u00a0The science, the wilderness, the source of oil and the issue all began to come together for me. \u00a0\u00a0About a year later, an article by Bill McKibben in Atlantic Monthly about how everything we do makes and is affected by greenhouse gases further inspired me.\u00a0\u00a0On my copy of that article I scrawled the idea:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWorld tour of global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how to approach such a huge subject?\u00a0\u00a0I knew from reading science journals and reports that scientists were seeing changes in many places, sharp turns from the slow change seen in years and years of measurements and data, shifts that seemed to correlate only to rising earth temperatures and added CO2. \u00a0Because popular articles and books on climate change were\u00a0based on predictions, which are easily dismissed, I wanted to look at the Earth itself and report\u00a0on the changes already under way. \u00a0As a journalist, I wanted to move beyond the raw statistics,\u00a0the secondhand and political arguments, and talk directly to the scientists who are documenting it. \u00a0So, since I had shot many stories of scientists in the field (like about the spotted owl) I began emailing or calling a few of the leading researchers to ask to come document their field work. \u00a0I also would ask where changes were the most visible and what other indicators there were of global warming. \u00a0I wrote my first project description:
\n\u201cThe goal of\u00a0World View of Global Warming\u00a0is to illustrate the physical changes and compelling science on all continents, which show that global warming and other climate shifts have begin.\u00a0\u00a0Too often public information and political debate lack a basis in science and are without a vision of how the earth is changing.<\/p>\n
Working with private grants and magazine assignments, I will visit those locations where climate science is undertaken and where effects of global warming have been documented.\u00a0\u00a0As often as possible my photographs will actually show changes (or comparisons with old photographs).
\nWorld View of Global Warming benefits from a dialogue with scientists and observers around the world who have provided hundreds of scientific contacts and papers.\u00a0\u00a0In the initial phase ending in 2001, I am focusing on polar regions, shrinking glaciers around the world, coral bleaching, insect and animal range changes, and rising sea level.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Images will appear in magazines and books.\u201d<\/p>\n
My first act was to pull my research into shape, and make a more formal list of locations to photograph. \u00a0 Thinking (rightly as it turned out) that I could not rely on too many magazine assignments, I applied to\u00a0Blue Earth Alliance<\/a>\u00a0 a tax exempt photography support NGO founded by photographers Natalie Fobes and Phil Borges]. By December 1998, my proposal received backing from Blue Earth and initial funding was secured from a family environmental fund with which I had previously had contact.
\nI have to say\u00a0that at this point I had little idea of what I was getting into \u2013 \u00a0how many studies there were, how much it would really cost, how rapidly climate science would develop, or what controversy it would raise.\u00a0\u00a0Global warming was already an issue and battle lines had been drawn:\u00a0\u00a0Al Gore had returned from the Kyoto climate meetings but the US Senate refused to consider the Protocol and the Clinton Administration did not push it.\u00a0\u00a0The 2000 election campaign was still in the future and the world\u2019s scientists were just writing drafts of their famous 2001 IPCC report \u2013 both events which would change the face of our national reaction to rapid climate change.<\/p>\nEarly in 1999 I cranked up my contact with climate scientists I already knew, most from my previous Alaska work.\u00a0\u00a0I put out the word to my magazine editor list, seeking assignments and other scientific contacts.\u00a0\u00a0I already had work coming up in the Peruvian Amazon, so I added on a week of travel into the Andes to photograph receding glaciers, using contacts I found through The Mountain Institute.\u00a0\u00a0I arranged to travel later in the year with some of the scientists I knew in Alaska who were studying change on the tundra. The big break came from a contact I had previously made at Life magazine, Steve Petranek, who had become editor at Discover magazine. He saw my emails about my new project and hired me to accompany a writer on a National Science Foundation geologic research cruise to Antarctic Peninsula ice sheets and glaciers in April 1999.\u00a0\u00a0The next year I parlayed this into my own return trip, using research about Southern Giant Petrels( which I had learned about while in Antarctica) to gain an assignment for International Wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0While on this second trip, I used every opportunity to learn more about and photograph climate change.\u00a0 I had never been to Antarctic before these trips in 1999 and 2000 \u2013 but now not only did I have a complete story about change down there, but was also able to gain more visibility as a nature photographer with scientifically-accurate images of Antarctica. \u00a0I was getting off to a great start.
\nOf far greater importance than the process of the project and the individual photos I began to make, was my role as a witness to climate change.<\/p>\n
No need to remind of what happened in the 2000 election, of the anti-science Administration that George W. Bush installed, of the horror of 9\/11 and the near total focus it created on war and national defense. \u00a0 Global warming was thoroughly off the radar and actively dismissed by the government and many corporations and their PR flacks. \u00a0Through all of this scientists continued to work, putting out a world review of effects and changes in 2001 and an even stronger and better documented one in 2007. \u00a0Through all of this I followed as \u2014 at first \u2014 the only photographer that I knew of on a full time climate project (even now there are only about 10 of us who focus on it a great deal).
\nMy photographs, seen in Discover Magazine, on the NRDC website and in an exhibit they curated along with the AAAS scientists organization, began to be seen. \u00a0In 2001 and 2002 I established my website. \u00a0And the requests for images from teachers, magazines, websites, citizens organizations and scientists themselves began to come in. \u00a0By the time I got a book contract from University of California Press in 2004 and completed my list of must-photograph locations the next year, I had been to 22 nations and all continents.<\/p>\n
I was a witness to what otherwise were just numbers or facts in news stories: \u00a0\u00a0I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced Adelie penguins\u00a0and photographed huge icebergs separated from an ice shelf in Antarctica. I have seen the jagged fronts\u00a0of receding Greenland glaciers and observed subtle changes on the tundra. I have tracked down Alpine\u00a0glaciers depicted in 150-year-old images and rephotographed them to show them wasting away. In the\u00a0woods of eastern North America I have walked among spring wildflowers and watched for migrant\u00a0songbirds, which are arriving earlier each season than in decades past. Along the coasts I have seen rising\u00a0tides and heavy storms erode beaches. I have heard the anguish in the voices of native Alaskans as\u00a0they describe their village being washed away, of Chinese farmers facing famine caused by drought, and\u00a0of Pacific Islanders driven from their homes by increasingly high tides.<\/p>\n
Photographing this subject presents a great challenge. Changes have been unfolding for fifty years\u00a0or more, with most effects being incremental, or invisible. Pictures are not science; they can, however,\u00a0provide direct evidence that global warming is happening now, all over the world. They provide contact\u00a0with eyewitnesses\u2014lifelong observers, Native peoples, and teams of scientists who are seeing rapid\u00a0change across the expanse of Earth\u2019s living systems. Pictures also show that the effects of global warming\u00a0are taking place in Earth\u2019s most beautiful and sensitive landscapes, especially at the extremities of\u00a0our planet\u2014at the poles, high in the mountains, and in the ocean\u2019s rich nearshore environments. Animals\u00a0and plants on the edge of their ranges, as well as people who live on shorelines or who still subsist\u00a0from nature, are the first to feel the effects.<\/p>\n
The photographs in Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World\u00a0\u00a0helped to make real the scientific evidence that\u00a0entire cultures, ecosystems, and species are being forced into transition, the continued existence of some of them threatened\u00a0by our use and abuse of fossil fuels and the soil of the earth.<\/p>\n
JPC<\/strong>
\nWhat recommendations do you have for the average citizen to start taking a more active role with respect to these issues?\u00a0 What would you suggest to other photographers to increase the effectiveness of their advocacy efforts?<\/p>\nGB<\/strong>
\nThe people I met on my climate change documentary project really mean something to me. \u00a0Beyond all the scientists and local guides, at this point those who mean the most are the ones who are living with the change but did not cause it. I am in fact a bit haunted by the Bangladeshis in Mohit\u2019s village, the Inupiats who live with Tony Weyionanna Jr. in Shishmaref Alaska, the kids in Tuvalu and in that coal town in Inner Mongolia. \u00a0They did not cause the great changes that\u00a0fossil fuel burning and\u00a0global warming are bringing, and yet they live right on the edge and are affected far out of proportion to their own energy use.
\nYes, it has to be said that everyone (with the possible exception of some jungle tribes still allowed to be in isolation) uses and benefits from fossil fuel and plastics and manufactured goods and land use which contribute to greenhouse gases. \u00a0Tuvalu, though, \u00a0uses diesel for its generators, relies on fuel for aircraft and boats, uses a great deal of plastic, etc., \u00a0but still is the smallest nation in the UN and at the bottom of the UN\u2019s list of climate polluters. \u00a0Those Bangladeshis on the edge of Bhola Island represent 40 million who earn an average of under $400 a year, compared to $36,000 for an average US citizen. \u00a0There are about 87 of them on that eroding road, and statistically they equal just one American in CO2 output.
\nI wish every American and citizen of the other 35 or so nations (out of 191) who create almost all the global warming pollution could feel the presence of the more than five billion people who don\u2019t.<\/p>\nWhile talking about my books and giving shows around the country, I am asked what should be done. \u00a0Here is the answer in short form:<\/p>\n
1. Understand the problem, its causes and threats.
\n2. Let leaders know the facts and that you expect them to act.
\n3. Do something today to reduce greenhouse gas output and energy use.<\/p>\n
The hard fact is that despite what many nations, companies, cities and people are starting to do to reduce their global warming emissions, the world is putting more CO2 into the air than ever before. The current amount is 387 parts per million (ppm) \u2014 higher than ever in the past 800,000 years.
\nAt the same time, renowned American climatologist Dr. James Hansen of NASA says we already have too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the air: \u201cIf humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted \u2026 CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 387 ppm to at most 350 ppm.\u201d This number is controversial (many scientists say staying below 450 ppm is acceptable), but there is a general call to act fast \u2014 \u00a0working together as a world of concerned people and leaders taking every action we can to limit greenhouse emissions.<\/p>\n
Americans wanting to know more about what the current science says can turn not only to my book, but also to a new report from the federal government, \u201cGlobal climate change impacts in the United States.\u201d \u00a0(Available at\u00a0http:\/\/www.globalchange.gov\/publications\/reports\/scientific-assessments\/us-impacts<\/a>). \u00a0The major points, indicating the on-going changes which I document in World View of Global Warming, are:
\nHuman activities have led to large increases in heat-trapping gases over the past century. The global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to this human-induced increase. Global average temperature and sea level have increased, and precipitation patterns have changed.<\/p>\nHuman \u201cfingerprints\u201d also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, plant and animal health and location, and Arctic sea ice. In the U.S., the amount of rain falling in the heaviest downpours has increased approximately 20 percent on average in the past century. Many types of extreme weather events, such as heat waves and regional droughts, have become more frequent and intense during the past 40 to 50 years. The destructive energy of Atlantic hurricanes has increased\u2026 In the eastern Pacific, the strongest hurricanes have become stronger since the 1980s, even while the total number of storms has decreased. Sea level has risen along most of the U.S. coast over the last 50 years, and will rise more in the future. Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly and this is very likely to continue. Global temperatures are projected to continue to rise over this century. Whether the temperature of the planet rises by 2-3 degrees F or more than 11 degrees in this century depends on a number of factors, including the amount of heat-trapping gas emissions humans continue to allow and how sensitive the climate is to those emissions. Lower emissions of heat-trapping gases will delay the appearance of climate change impacts and\u00a0lessen their magnitude.<\/p>\n
Unless the rate of emissions is substantially reduced, impacts are expected to become increasingly severe for more people and places. Not a pretty picture. \u00a0But more and more \u2014 in their gardens, along the seashore, in changes to spring and fall natural events, in deeper droughts and more severe weather records, in increasing asthma and urban heat, \u00a0in smaller glaciers and summer river flow, in dying forests and larger fires \u2013 – Americans are seeing climate change and understanding how it affects them.<\/p>\n
On my website<\/a> I have a list of \u00a0\u201dVery Important Things to Do about Global Warming\u2026from the individual to the national. \u201d \u00a0These actions are prioritized by those that make the greatest difference and from the individual to the national. \u00a0For example: Sell the SUV (Cash for Clunkers!!) \u00a0and choose cleaner, more efficient vehicles. Reduce your driving: one gallon of gas burned in any car creates 20 pounds of CO2. Slow down for much better mileage. \u00a0In terms of fuel, if you can, avoid biofuels like corn ethanol that can steal food from a hungry world. \u00a0Look for ways not only to combine driving trips but\u00a0 also to use more transit and sidewalks for your errands and for getting to school. \u00a0Electric cars will be coming soon, perfect for urban trips, but any car needs more concrete, which is a heavy climate pollutant. \u00a0Reclaim our cities for walking, biking, and dense transit networks. \u00a0More than 40 percent of household\u00a0energy use is for transport.<\/p>\nUse efficient appliances and use them less, replace light bulbs with low-voltage compact fluorescents, check your home insulation and windows for leaks that can send huge clouds of heat and CO2 into the air. \u00a0Many states are offering rebates and programs for household energy audits and rehabs. Turn down the thermostat a few degrees in winter and up a few in the heat of summer. \u00a0\u201dSmart\u201d meters, offered by many utilities now, can do this for you and help you see how well you are doing. \u00a0Buy renewable energy, like wind and solar, from your power company, and track the use to see how you can improve. There are also programs for installing solar panels and hot water systems on residences and small\u00a0businesses. \u00a0Homes and their contents make 57 percent of household energy use \u2014 and half that is for heating and cooling. Companies \u2014 the one you work for and the ones you buy from \u2014 can save lots of money and reduce global warming by taking similar steps toward energy efficiency.<\/p>\n
Shop smart: Look for products made from recycled materials, created with renewable energy, and which help you save money and reduce pollution.\u00a0Right now, WalMart and other companies as well as many product makers, are moving to put energy and climate labels on products so we can all see how what we buy affects our\u00a0 atmosphere and water.Let the corporations who make our cars, fuels, goods and power know you want their products to be as ecological as possible.<\/p>\n
Use your vote and influence as a citizen to elect responsive leaders. \u00a0The US House voted on a heavily compromised energy and climate bill which nevertheless will create huge incentives for renewable, non-greenhouse-pollution energy and employment. \u00a0Go visit or write your Senators to urge they strengthen the national law. \u00a0Coal is a source of about half our electricity, but it is also the worst CO2 source and very poisonous to boot. \u00a0Tell your politicians you want to reduce our electrical use so we do not need coal power in the near future.<\/p>\n
Organize the neighborhood and town for energy efficiency. \u00a0Invite neighbors and schools to cooperate in climate cooling actions: Make pathways for walking and biking; put solar panels on roofs; plant community gardens; combine trips or use electric buses for daily errands and kid transport. For ideas and ways to bring climate knowledge into the schools, see http:\/\/www.howweknowclimatechange.org <\/a>\u00a0and \u00a0http:\/\/www.climatechangeeducation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn the larger urban areas, suburban sprawl makes for lots of global warming pollution; plan for walkable communities, lots of trees, open spaces, and public transportation in and between cities.\u00a0Build new homes and buildings for efficiency and solar power. \u00a0Introduce the LEED building principles into building codes, not just to gain points but to urge the most efficient \u2014 even energy generating \u00a0\u2013 buildings from now on. \u00a0And on the ex-urban front, support sustainable farming and forestry, locally grown foods of all kinds, and \u00a0non-food crops to make into biofuels.<\/p>\n
For concerned photographers, many directions and projects springing from knowledge of climate change can enrich their lives and work and perhaps create a new portfolio. \u00a0I have encouraged a few energized photographers, such as Benj Drummond and Sara Steele, who wanted to specialize on climate change. \u00a0Their focus on human societies and groups in \u201cFacing Climate Change\u201d has been very successful.\u00a0\u00a0 But on an everyday scale, if the issue affects your life or your photo subject matter, just integrate it into your work and make sure your viewers know why you made the photos.\u00a0 Make it personal \u2013 it is your subject matter and perhaps your livelihood. \u00a0Start at home or in places you know well, with local effects and local reactions. \u00a0Since we must all be on to the changes, the things people are doing to shift energy use and waste are extremely important. \u00a0Many groups from traditional outdoor clubs to fire departments and military bases are taking up climate change \u2014 they need photos and we need to see what they are doing.<\/p>\n
Climate change affects everyone and everything.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Gary Braasch<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Visit the artist website.<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gary Braasch is a world caliber environmental photojournalist who creates remarkable images and documentation about nature, environment, biodiversity and global warming. His images and assignment articles<\/a> have been published by Time, LIFE, Discover, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scientific American and the United Nations among many others.<\/p>\n He received the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club and the Outstanding Nature Photographer citation from the North American Nature Photography Association. In 2010 he was named as one of the Forty Most Influential Nature Photographers by Outdoor Photography magazine. Gary Braasch is author of Earth Under Fire<\/a>: How Global Warming is Changing the World, which Al Gore calls “essential reading for every citizen.” He is a founding executive committee member and Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers, and is a Nikon “Legend Behind the Lens.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JPC<\/strong> GB<\/strong> As it turned out, that otherwise really boring time on the tundra was partly a turning point for both Gerry and me (he had started a stock agency but had his eyes on education and the protection of baby animals in Africa; that work, \u201cWild Orphans,\u201d became his NGO, Globio). \u00a0\u00a0I generated lists of environmental issues and realized that climate change was possibly going to be really important, but no one was photographing it.<\/p>\n Before I left Alaska that year, I had not only found a huge herd of caribou to photograph, but I also talked to some scientists about how Alaska was warming. \u00a0And I went out by way of Prudhoe Bay, seeing and smelling the industrial oil field. \u00a0I also met the crew of a Greenpeace ship that was bird-dogging a drilling platform offshore. \u00a0They were already committed about the connection between fossil fuel and global warming. \u00a0The science, the wilderness, the source of oil and the issue all began to come together for me. \u00a0\u00a0About a year later, an article by Bill McKibben in Atlantic Monthly about how everything we do makes and is affected by greenhouse gases further inspired me.\u00a0\u00a0On my copy of that article I scrawled the idea:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWorld tour of global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n But how to approach such a huge subject?\u00a0\u00a0I knew from reading science journals and reports that scientists were seeing changes in many places, sharp turns from the slow change seen in years and years of measurements and data, shifts that seemed to correlate only to rising earth temperatures and added CO2. \u00a0Because popular articles and books on climate change were\u00a0based on predictions, which are easily dismissed, I wanted to look at the Earth itself and report\u00a0on the changes already under way. \u00a0As a journalist, I wanted to move beyond the raw statistics,\u00a0the secondhand and political arguments, and talk directly to the scientists who are documenting it. \u00a0So, since I had shot many stories of scientists in the field (like about the spotted owl) I began emailing or calling a few of the leading researchers to ask to come document their field work. \u00a0I also would ask where changes were the most visible and what other indicators there were of global warming. \u00a0I wrote my first project description: Working with private grants and magazine assignments, I will visit those locations where climate science is undertaken and where effects of global warming have been documented.\u00a0\u00a0As often as possible my photographs will actually show changes (or comparisons with old photographs). My first act was to pull my research into shape, and make a more formal list of locations to photograph. \u00a0 Thinking (rightly as it turned out) that I could not rely on too many magazine assignments, I applied to\u00a0Blue Earth Alliance<\/a>\u00a0 a tax exempt photography support NGO founded by photographers Natalie Fobes and Phil Borges]. By December 1998, my proposal received backing from Blue Earth and initial funding was secured from a family environmental fund with which I had previously had contact. Early in 1999 I cranked up my contact with climate scientists I already knew, most from my previous Alaska work.\u00a0\u00a0I put out the word to my magazine editor list, seeking assignments and other scientific contacts.\u00a0\u00a0I already had work coming up in the Peruvian Amazon, so I added on a week of travel into the Andes to photograph receding glaciers, using contacts I found through The Mountain Institute.\u00a0\u00a0I arranged to travel later in the year with some of the scientists I knew in Alaska who were studying change on the tundra. The big break came from a contact I had previously made at Life magazine, Steve Petranek, who had become editor at Discover magazine. He saw my emails about my new project and hired me to accompany a writer on a National Science Foundation geologic research cruise to Antarctic Peninsula ice sheets and glaciers in April 1999.\u00a0\u00a0The next year I parlayed this into my own return trip, using research about Southern Giant Petrels( which I had learned about while in Antarctica) to gain an assignment for International Wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0While on this second trip, I used every opportunity to learn more about and photograph climate change.\u00a0 I had never been to Antarctic before these trips in 1999 and 2000 \u2013 but now not only did I have a complete story about change down there, but was also able to gain more visibility as a nature photographer with scientifically-accurate images of Antarctica. \u00a0I was getting off to a great start. No need to remind of what happened in the 2000 election, of the anti-science Administration that George W. Bush installed, of the horror of 9\/11 and the near total focus it created on war and national defense. \u00a0 Global warming was thoroughly off the radar and actively dismissed by the government and many corporations and their PR flacks. \u00a0Through all of this scientists continued to work, putting out a world review of effects and changes in 2001 and an even stronger and better documented one in 2007. \u00a0Through all of this I followed as \u2014 at first \u2014 the only photographer that I knew of on a full time climate project (even now there are only about 10 of us who focus on it a great deal). I was a witness to what otherwise were just numbers or facts in news stories: \u00a0\u00a0I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced Adelie penguins\u00a0and photographed huge icebergs separated from an ice shelf in Antarctica. I have seen the jagged fronts\u00a0of receding Greenland glaciers and observed subtle changes on the tundra. I have tracked down Alpine\u00a0glaciers depicted in 150-year-old images and rephotographed them to show them wasting away. In the\u00a0woods of eastern North America I have walked among spring wildflowers and watched for migrant\u00a0songbirds, which are arriving earlier each season than in decades past. Along the coasts I have seen rising\u00a0tides and heavy storms erode beaches. I have heard the anguish in the voices of native Alaskans as\u00a0they describe their village being washed away, of Chinese farmers facing famine caused by drought, and\u00a0of Pacific Islanders driven from their homes by increasingly high tides.<\/p>\n Photographing this subject presents a great challenge. Changes have been unfolding for fifty years\u00a0or more, with most effects being incremental, or invisible. Pictures are not science; they can, however,\u00a0provide direct evidence that global warming is happening now, all over the world. They provide contact\u00a0with eyewitnesses\u2014lifelong observers, Native peoples, and teams of scientists who are seeing rapid\u00a0change across the expanse of Earth\u2019s living systems. Pictures also show that the effects of global warming\u00a0are taking place in Earth\u2019s most beautiful and sensitive landscapes, especially at the extremities of\u00a0our planet\u2014at the poles, high in the mountains, and in the ocean\u2019s rich nearshore environments. Animals\u00a0and plants on the edge of their ranges, as well as people who live on shorelines or who still subsist\u00a0from nature, are the first to feel the effects.<\/p>\n The photographs in Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World\u00a0\u00a0helped to make real the scientific evidence that\u00a0entire cultures, ecosystems, and species are being forced into transition, the continued existence of some of them threatened\u00a0by our use and abuse of fossil fuels and the soil of the earth.<\/p>\n JPC<\/strong> GB<\/strong> While talking about my books and giving shows around the country, I am asked what should be done. \u00a0Here is the answer in short form:<\/p>\n 1. Understand the problem, its causes and threats. The hard fact is that despite what many nations, companies, cities and people are starting to do to reduce their global warming emissions, the world is putting more CO2 into the air than ever before. The current amount is 387 parts per million (ppm) \u2014 higher than ever in the past 800,000 years. Americans wanting to know more about what the current science says can turn not only to my book, but also to a new report from the federal government, \u201cGlobal climate change impacts in the United States.\u201d \u00a0(Available at\u00a0http:\/\/www.globalchange.gov\/publications\/reports\/scientific-assessments\/us-impacts<\/a>). \u00a0The major points, indicating the on-going changes which I document in World View of Global Warming, are: Human \u201cfingerprints\u201d also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, plant and animal health and location, and Arctic sea ice. In the U.S., the amount of rain falling in the heaviest downpours has increased approximately 20 percent on average in the past century. Many types of extreme weather events, such as heat waves and regional droughts, have become more frequent and intense during the past 40 to 50 years. The destructive energy of Atlantic hurricanes has increased\u2026 In the eastern Pacific, the strongest hurricanes have become stronger since the 1980s, even while the total number of storms has decreased. Sea level has risen along most of the U.S. coast over the last 50 years, and will rise more in the future. Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly and this is very likely to continue. Global temperatures are projected to continue to rise over this century. Whether the temperature of the planet rises by 2-3 degrees F or more than 11 degrees in this century depends on a number of factors, including the amount of heat-trapping gas emissions humans continue to allow and how sensitive the climate is to those emissions. Lower emissions of heat-trapping gases will delay the appearance of climate change impacts and\u00a0lessen their magnitude.<\/p>\n Unless the rate of emissions is substantially reduced, impacts are expected to become increasingly severe for more people and places. Not a pretty picture. \u00a0But more and more \u2014 in their gardens, along the seashore, in changes to spring and fall natural events, in deeper droughts and more severe weather records, in increasing asthma and urban heat, \u00a0in smaller glaciers and summer river flow, in dying forests and larger fires \u2013 – Americans are seeing climate change and understanding how it affects them.<\/p>\n On my website<\/a> I have a list of \u00a0\u201dVery Important Things to Do about Global Warming\u2026from the individual to the national. \u201d \u00a0These actions are prioritized by those that make the greatest difference and from the individual to the national. \u00a0For example: Sell the SUV (Cash for Clunkers!!) \u00a0and choose cleaner, more efficient vehicles. Reduce your driving: one gallon of gas burned in any car creates 20 pounds of CO2. Slow down for much better mileage. \u00a0In terms of fuel, if you can, avoid biofuels like corn ethanol that can steal food from a hungry world. \u00a0Look for ways not only to combine driving trips but\u00a0 also to use more transit and sidewalks for your errands and for getting to school. \u00a0Electric cars will be coming soon, perfect for urban trips, but any car needs more concrete, which is a heavy climate pollutant. \u00a0Reclaim our cities for walking, biking, and dense transit networks. \u00a0More than 40 percent of household\u00a0energy use is for transport.<\/p>\n Use efficient appliances and use them less, replace light bulbs with low-voltage compact fluorescents, check your home insulation and windows for leaks that can send huge clouds of heat and CO2 into the air. \u00a0Many states are offering rebates and programs for household energy audits and rehabs. Turn down the thermostat a few degrees in winter and up a few in the heat of summer. \u00a0\u201dSmart\u201d meters, offered by many utilities now, can do this for you and help you see how well you are doing. \u00a0Buy renewable energy, like wind and solar, from your power company, and track the use to see how you can improve. There are also programs for installing solar panels and hot water systems on residences and small\u00a0businesses. \u00a0Homes and their contents make 57 percent of household energy use \u2014 and half that is for heating and cooling. Companies \u2014 the one you work for and the ones you buy from \u2014 can save lots of money and reduce global warming by taking similar steps toward energy efficiency.<\/p>\n Shop smart: Look for products made from recycled materials, created with renewable energy, and which help you save money and reduce pollution.\u00a0Right now, WalMart and other companies as well as many product makers, are moving to put energy and climate labels on products so we can all see how what we buy affects our\u00a0 atmosphere and water.Let the corporations who make our cars, fuels, goods and power know you want their products to be as ecological as possible.<\/p>\n Use your vote and influence as a citizen to elect responsive leaders. \u00a0The US House voted on a heavily compromised energy and climate bill which nevertheless will create huge incentives for renewable, non-greenhouse-pollution energy and employment. \u00a0Go visit or write your Senators to urge they strengthen the national law. \u00a0Coal is a source of about half our electricity, but it is also the worst CO2 source and very poisonous to boot. \u00a0Tell your politicians you want to reduce our electrical use so we do not need coal power in the near future.<\/p>\n Organize the neighborhood and town for energy efficiency. \u00a0Invite neighbors and schools to cooperate in climate cooling actions: Make pathways for walking and biking; put solar panels on roofs; plant community gardens; combine trips or use electric buses for daily errands and kid transport. For ideas and ways to bring climate knowledge into the schools, see http:\/\/www.howweknowclimatechange.org <\/a>\u00a0and \u00a0http:\/\/www.climatechangeeducation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the larger urban areas, suburban sprawl makes for lots of global warming pollution; plan for walkable communities, lots of trees, open spaces, and public transportation in and between cities.\u00a0Build new homes and buildings for efficiency and solar power. \u00a0Introduce the LEED building principles into building codes, not just to gain points but to urge the most efficient \u2014 even energy generating \u00a0\u2013 buildings from now on. \u00a0And on the ex-urban front, support sustainable farming and forestry, locally grown foods of all kinds, and \u00a0non-food crops to make into biofuels.<\/p>\n For concerned photographers, many directions and projects springing from knowledge of climate change can enrich their lives and work and perhaps create a new portfolio. \u00a0I have encouraged a few energized photographers, such as Benj Drummond and Sara Steele, who wanted to specialize on climate change. \u00a0Their focus on human societies and groups in \u201cFacing Climate Change\u201d has been very successful.\u00a0\u00a0 But on an everyday scale, if the issue affects your life or your photo subject matter, just integrate it into your work and make sure your viewers know why you made the photos.\u00a0 Make it personal \u2013 it is your subject matter and perhaps your livelihood. \u00a0Start at home or in places you know well, with local effects and local reactions. \u00a0Since we must all be on to the changes, the things people are doing to shift energy use and waste are extremely important. \u00a0Many groups from traditional outdoor clubs to fire departments and military bases are taking up climate change \u2014 they need photos and we need to see what they are doing.<\/p>\n Climate change affects everyone and everything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\nTell me about climate change.
\nAnd, tell me about your book \u2013 Earth Under Fire.<\/p>\n
\nIn June 1997 I was stuck in a cold tent on the Alaska tundra\u00a0with fellow nature photographer Gerry Ellis.\u00a0\u00a0We had come to photograph caribou and other tundra animals, but for these weeks, anyway, we saw very little.\u00a0\u00a0But while we read our books in the tent and talked of life and photography, we also chatted about the major issues in nature and conservation.\u00a0\u00a0What were we going to do in coming years: what locations, what species, what issues were going to be the most important to photograph?.\u00a0\u00a0And also, who was going to hire, publish and pay us for this?<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe goal of\u00a0World View of Global Warming\u00a0is to illustrate the physical changes and compelling science on all continents, which show that global warming and other climate shifts have begin.\u00a0\u00a0Too often public information and political debate lack a basis in science and are without a vision of how the earth is changing.<\/p>\n
\nWorld View of Global Warming benefits from a dialogue with scientists and observers around the world who have provided hundreds of scientific contacts and papers.\u00a0\u00a0In the initial phase ending in 2001, I am focusing on polar regions, shrinking glaciers around the world, coral bleaching, insect and animal range changes, and rising sea level.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Images will appear in magazines and books.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nI have to say\u00a0that at this point I had little idea of what I was getting into \u2013 \u00a0how many studies there were, how much it would really cost, how rapidly climate science would develop, or what controversy it would raise.\u00a0\u00a0Global warming was already an issue and battle lines had been drawn:\u00a0\u00a0Al Gore had returned from the Kyoto climate meetings but the US Senate refused to consider the Protocol and the Clinton Administration did not push it.\u00a0\u00a0The 2000 election campaign was still in the future and the world\u2019s scientists were just writing drafts of their famous 2001 IPCC report \u2013 both events which would change the face of our national reaction to rapid climate change.<\/p>\n
\nOf far greater importance than the process of the project and the individual photos I began to make, was my role as a witness to climate change.<\/p>\n
\nMy photographs, seen in Discover Magazine, on the NRDC website and in an exhibit they curated along with the AAAS scientists organization, began to be seen. \u00a0In 2001 and 2002 I established my website. \u00a0And the requests for images from teachers, magazines, websites, citizens organizations and scientists themselves began to come in. \u00a0By the time I got a book contract from University of California Press in 2004 and completed my list of must-photograph locations the next year, I had been to 22 nations and all continents.<\/p>\n
\nWhat recommendations do you have for the average citizen to start taking a more active role with respect to these issues?\u00a0 What would you suggest to other photographers to increase the effectiveness of their advocacy efforts?<\/p>\n
\nThe people I met on my climate change documentary project really mean something to me. \u00a0Beyond all the scientists and local guides, at this point those who mean the most are the ones who are living with the change but did not cause it. I am in fact a bit haunted by the Bangladeshis in Mohit\u2019s village, the Inupiats who live with Tony Weyionanna Jr. in Shishmaref Alaska, the kids in Tuvalu and in that coal town in Inner Mongolia. \u00a0They did not cause the great changes that\u00a0fossil fuel burning and\u00a0global warming are bringing, and yet they live right on the edge and are affected far out of proportion to their own energy use.
\nYes, it has to be said that everyone (with the possible exception of some jungle tribes still allowed to be in isolation) uses and benefits from fossil fuel and plastics and manufactured goods and land use which contribute to greenhouse gases. \u00a0Tuvalu, though, \u00a0uses diesel for its generators, relies on fuel for aircraft and boats, uses a great deal of plastic, etc., \u00a0but still is the smallest nation in the UN and at the bottom of the UN\u2019s list of climate polluters. \u00a0Those Bangladeshis on the edge of Bhola Island represent 40 million who earn an average of under $400 a year, compared to $36,000 for an average US citizen. \u00a0There are about 87 of them on that eroding road, and statistically they equal just one American in CO2 output.
\nI wish every American and citizen of the other 35 or so nations (out of 191) who create almost all the global warming pollution could feel the presence of the more than five billion people who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n2. Let leaders know the facts and that you expect them to act.
\n3. Do something today to reduce greenhouse gas output and energy use.<\/p>\n
\nAt the same time, renowned American climatologist Dr. James Hansen of NASA says we already have too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the air: \u201cIf humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted \u2026 CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 387 ppm to at most 350 ppm.\u201d This number is controversial (many scientists say staying below 450 ppm is acceptable), but there is a general call to act fast \u2014 \u00a0working together as a world of concerned people and leaders taking every action we can to limit greenhouse emissions.<\/p>\n
\nHuman activities have led to large increases in heat-trapping gases over the past century. The global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to this human-induced increase. Global average temperature and sea level have increased, and precipitation patterns have changed.<\/p>\n