Jonathan Jarvis speaking at the APPL conference in San Diego (Photo by Beth Pratt)

During the Association of Partners for Public Lands conference yesterday, Jarvis updated a standing-room only audience about the latest issues facing the NPS, from climate change to firearms in parks. In our interview, he elaborated on some of his priorities for the agency.

You have called climate change one of the greatest challenges the National Park Service has ever faced. How do you see the service addressing this issue?

The NPS has a unique responsibility with climate change in protecting the special places we have been entrusted to care for. So much of the climate change issue is framed in terms of green energy and carbon sequestration, but we also have to deal with the preservation aspect.

We fulfill many significant roles in the fight against climate change. Our lands straddle large ecological systems—such as the Sierra Nevada and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—in some of the most extreme and sensitive environments in the country. These places provide areas for important scientific studies regarding global warming.

Education is also a crucial role for the NPS. Climate change can be a difficult concept to teach—for example most people do not differentiate between climate and weather. The parks have the advantage of being able to reach large numbers of people—most of whom are not only repeat visitors but also multigenerational ones. They are already seeing the changes in the parks they love; we can help promote stewardship by making the connection between climate change and these impacts.

Our most important role in climate change, however, is providing optimism and hope about the future. So much of the news about climate change is very depressing. The NPS manages an incredible diversity of sites in America, some of them representing our history in times of crisis; these sites offer lessons in the positive change that emerges from challenging events. We should provide centers of hope on the climate change issue as well.

President Obama just signed an executive order that sets sustainability goals for federal agencies with greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. How will the NPS approach these goals?

One of the top priorities on my agenda is that the NPS and its all partners—contractors, concessioners, non-profits—infuse sustainable practices throughout their operations in a comprehensive manner. We need to insist that practices like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building, energy efficient lighting, and extensive recycling programs become standard across all parks. We should be setting the example to our visitors with our sustainable practices, which is another educational tool in the climate change forum.

One specific initiative we’ve been exploring is working with the LEED model and developing a similar criteria that incorporates the special circumstances of historic structures. Historic structures hold a large amount of embedded energy—we believe we can both do good in terms of the environment and maintain the historic integrity of some of our buildings.

What are some other priority areas on your agenda as the new director?

I have too many priorities to count, but I have developed four categories of strategic focus to make better sense of the enormous task we have before us: workforce, education, relevancy, and stewardship.

In the workforce area, we’re looking at the bigger picture of the staff in parks and better incorporating the agency with our concessioners and partners. For stewardship, my goal is to be vigilant about standing up for the resource, even if it means making hard decisions. We are strengthening our educational resources and just hired a new position for the agency, an Associate Director for Education. Critical to all of our efforts is making parks more relevant to the American people—we need to reach new audiences and expand our connections to the broader population to ensure the survival of the parks.

How do partners like APPL and its member organizations fit with your goals for the future?

Our agency at times has made it hard to be a partner. That is going to change. We’re all in this together—working for the common goal of protecting our national parks—and as an agency we should be utilizing all of the tremendous resources our partners provide to us.

Larry Schweiger, President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation (photo courtesy NWF)

Like most environmental leaders, Schweiger realizes the dire consequences that climate change presents toward life on earth, and he recently attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to urge world governments to act. His new book, Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth, is an impassioned plea for us to combat climate change before it destroys the precious legacy of life that we leave to our children and grandchildren. All author proceeds from the book are being donated to NWF.

Last Chance outlines the threats that wildlife face from climate change, most alarmingly the statistic that “40 to 70 percent of all species could be extinct within our children’s lifetimes if we don’t take action now.” The book, however, is not just a compilation of scientific figures, although it provides an excellent summary of the projected impacts of climate change. Indeed, Last Chance also serves as a call to action for every citizen of the world.  “Global warming is not only an intellectual matter, but also a deeply moral and spiritual issue that lets no-one off the hook. We must all answer, not just with our best thoughts and words, but with our hearts and actions.”

Mr. Schweiger will be speaking on climate change and signing copies of his new book in Yellowstone National Park on January 7, 2010 at 8:00 pm at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. 

Success at Copenhagen is crucial to the survival of Yellowstone--and all of our national parks. (Photo by Beth Pratt)

Although to most people the bureaucratic meetings in a distant city seem to have little relevance to their own lives, what happens in Copenhagen doesn’t stay in Copenhagen. The inability to come to a consensus on a treaty has dire repercussions for the entire world. And here in the United States, progress—indeed, a solution to the climate crisis—is imperative to the survival of our cherished national parks.

Climate change is already threatening our national parks—some of the best-protected places on the planet. Jon Jarvis, the newly appointed Director of the National Park Service (NPS), deemed climate change “potentially the most far-reaching and consequential challenge to our mission than any previously encountered in the entire history of the NPS.” If we don’t develop a global solution to reduce the ever-increasing production of greenhouse gas emissions, the future of “America’s Best Idea” is at stake.

In Yellowstone National Park, a tiny insect has become a serious threat to the mighty grizzly bear. As a result of warming temperatures at higher elevations, the mountain pine beetle has gained a foothold in whitebark pine forests and is destroying an important part of the bear’s diet. Scientists now predict glaciers will disappear from Glacier National Park by 2030, and Joshua Tree National Park may lose its namesake tree within the next century. Climate change and other environmental ills have pushed a third of amphibians on the verge of extinction, including the mountain yellow-legged frog in Yosemite. And rising temperatures have diminished habitat for the cold-loving pika—a high elevation dweller than can perish from overheating--in Yosemite and other parks.

Recent reports by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, and the National Parks and Conservation Association warn of these threats and many others that climate change pose to our national parks.

Copenhagen must be successful at uniting the world to stop global warming. Using the strategies discussed this past week—many of them practical, feasible and workable—week two of the conference must yield comprehensive solutions. If our leaders fail to act, they not only fail the grizzly bears in Yellowstone and the yellow-legged frogs in Yosemite, they also fail to protect our country’s important heritage of national parks, what writer Wallace Stegner called “the best idea we ever had.”

View a photo slideshow of Ten National Parks in Peril.

International explorer Josh Bernstein addresses a full house at Greenbuild 2009 (photo by Beth Pratt)

His talk included a brief survey of past cultures and the reason for their demise, and he focused on two that may have disintegrated for environmental reasons: the people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the Maya civilization. Bernstein connects both cases to our current situation: the societies were “highly advanced but also unable to stop their own ruin through the over consumption of natural resources.” Despite the parallels to our present environmental crisis, he is hopeful we can learn from these historical mistakes and take action at this critical juncture. “We seem to love stories with a rough time before the end. Think of Rocky or Star Wars,” he joked.

To move forward, and to address the current problem of global warming, Bernstein believes the environmental movement must make a fundamental shift in its approach. “It’s unfortunate we’ve tied the movement to a color. This may be semantically petty, but the environmental movement is not visual, but visceral. It has to be about what people are feeling.” He urged participants to be strong leaders and commit to a course of affecting change, but change that connects to people on an emotional level. “We need to shift the way we relate to each other and to the planet from one of ignorance to one of openness.”

To help minimize his environmental footprint, Bernstein purchases offsets for his 500,000 miles of annual travel, and for the travel of the participants to his outdoor school. He recognizes offsets are a temporary patch to the overall problem, but thinks it’s an approach that at least helps foster investment of new energy sources. During his extensive wanderings across the globe, he is already seeing the impacts of climate change in the cultures he studies; he told the audience of the societal devastation an Eskimo tribe experienced that had to relocate from their ancestral home due to the widespread melting of ice.

Bernstein hosts the popular Discovery Channel show, Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein, and also owns BOSS (The Boulder Outdoor Survival School), the oldest and largest such school in the world. Participants at BOSS “exfoliate the urban world” by embarking in a wilderness experience from the perspective of traditional cultures; primitive survival skills are taught such as fire making. The courses are powerful and transformative and as Bernstein states provide a “renewal of connection to the natural world that can be life changing.”

The Honorable Al Gore presenting the keynote address at Greenbuild 2009 (Photo by Beth Pratt)

U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi opened the event and spoke to the crowd about the importance of leveraging green buildings to “improve lives, heal our planet, and ensure our future.” He introduced green building leaders from throughout the world—Australia, South Africa, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, India, Mexico, Taiwan, and Brazil—who all shared engaging stories of sustainable projects in their countries.

Former Vice President Al Gore arrived on stage to a standing ovation and delivered an engaging message focused on the imperative action needed to combat climate change. “This is a challenge to our system of democracy. We need to get active and engaged and do something about it.” He warned that the “alternative to failure in Copenhagen is unacceptable” and urged the crowd to ensure that our government takes action. “We need to change our light bulbs, but we also need to change our laws and policy.”

Sheryl Crow giving a special concert at Greenbuild (photo by Beth Pratt)Climate change transcends politics and party lines, he asserted: “We’re all in this together—we don’t need to be fighting about this.”  He quoted an African proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Gore ended his address with a message of hope: “We can solve this crisis. We have the tools we need to solve three or four climate crises and we need to only solve one.” He urged the audience to take action so when future generations look back to this critical juncture, they’ll be able to consider us with admiration for finding the moral courage to solve the issue of climate change.

After his speech, Gore returned to the stage to welcome (and hug) singer and fellow environmentalist Sheryl Crow, who entertained the Greenbuild audience with an hour-long concert that included most of her popular songs. During “Are You Strong Enough to be My Man,” Crow ad-libbed to ask the crowd, “Are you strong enough to recycle? Are you strong enough to drive a Prius?” And to prove that even “tree huggers” can rock, she finished the show with an energetic cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” and the audience shouted every “been a long time, been a long time” right along with her.

For a photo slideshow of the opening celebration, see below:

Former Vice President Al Gore opens Greenbuild 2009 (photo Tipper Gore from Our Choice/Rodale)

Former Vice President Al Gore will provide the opening keynote address at Greenbuild 2009, which begins next week in Phoenix. His new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, was just released.

This annual event, organized by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), focuses on sustainable building; the conference goal is to advance the conversation about “how we can build a prosperous and sustainable future for our nation through cost-effective, energy-efficient, water-saving green buildings.” The USGBC oversees the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification process for buildings.

Over twenty thousand attendees are expected to explore the array of offerings at Greenbuild 2009, which includes the world largest expo devoted to green building, a green building job fair, over 100 educational sessions, and LEED accredited workshops. 

Along with Al Gore, the impressive line-up of speakers features Discovery Channel explorer Josh Bernstein, Starbucks President of Global Development Arthur Rubinfeld, and Assistant to President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner. Singer Sheryl Crow opens the event with a special concert celebration.

Stay tuned for my live dispatches from Greenbuild 2009 beginning next week!