New Years Resolutions

New Year's resolutions have never made much sense to me. If I want to make a change in my life, it seems like I should try to start right away. I also know significant changes are way harder; I start strong and burn out fast. Even though I don't like New Year's resolutions, I always seem to have some. After years of failing miserably, I started strategizing my resolutions. I have much more success with little changes, so I try to set more small goals. I also try to make them SMART goals. 

So what is a SMART goal? 

SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Setting a SMART goal allows you to plan for and achieve a goal. For example, saying I want to paddle more is not a SMART goal. It is not specific. Paddle more what? Miles, hours, days of the week? Who knows. It isn't measurable. I don't know the value of more, so I will never know if I am there yet. I might be able to paddle more, but if I don't know what I am trying to exceed, I can't get there, so again it is unattainable and unrealistic. Finally, it is not timely. There is no start or end of the goal. Maybe "paddle more" means each day, and I have to paddle a minute longer every day forever, and I get to where I need to paddle 24 hours a day and can't actually achieve my goals without defying spacetime. 

Let's turn, "I want to paddle more" into a SMART goal. 

First, let's make It specific. I keep track of my paddling days, so I know this year was low, sitting around 60 days. My record is 257. I was a full-time kayak only guide in Anacortes then New Zealand that year, and I had a broken leg, so I didn't do much biking, hiking, or really anything else. 257 is probably not realistic for 2021, but I would like to get over a hundred, which will leave time for biking and some other hobbies. 

"I will paddle for over 100 days this year." 

Now it is specific. Let's work on measurable. Last year I kayaked 30 days before May, then about the same the next eight months. This year I want to spread it out and make it more consistent. There are 52 weeks in a year, which means I need to boat twice a week on average. To make that even more specific and measurable, I'll pick two days for an updated goal like this:

"I will paddle on Tuesdays and Thursdays this year."

My goal is specific and measurable, but maybe not attainable. I might not be able to kayak every Tuesday and Thursday, but I can add some reasonable qualifiers to allow for work or other things that come up. Maybe something like:

"I will paddle on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I am home this year.

We are getting closer to SMART. It's probably not realistic to get only Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe the weather one week, Monday and Friday are best, but I can give my self a little flexibility to change things up or paddle extra if I want to. One hundred days is a lofty goal, but I think I can make it work. 

"I will paddle on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I am home this year unless I already have plans to paddle on two or more days that week."

The goal is for this year, so it is timely, and we have officially reached SMART. Who wants to go paddling?

Many people have seen smart goals, but I think it is a handy tool, and achieving goals feels good. If you can't measure a goal, you never get to mark it complete. I imagine I am not the only one hoping for a better year come 2021. some things are out of our control, but there are a bunch of things we can control. 

If you are looking for some smart goals that can reduce your carbon footprint this year, here are a few:

1) Change my search engine to Ecosia right now. 

Ecosia is a search engine that uses there proceeds to plant trees around the world. They also do not sell your data. The algorithms come from Bing, so it is still a reliable search, and you do a little good. My searches have resulted in 169 trees planted since I changed over as of today.

2) I will eat vegetarian one meal per day this year. 

Sustainable meat is available, but the simple fact is raising animals uses more energy than growing plants. You don't need to go entirely vegetarian or vegan to reduce your carbon footprint. If even one meal per day without meat seems like a stretch, try changing up the meat. Beef has the highest carbon footprint; poultry, on the other hand, is pretty low. Here is a comparison of different diets I found using Ecosia that is pretty good: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet. I read somewhere that Earth could only feed 2 billion people if everyone ate the typical diet of someone in the United States, but Earth could support 10 billion vegetarians. We are currently sitting somewhere around 7.8 billion on Earth. I have been a vegetarian for about three years now, and I think it has been a great change for me. 

3) Avoid one or two-day shipping unless it is an emergency.

Food is one of the big-tickets carbon footprints. Transportation is another. In the transportation game, the faster it moves, the more fuel it takes to get there. Let's be real, is it really going to make much of a difference if your new stainless steel pepper grinder arrives three days later?

Depending on where you live, electricity production is also a significant carbon dioxide producer. Reducing your energy consumption could be another great way to reduce your footprint. Here is another, more scholarly, break down of carbon footprints: http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet. If you choose to offset your carbon, that is great, but carbon offsets do not remove carbon from the atmosphere; they only prevent carbon from being released elsewhere. Reducing your carbon footprint is always more effective than carbon offsets. I hope these ideas are useful for anyone who read this far. We can certainly make many more changes to get greenhouse gasses under control, but these three are an easy place to start! 

If you would like to calculate your carbon footprint and figure out where you can make reductions, here is a great tool. https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx It even has options to offset carbon emissions built-in, but again making reductions is better than offsetting the same amount. 

Happy New Year!

Preservation vs. Conservation

I spend a lot of my time thinking about conservation and preservation, and I still don't know how I feel about them.

The words conservation and preservation are sometimes used interchangeably. They're in fact very different, and the difference is worth clarifying.

Preservation, in land-use terms, is the act of keeping a place pristine and completely unaffected by humans.

Conservation, on the other hand, accepts there will be an impact from humans, and it attempts to reduce the harm to a level where the resource will be renewable.

Both conservation and preservation are in favor of protecting, but preservation is like getting 100% on a test, and conservation is just passing. A perfect score might be too lofty of a goal for now.

UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ilulissat, Greenland

To truly commit to preservation mean's people can no longer enter wildlands, but it also means nothing we have made or moved can enter the environment either. With the global impacts of climate change, true preservation of any ecosystem is probably impossible (unless there are some crazy lava moles hanging out in the earth's core we don't know about).

If right now, you are thinking: "Climate change isn't human-caused." It is, but it is also very complex. The main problem is carbon which was trapped underground is now in the air. The Royal Society has tons of information about climate science, written in a way that is easy to understand. I encourage you to take a look. https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/basics-of-climate-change/

Humans are the most powerful species we know about, and we can have profound influences on the world, good and bad.

Back to the main topic.

Policies to preserve land would require halting all forms of mining, pollution, forestry, travel, farming, and pretty much everything we do. If we want to preserve the whole earth we better all move to the moon. So, the real question is: what the acceptable level of damage to the planet to appropriately conserve it?

I don't know the answer. I do know I have seen changes in the weather, wildlife, and landscapes of the places I regularly visit, in my short lifetime. So we probably are not doing enough. On a global scale, we need to reduce CO2 emissions, cut consumption, and all of the other things we hear about. It is hard to apply sweeping changes to day to day life, and I don't want to get into changing live now. Instead, let's talk about my favorite place, the backcountry.

Conserving natural areas like forests, deserts, waterways, etc. should strive to be as close to preservation as possible while allowing people to enjoy it within reason. (Just because the Joker wants to watch the world burn doesn't mean he should be able to start a forest fire.) Sometimes this means sacrificing an area to take the hit. Trails are a perfect example. They allow many people to explore a beautiful space while containing the environmental impact.

High Traffic Trail in Iceland

When there is no trail, it starts to be more of a balancing act. The impact of one person probably isn't a big deal, if a search party goes looking for them that's huge. The impact from ten people in a temperate forest might recover in a week, while the same ten in an arctic tundra could take hundreds of years literally.

A ton of research, including mine, shows how significant time outside can be for the people and the environments they visit, so I am not willing to stop outright.

I might be willing to put in a bit more effort getting closer to "preserving" the environment than many people, but I think everyone should reflect on the impact they are having on the world.

More information on minimizing your impact in the backcountry can be found at https://lnt.org/research-resources/