Enough, already!

by Stephan Wilkinson

My wife and I used to be huge mail order shoppers. I even bought an airplane (yes, a real one, not a model) by mail order. As catalogs increasingly flooded our post office box, partly as a result of our patronage but far more so because mail order companies routinely sell each other their customer lists, we rented a bigger box to hold them all.

We kept the catalogs that interested us and threw out the rest -- dozens and dozens of glossy, expensive mini-magazines into the trash. Friends thought me goofy because I actually filed our catalogs in separate little magazine racks: "aviation and automotive," "bicycling and fitness," "books," "tools and hardware," "kitchen and housewares" and "clothing" among them.

It got out of hand, especially now that I'm an Internet shopper and can look up anything I need electronically rather than paging through a batch of catalogs. But thanks to The New York Times, I've found a fabulous solution to our catalog glut.

This Chevy Equinox runs on hydrogen. What a gas.
Photos: Chevrolet

by Stephan Wilkinson

Chevrolet is looking for a thousand drivers willing to gad about for free in one of the company's revolutionary fuel-cell-powered Equinox SUVs, each for three months. In return, GM asks only that the lucky recipients tell them frankly what they think of the car.

No bull. Free car, free fuel (gaseous, high-pressure hydrogen), free insurance, free XM satellite radio, free OnStar, and the car comes with leather, a nav system, and other top-of-the-line options. It's also rarer and more valuable than any Ferrari or Porsche sold, since only 100 have been handmade. (The program goes on for 30 months, 10 driver cycles per car.)

General Motors is hoping that the hydrogen-powered fuel cell is the Next Big Thing -- an electric car that never has to be plugged in or recharged because it creates its own electricity and produces zero emissions. Because unlike a hybrid, it doesn't use any gasoline at all. The hydrogen gas flows through something call a "fuel cell" that creates electricity (go here to learn how, if you're a techie), which then drives an electric motor and also gets stored in a big battery for when it's needed for hard acceleration or hill-climbing. What comes out the tailpipe is tepid water vapor, nothing else.

I drove an Equinox FCV last week, and it was a remarkable experience, largely because it was in fact unremarkable. Turn the key and nothing happens other than the dash gauges coming alive. Press the accelerator and the car silently moves off. Press it harder and the roomy four-seat SUV silently accelerates (all the way to 100 mph, if you wish -- and I did briefly consider becoming the first person in the world to get a speeding ticket in a fuel-cell vehicle). Acceleration feels surprisingly strong, because the electric motor's torque is instant, although the car's actual 0-60 time is a poky 12 seconds.

Here's the hitch:

Marcia Gay Harden graced the stage at Conde Nast Traveler's World Savers Congress last week.
All photos: Marion Curtis, Star Pix

by Brook Wilkinson

What was a celebrity like Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden doing at Conde Nast Traveler's World Savers Congress last week? Not merely looking for good press, I can assure you. Marcia is a long-time supporter of environmental issues, and has been profiled in the magazine as an advocate for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit that has helped clean up the Hudson River and sprouted sister organizations that protect waterways around the world. Marcia, who was one of the judges for this year's World Savers Awards, spoke thoughtfully about the responsibility we all have to preserve the planet for future generations. Then she let us all in on a dirty secret of "green" Hollywood: No one recycles on movie sets. Thinking on her feet, Marcia even coined a name for her new cause: Reelcycle. Get it?

Marcia and fellow judges Sven Lindblad of Lindblad Expeditions and Martha Honey of the Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development gave out awards to our top World Savers honorees, who'd flown in from all over the globe to accept their glass statues. Andrea Boston over at Blue Egg was so impressed by the Jungle Bay Resort & Spa, in Dominica, that she's vowed to spend her next vacation there. (You can read about the winners and runners-up in our September issue.)

But it wasn't all good news at the panel discussions that followed. To find out what the audience learned, keep reading.

Conde Nast Traveler's World Savers Congress was held in New York City's Gotham Hall on October 10, 2007.
All photos: Marion Curtis, Star Pix

by Brook Wilkinson

That's a rather immodest title for a conference put on by a travel magazine, but it's the question that we at Conde Nast Traveler posed last week at our first-ever World Savers Congress. Some of the biggest players in the industry -- and also some of the smallest -- came together to discuss how travel can help preserve the planet and better the lives of the underprivileged.

Bill Clinton giving a taped address to the crowd gathered at the World Savers Congress.

First up on stage was Bill Clinton. Well, he was actually above the stage: Since he wasn't able to attend, the former president sent a taped message. The Clinton Global Initiative was the topic of our September cover story, for which writer Patricia Storace followed him on a disaster-relief tour of Southeast Asia. "The travel industry is in a unique position to influence change in the world through fair employment practices, career opportunities, responsible environmental initiatives, and deep engagement in community affairs," Clinton said. "Together we can make a better world." (Ever the world traveler, Clinton talked about a recent African safari when he was on the Late Show with David Letterman last month, and Ben Smith over at Politico has an interesting snippet of that conversation.)

Richard Holbrooke speaks at the World Savers Congress.

Next up on stage -- in the flesh, this time -- was Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and current president and CEO of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Holbrooke was interviewed for the magazine's April Forum. Christopher Lydon over at ...OpenSource predicts that Holbrooke may well be our next Secretary of State, too, should Hillary win the 2008 election. Holbrooke congratulated the travel companies who've joined his organization -- Accor, Kerzner International, Micato Safaris, and Ritz-Carlton -- and threw down the gauntlet for the rest of the audience to do the same.

Later in the morning, John Paul DeJoria got up to speak. What does the hair care maven (he of Paul Mitchell) have to do with sustainable travel, you ask? I wondered the same thing. Read on to find out.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Norway is home to 120,000 elk, the beloved national animal, each of which burps and farts over a year the methane equivalent of two and a half tons of carbon dioxide, thus mindlessly doing its part for global warming.  Methane, unfortunately, has 21 times the greenhouse-gas effect of CO2.  To put that into a traveler's perspective, a single elk (we call them moose) each year emits the same carbon footprint as 26 airline round trips between New York and Chicago.  Or, if you're driving, an elk is as destructive to the ozone layer in a year as 8,000 miles of typical car travel.

Who cares?  Well, the Norwegians do, because they did the math, at Trondheim Technical University.  Elk herds are proliferating as decreasing Scandinavian snow gives the loaf-nosed brutes access to lots more food, and gassy wild blueberries don't help.  The elk are fatter, hornier -- they get Norwegian woodies and reproduce at an increased rate -- and rowdier: last winter, elk were known to enter Norwegian towns and smash grocery-store windows to get at the vegetables they could see.  ("Step back from the beans, sir, and keep your hooves in the air...")

Norwegian hunters hope to shoot 35,000 elk during the season that begins in late September, and the environmentally conscious gunmen (yeah, right...) are begging for an even higher quota.

Ruminant animals of all sorts -- particularly cattle -- contribute horrendous amounts of methane to the stratosphere, but at least there's a chance that domestic feedlot diets can be altered to provide some sort of Bean-O for cows.  But the wild elk of Norway won't cooperate.

An Air Force B-52H bomber gets the seal of
approval to burn synthetic fuel.
Photo:  United States Air Force

by Stephan Wilkinson

The U.S. Air Force has just completed testing and approving an interesting alternative fuel, a man-made synthetic, for use in its huge eight-engine Boeing B-52H bombers. The next military airplane to be certified for the synfuel will be the Boeing C-17 cargo and troop carrier, essentially an Air Force airliner. Since fuel costs and availability are the biggest operating considerations for an airline, "We are being watched by many of our airline colleagues who are not only partnering with us but researching our data," says secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne.

A zoomy new piece of high technology? Not at all. The jet fuel is made using a process called Fischer-Tropsch, which was originally developed in Germany in the 1920s and used by the Luftwaffe during World War II, when gasoline was in short supply. South Africa also made extensive use of Fischer-Tropsch during the dark days of apartheid, when the country was shunned by oil-exporting nations.

The Fischer-Tropsch process is basically a way of gasifying coal or natural gas and then refining the product into a high-quality, low-sulfur synthetic kerosene. (The nice thing about jet engines -- turbines -- is that they can be made to run on just about anything that'll burn, from hair tonic to whiskey. The hard part is making sure the fuel works at temperature and altitude extremes.)

Here's the not-so-good news:

 
Here's a Toyota "Energy Monitor" display, this one from the Lexus GS450h
sport-sedan hybrid. Photo: courtesy of Toyota

by Stephan Wilkinson

Curious what it's like to drive a semi-electric car? Avis has just announced that it's adding 1,000 Toyota Prius hybrids to its rental fleet in Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and throughout California. Enterprise Rent-A-Car already has 3,000 Priuses available throughout the U. S., and Hertz is adding 1,000 more Priuses to the 1,000 already in its fleet

Avis will be charging $69.95 a day and up, depending on location, day of the week, phase of the moon and all of the other mysteries that determine rental-car rates. Hertz says a Prius will cost renters $5 to $10 more than a comparable gas-engine car

I've put a fair amount of mileage on a number of hybrid cars, ranging from the Prius and the Ford Escape hybrid all the way up to the $104,000, 438-horsepower Lexus LS600h L super-hybrid limo--including a Conde Nast Traveler "Great Drive" in a Prius--and I can tell you that driving a hybrid is more fun than you might imagine.

Here's why:

Plane Stupid is a U.K.-based group opposed to airport expansion and aviation.

by Brook Wilkinson

Europe has several things over the United States -- funnier sitcoms, a better train network, nicer beers. Now you can add a more cohesive anti-travel movement to the list. There's a growing feeling across the pond that people should strictly limit their airline travel, or even give it up completely (a notion made possible in part by the aforementioned train situation). The latest activist superglued herself to a building to make her point.

The woman, a member of the anti-aviation group Plane Stupid, attached herself to the front door of the headquarters for Lastminute.com, a website that she says encourages people to "binge-fly" with their too-good-to-resist fares. Brit writer George Monbiot recently published a book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, in which he called for a 90% reduction in air travel (you can watch of video of Monbiot explaining his philosophy at YouTube, and read a post entitled "We Are All Killers Until We Stop Flying" on his blog.)

Air travel is a huge concern in terms of the future of global warming: Though it only accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon emissions, there are no alternative fuels or engines on the horizon to ease that burden. I would never advocate giving up air travel entirely -- how could I, given the nearly 100,000 miles I flew last year? -- but I can get behind the idea of taking fewer, longer trips (which are more efficient, since more fuel is burned in takeoff and landing). Just a thought . . .

The VW Polo BlueMotion, available only in Europe, is the Continent's
most economical five-seater: It gets 60 miles to the gallon. 
Photo: Volkswagen of America

by Stephan Wilkinson

Renting a car in Europe this summer? Two reasons to opt for a diesel:

(1) Diesel fuel is typically about 50 cents a gallon cheaper in Europe, where gasoline can cost as much as $7.50 a gallon. During my own most recent Euro-drive, in a superfast Maserati Quattroporte sedan, I routinely watched hundred-euro bills gurgle into its gas tank.

(2) Diesel cars get 20 to 25 percent better fuel mileage than the equivalent gasser. Europeans love the economy of diesels, and more than half of all new cars sold in Europe have diesel engines.

Do the math: Drive 2,000 vacation miles in a 60-m.p.g. VW diesel and you'll pay less than $140 for fuel. Do the same trip in a 37-m.p.g. Ford Focus and you're out more than $250. You'll have no trouble finding a diesel to rent at any European or British rental agency -- in some countries, like France, you may find nothing but diesels available -- and, trust me, you'll never know you're in an oil burner.

These boys are using Lifestraws to filter this seemingly undrinkable water.
Photo:  Vestegaard Frandsen, Inc.

by Brook Wilkinson

Imagine getting up each morning and not having any water. How would you brush your teeth? Make your coffee? Do the laundry? Americans take clean water for granted, but if you've traveled at all to the third world, you probably have an inkling of how tenuous the rest of the world's grasp on this daily necessity truly is.

Now, we as travelers can do something about it. A Danish company, Vestergaard Frandsen, has developed an ingenious product they call the Lifestraw. This portable water purification system, which basically looks like the straw for a really thick milkshake, can turn any source of water into clean, safe-to-drink water. I learned about this incredible invention last week while talking to Linda Friedman of Custom Safaris, an East Africa expert on Wendy's annual list of the world's best travel specialists. Linda told me that some of her clients had heard about Lifestraws, which cost only $3.50 each and last for a year, and have been fundraising so that they can deliver 1,500 straws on their next trip to Kenya this July.

If you'd like to donate to this cause and give the gift of clean water to a fellow human, visit Custom Safaris' projects page. You can learn more about the Lifestraw, and watch a video of its use, over at the Creative Think blog.

Not your typical cruise ship guest.
Photo: Bob Mesher/Cruise North Expeditions

by Brook Wilkinson

The cruising season in Arctic Canada is understandably short, but your window of opportunity is about to open. Expedition ship operator Cruise North runs trips from June 18 to September 1, and their first two itineraries are brand-new this year. I'm a big fan of Inuit-owned Cruise North's philosophy; they were named to Conde Nast Traveler's Green List last year for their dedication to cultural and environmental preservation. Why? They always have Inuit guides on board to give you a deeper understanding of your surroundings -- something you won't find on any other cruise line -- maintain an open bridge policy, and run an annual end-of-season clean-up cruise of an abandoned mining site.

Cruise North is introducing two new itineraries this year in Newfoundland and Labrador, and there are still cabins available on each. Their 8-night trip along Labrador's coast will be the first passenger navigation of the inside passage of Eclipse Sound. Technically, this is sub-Arctic, but if you're dead-set on crossing the Arctic Circle, check out their High Arctic departures on August 23 and September 1, when you're likely to see polar bears and the Aurora Borealis.

The coast of Greenland is being reshaped by global warming. Photo: Betchart Expeditions

By Brook Wilkinson

Two of the places that are succumbing most rapidly to global warming are Antarctica and the Arctic -- and travelers are scrambling toward both poles to see what's left. (I'd nominate them as numbers 21 and 22 on Conde Nast Traveler's May 2007 list "20 Places to See Before They Die," which includes endangered places like Borneo and the Florida Everglades.)

I've already blogged about tourism in Antarctica, and today I came across news of an upcoming trip to what may well be the northernmost bit of permanent land in the world, only just discovered last year when it appeared from beneath the melting Greenland ice sheet. (Pamela Leavey over at The Democratic Daily gives a clear explanation of where exactly the island came from.) According to the Ecoutourism Blog, Betchart Expeditions is organizing a trip this September to "Warming Island" led by Dennis Schmitt, the American adventurer who first noticed it.

Photo: GE.

By Brook Wilkinson

Imet the other day with M. Sanjayan, the Nature Conservancy's lead scientist, and he gave me a great tip that I'm pledging to put into action on my next trip -- and I challenge all of you to as well: Offset the carbon footprint of your plane flight by handing out a few low-energy light bulbs while you're traveling. It's also a nice gesture in parts of the developing world where electricity is available but expensive.

According to the Nature Conservancy's climate expert, replacing a conventional bulb with a compact fluorescent one saves the equivalent of 660 pounds of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the bulb -- enough to offset one passenger traveling 1,600 miles on a jet. A trip from Chicago to Delhi, for instance, is about 6,500 miles. Bring along 4 low-energy light bulbs (Walmart is now selling them for about $15), hand them out to people you meet or screw them into the lamps in your hotel room, and voila, you've offset the carbon emissions of your flight there. (To close the circuit, you could swap out 4 of your own old light bulbs for compact fluorescents and negate your flight back too.)

Sanjayan's done this in Sri Lanka and Kenya, among other places, where the surprising gift of a few funky-looking light bulbs to a local guide or shopkeeper can jump-start a conversation about global warming, politics, lifestyles -- all sorts of things. Frankly, I can't wait to try it out myself.

Man overlooking the Ganges from Varanasi in early March.
Photo: Ahmed Shihab-Eldin

By Tara Kyle

Our sister blogger The Materialist, back from two and a half weeks in India, was telling us today that, of all the places she saw, it was Varanasi, Hinduism's holiest city, that moved her the most. Varanasi came up because of a post we saw on one of our favorite travel blogs, Worldhum, about a five-part series NPR is airing this week, "The Ganges: A Journey into India."  On a 1,550-mile trip beginning in the Himalayas, Philip Reeves chronicles the complexities of a nation where burgeoning economic might coexists with abject poverty. The Ganges, which now hosts rafting trips for India's growing middle class, remains a key symbol of India's contradictions, particularly along its 7 kilometers passing through Varanasi.

Coincidentally, several classmates of mine at Columbia University's School of Journalism were just in Varanasi too, to report on India's religious traditions. In her daily dispatch, "A Sacred Space Soiled," Columbia grad student Neha Singh Gohil describes the dangers (typhoid, dysentery and polio among them) facing those whose faith compels them to bathe in the Ganges' polluted waters, and the battle to clean it up.

This photo of penguins in Antarctica is one reader's entry in Conde Nast Traveler's Dream Trip Contest. (Wanna enter too? You have until April 23.)

By Brook Wilkinson

Last night "60 Minutes" had a segment about the effects of global warming on Antarctica, and the show's evidence was incredibly persuasive. The number of chinstrap penguins in Paradise Cove, for instance, has dropped by 50% because the babies can't find enough krill to eat--and that's because krill grows under sea ice, and higher Antarctic temperatures mean less sea ice.

But what "60 Minutes" didn't tell you is that its crew was on board Abercrombie & Kent's Explorer II, a luxury ship with an ice-strengthened hull that carries 198 travelers at a time to the coldest continent. Over at Gadling, blogger Dave Luna recently pointed out that the Chinese government has asked its citizens to stop traveling to Antarctica because of the impact of human visitors on this near-pristine environment. (As if the Chinese couldn't find a potential ecological disaster closer to home to prevent!)