Interviewed by Marty Weening

To say I respect the legendary polar explorer Will Steger would be a considerable understatement. He has traveled tens of thousands of miles by kayak and dog- sled over 40 years, leading teams on some of the most significant polar expeditions in history.

My deep admiration for Will is rooted in his life long dedication to educating youth and emerging leaders (Globalwarming101.com) to the catastrophic consequences of global warming. Will understands that knowledge empowers people and people create change. He is a formidable voice calling for understanding and the preservation of the Arctic, and the Earth. He has been a mentor and influence to numerous change makers ranging from Sir Richard Branson to Al Gore. Will Steger is the “real deal”, a kind, dedicated and passionate advocate that has put his actions where many offer up only rhetoric.

Will graciously agreed to speak with me, on the record, for the release of our Fall ‘08 Greenicci products.

In April 2008, six emerging leaders, ages 21-28, joined Will Steger on a 1,400 mile international dogsled expedition across Ellesmere Island. There, they followed in the footsteps of legendary polar explorers and visited ice shelves that have collapsed due to global warming and recorded firsthand those that are on the brink of collapse. Crossing fjords, mountain ranges, and sea ice, the Expedition Team recorded the impact global warming has had on the northern coast of the third largest and northernmost island in the Canadian Arctic. Some months ago, Will asked if Gramicci would dress the Ellesmere Island Expedition Team in Gramicci and we were honored to be a part of it.

We also want to congratulate Will on receiving two more prestigious international awards for his exploration of climate change: the 2007 Lowell Thomas Award, presented jointly by The Explorer’s Club and Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc., and National Geographic Adventure’s Second Annual Lifetime Achievement Award.

Let’s get right into it. When did you first become aware of global warming?

I taught global warming as a classroom teacher in the late sixties. It was real obvious to me that when you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it warms the earth. That’s never been debated for the last hundred years. Although in the sixties we weren’t burning up our fossil fuels as we are doing right now. So it’s been 40 years. I’ve been actually working on the direct issue for the past twenty years since the late eighties. I worked with Al Gore among others on the issue.

I have noticed that educating youth to the effects of global warming is the primary focus of your websiteglobalwarming101.com. Is this also a focus of the Will Steger Foundation?

Globalwarming101 is one of the initiatives of the Will Steger Foundation. We are really focusing on basically the seventeen to upper twenty year olds because this is where I think we are going to see a movement. This generation is going to take ownership of the issue, because it is going to be affected most by global warming. This generation is probably going to move in similar ways but probably different than those of the sixties and early seventies, during the Vietnam War. I don’t think they will be protesting in the streets. What is different than the sixties is the Internet. People are connecting or connected to this community on the Internet. That’s where we are going to see the movement starting. The Internet is merely a tool though, a communication tool. We can talk about global warming until we are blue in the face, but unless we take action...the real key here is we need to take action. Discussion and education definitely has a point and purpose here, but it’s the action and this younger generation is going to take this on very soon.

It is your teaching youth of the effects of global warming that has impressed me because with knowledge comes involvement, action and change. But it begins with letting youth know what the world is becoming so they can take on the responsibility for change. The globalwarming101.com website offers detailed lesson plans that teachers and schools can adopt to bring this issue into the classroom. How is that working?

Very well. There are a number of schools that have adopted our lesson plans grades 6 to 12. They are open to the public and they are free. They can be adapted to almost any educational system. We work with many schools, based out of the Minneapolis area. There are several schools that have taken this on.

Who in your view are the leading spokes people, organizations or initiatives that are making significant progress or contributions to stopping global warming?

Fortunately we look at Al Gore and him winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue. What was also important about that was the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) shared that award with him. The IPCC is about a thousand climatologists which have been working for about ten years providing balanced and impartial climate change assessments to the world.

Unfortunately there is no real clear leadership that people can naturally point to. There is a lot of great local activity in areas that are not as obvious. Minnesota is growing right now. It’s grass roots and I think it’s important that it is grass roots at the beginning because that’s where you get your real strength.

There are some politicians that are taking the issue on. We have to hold our breath here for the next election. There isn’t any real true leadership. Unfortunately in global warming there isn’t one answer. There is a thousand different, ten thousand different small things that make up the issue and the solution of global warming.

I would first encourage people to check our website out(globalwarming101.com). The whole face of the web site is going to change after mid December. We are changing the backside now and after mid December it’s going to focus on this emerging leader generation, seventeen to upper twenty year olds and new projects. Our website is a great source and that’s the reason for the web site because there is not any clear leadership out there and we need various web sites and books that people can go to learn more about the issue and what they can do. In a way it’s the leadership model itself that has kind of got us into this problem, because leaders are always looking for that young person who is going to motivate us while we are followers and sheep. Whereas, in this situation it is like those extreme sports that many emulate, the rock and ice climbing. That sport takes real initiative, the kind of individual initiative we all have to take with global warming. We may all have to find our own way to a certain extent. But there are books and organizations in your local areas and our web site is a point to begin.

I would recommend that people check out a web site called realclimate.org. That’s probably the best public site out there for global warming. Lots of topics and all sorts of links. Once you are on that you can pretty much follow anything of your interest. That’s a really good way to get informed, realclimate.org. I would suggest our website as well and once it is modified in mid December it will be geared even more towards action and education and bring people together.

Can you give some insight into the expedition and its primary objectives.

globalwarming101.com has a detailed description of the expedition and profiles of the team.

We traveled with six emerging leaders ranging from 17 to 28 from four countries and by dog team to the northern most part of the North American Continent. Particularly this is where the ice shelves started breaking off, so we traveled up there to record first hand what we are seeing and to show our audience that global warming is real. It was a very serious two and half month 1,400 mile expedition with some real scientific and educational goals. We will had to be very disciplined about our use of time when we traveled.

The main goal, the bottom line goal, was to show in real time visually on our web site the affects of global warming and to drive people towards action; offering people steps they can take to make change and answering exactly the questions you are asking me here today. What do people do? I don’t have all the answers to this yet but that is a big question: Where do we take action? With the emerging leadership generation the best way to reach them is on the peer to peer level.

Is there something the team did differently than prior expeditions?

This one was not cultural. It was cultural in a way, but our last expedition was more about the culture and the effects of global warming on the lives of the natives. This expidition was more science and eye witness accounting of global warming. It is more definite: ”here is the smoking gun.” What is different about this one was the emerging leaders age group. It was pretty much an all 17 to upper twenty age group.

Did you place cameras that will perpetually record the changing ice shelves?

We did a project with James Balog, the photographer. He wrote the cover story for National Geographic this past June. You should google him and learn more about his work. His main project is he takes time lapse photographs of every hour of glaciers receding. We put up some of his cameras.

Having those cameras recording this will offer irrefutable and sobering proof of what is happening. Was the video you shot on the expedition mostly in real time and is it available to classrooms everywhere throughout the expedition?

Yes. We are using the adventure, the dog sled expedition, the emerging leader younger peer group to draw in that curiosity.

I know you have probably been asked the next question time and time again. Where does one begin, so they can make a difference?

They begin in two areas; personal responsibility, and that begins with educating yourself, connecting, getting on the web, getting with other people, but your individual actions to cutting the emissions of carbon dioxide is the goal. If our personal lives take the responsibility to slowly cutting down emissions, changing our habits slightly, simple as changing light bulbs, recycling, walking, and biking more. There are many different things that people can do. They can go to our website and read about more examples.

The second part of that equation is selectively we need to move our elected officials to draft and support climate policy that has teeth in it. The start is to do it in our own individual lives but we cannot do it alone. We need to make change collectively. This is why this younger generation could be a credible political force. They could and will be writing and passing the policy for us. This is their issue. This type of action, this political action of getting themselves energized on the website and grabbing hold of this issue and going with it is the future of bringing this issue to the forefront. There is a synergy, a movement just beginning. This is a very exciting time.

What is your view of carbon offsets? There is a growing concern that the purchasing of carbon offsets needs regulating to assure that the money is going towards alternative energy sources.

There is one main point here. Whatever we do is important but carbon offsets is a band aid. We cannot cover over our guilt about what we emit into the atmosphere with carbon offsets. But it’s a good step if we are flying in an airplane that we can be looking at offsetting that carbon emission but not using that carbon offset as an excuse for not taking action.

I myself think we need more investment in alternative energy companies, funds, stocks as a more effective way to offset the carbon emissions. I don’t think I could spend $1,000 at a web site and have that money thrown out the window at someone telling me they were planting trees. That might be important, but what we’re working at and the way we think the carbon offset should work is people should offset their carbon by investing a certain amount of money in a formula. You have so many tons of carbon emitted, and here’s a way to invest your money in wind industry or whatever it might be for a period of time required to offset that carbon emitted. The point here is two things, one you have an investment comp, it’s your own investment, it’s real money not being thrown out at a website. And, the most important part here is it is an investment in this new energy infrastructure. The more money we get invested in this the faster it will go. So I personally believe that there are not many programs like this yet, but I think you’re going to see things like investing in the new technologies. A really good way of offsetting that carbon is with investment. That way you can save the returns on that investment, put the kids through college, retire on it. It is just a good way of putting money into this new growing economy.

Kiplinger’s publishes an issue titled THE GREEN ISSUE where it offers its readers a comprehensive look into companies people can invest in that are making huge strides in the development of alternative energy investments.

Exactly. I have to tell you the bottom line is we really need to cut our carbon output. I think we can justify business travel, but do we need to fly halfway across the country to see a ball game or visit a friend? This type of travel we really have to seriously look at, because that’s what is heating the planet. It’s decadence of travel that is blowing so much carbon into the atmosphere. We don’t see cause and effect. We don’t see the connection of our lifestyles and that 25% of this problem is our materialistic society. We don’t see that connection to the melting of the back ice, the extinction of the polar bears, the fires in California, everything that is happening around us. It’s all tied in together.

The big question here is: how do we make social change? I believe that social change is going to start with the emerging leader generation. They set the market. They may not spend the most amount of money but they set the market. It’s like the new advertising in Rock and Ice. That segment of the industry, the extreme sports, they set the market for clothing and style. Also this climbing field should be setting the market for example and reducing this carbon emission problem and making an end to this by making it socially acceptable to adopt behavioral change. And I think this is coming.

We agree. At Gramicci we say "Start Somewhere” and this new generation is surely an important demographic for making important change. Are there times when you lose faith and want to give into the growing perception that global warming is not reversible?

Well part of it is that it is not reversible and that’s the problem. The fact is even if we stop now, the climate is changing. We can’t put our heads in the sand especially this young generation. What are we going to do, give up for the next forty or fifty years? I mean, it’s like climbing a mountain. You’ve got to do it. The worse thing you can do is give up. That’s not acceptable. We are going to adapt and move this new economy. If you want the kind of lifestyle that you and I have benefitted from we need to move this new economy. We need to move the technology right now. We need to get together and get this going. There is no more time of sitting around and just talking about it. We need to elect officials, number one, that get on board immediately. We are building a constituency here. They are going to be on our side or they just are not going to be in politics any more.

Will, I want to thank you for taking the time to share with us your views and insights into this real global crisis. My hope is your words here will inspire others to visit your web site and others, and read what they can do individually and collectively to stop global warming and initiate much needed action. On a lighter note, we are curious about how long you have been wearing Gramicci and why you still wear it today.

Oh gosh, when did I start wearing it? I think it was the late eighties- ‘87 or ‘88. You have the gusset thing that I really like. I gravitated to it because it’s a really fine practical piece and it’s really comfortable, like wearing pajamas, but it is functional. You can work in it. But it’s really the functionality, comfort of it and it’s look, the whole combination. I was attracted to it from the first time I saw it.

So, you really are a “Gramicci Head.”

Don’t know about the head part of it (laughter) but it’s what I am wearing right now and usually wear every day.

Will, thanks again.

Thanks, Marty, for your support.