Oct 03 2007
Global warming tourism?
I was intrigued by an article in this weekend’s Seattle Times Pacific Magazine about a proposal to develop some of the unusual geological features of Eastern Washington into an interpretive tourist route focusing on climate change. In some ways it’s kind of goofy: I’m just not picturing a carload of tourists from Wisconsin schlepping from kiosk to kiosk across the state and dutifully snapping pictures of impending doom. On the other hand maybe it’s just the kind of thing needed to take global warming out of the category of abstract debate. The ultimate audio-visual aid.
There are of course a few logical problems. For example, the Missoula Floods happened as the last ice age was ending, 15,000 to 12,000 BP (Before the Present) and by the time the next ice age rolls around our ancestors will all be uploaded into computers anyway, so why should we care? Still, looking down into Dry Falls Lake from the highway and imagining that I’m about 300 feet from the surface of a giant river that’s moving at about 65 miles an hour — does have a tendency to make me humble.
To be honest, though, the real reason I’m so interested in this article is it talks about many of the issues I was pondering back in May of 1998 when I spent a week doing some writing and photography along the Columbia.