Global Voices » Lester Bolicenni

Global Pulse 2010: An invitation to talk to decision makers online

Lester Bolicenni — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:22:53 +0000

From March 29 to 31, Global Pulse 2010 aims to gather over 20.000 individuals and representatives of organisations in an online conversation dealing with topics ranging from human development to science and technologies.

The event is sponsored by US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the goal is to give world citizens an opportunity to voice opinions and share ideas for innovative solutions to social issues. According to USAID, the inspiration for the online event is a speech President Barack Obama gave in Cairo in June 2009 in which he said he would promote partnership with the rest of the world.

Ten topics of discussion

The event will start at 0 am (GMT) and will last 72 hours non-stop, and participants will be able to follow and comment in several live discussions simultaneously. All discussions will be led by featured opinion leaders, decision makers and NGO members, including Youssou N'Dour [fr], famous Senegalese singer, deeply engaged in the fight against malaria, Iqbal Z. Quadir, founder of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, and even Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online.

Participants from at least 128 countries will share and discuss on ten broad topics, listed here :

Inspiring a new generation
Empowering Women and Girls
Enabling the Essential Education
Building Stronger Partnerships
Exercising Political and Civil Rights
Promoting Global Health
Advancing Entrepreneurship, Trade & Economic Opportunity
Fostering Science, Technology & Innovation
Supporting a Sustainable Planet
Pursuing Grand Challenges

Innovative technology

Gathering thousands of people online at the same time could be tricky. Fortunately, the forum technology that will be used, IBM Jam, has been already been tested in previous events.

Bill Tipton took part in Habitat Jam - a three-day online event in 2005 to solicit ideas on urban sustainability. In a blog at the Global Dialogue Center he shares his experience:

I know this can work from participating in such an event in 2005 […] Tens of thousands of individuals – including government and business leaders, NGOs and specialists — came together to discuss real issues and concerns facing the world’s urban communities.

[…]

I still meet and work with people I met in that truly remarkable Jam and expect to meet other extraordinary individuals in Global Pulse in 2010.

Participating

To join the Global Pulse event, you only need a computer and internet access - and you also have to register in advance (for free). Before March 29, you can follow @globalpulse2010 on Twitter as well as the hashtag #gp2010. There is also a Facebook page with almost 700 fans, where suggestions have already been posted.

One idea by Oliver Mupila goes:

Query: Can Global Pulse suggest effective indicators for tracking the progress of grand corruption cases from referral to the investigating agencies, through to the Director of Prosecutions, onward to the courts and progress while they are in court without compromising the individuals right to a fair trial/hearing or reputation before they are convicted? What is considered good practice in this area and are there any countries that do this particularly well? And why are news writers in Africa not in good books [of] the government?

According to Dr. Rajiv Shah, Adminsitrator of USAID, the online summit will gather “individuals who are not normally seated at the table with key decision makers”. Could this be a move towards the future of democracy? It should at least be interesting to find out.

France: What would you do in The Game of Death?

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:02:33 +0000

A controversial French documentary called “How far will TV go: The Game of Death” sparked worldwide scandal on March 17 by broadcasting an experiment of a fake TV game show in which contestants were led to torture other players by giving them electric shocks. Most of the 80 test subjects complied without complaint.

This scene above is taken directly from the documentary, which was broadcast on the French television network France 2.

The fake game show, “Xtreme Zone”, reproduces the situational conditions of a psychological experiment conducted by American psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. In this new television version, a “questioner” asks a series of questions to a “candidate” locked in a box. For each wrong answer, the candidate is given an electrical shock. The intensity increases for each question. Of course, the candidate is an actor and everything but the actual subject of the experiment (the questioner) is made-up.

The show ends when the questioner refuses to go further (”rebels”) or sends twice the ultimate shock of 460V (”obeys”). Then the on-site psychologists reveal the truth to the questioner and film the reaction.

A televised experiment

This is the first time the experiment was televised, but the Milgram experiment was previously reproduced in many different countries with variations - and also once in a fictional scene of a film from 1979 by Henri Verneuil, called I As In Icarius (watch in French or with English subtitles).

One of the scientists of the show, Jean-Leon Beauvois [fr], researcher and lecturer in social psychology, relates [fr] the experiment on a social science forum. He explains his reasons for collaborating:

[A reason] that pushed me to accept [participating in the show] is the integration of the proposed research project in a broader political television, giving rise to a documentary on the abuses of networks and the hazards of reality TV.

Reproducing the Milgram experiment, he has expected similar results:

For the show we expected maximum obedience because we reproduced the Milgram situation in which 62.5% had received obedience. And indeed, 81% of our questioners choose to send the 460 volts electrical jolt twice.

He concludes, cautiously, that television is an institution where people are more prone to obey:

People do not need references like knowledge, science, etc… to obey a person who gives them immoral orders in an institutional context because they came to do what they were asked to do. they owe this predisposition to obedience to their education and the practice routine in their organizations.

Bloggers reactions

Unlike television viewers (the television ratings have been low so far) [fr], this transposition of the experiment on television has triggered many reactions from the blogosphere.

Many people have criticized the implementation of experience in the field of television. Andre Gunthert, historian and researcher in visual studies, refutes [fr] the previous analysis:

The Milgram experiment was about authority. However, its implementation on television does not prove the existence of an “authoritative” television, but rather a submission to the environnemental context. […] A television broadcast is a large machine in which the production process applies a certain pressure on the participant. It involves the mobilization of costly equipment, a team of several people, specially arranged premises reserved for that purpose, etc.. Struggling with the production once we have agreed to take part in it is hardly feasible, and would be like taking the controls of a Boeing after takeoff.

According to Virginia Spies [fr], semiotician and television expert, experimental conditions are distorted because it is primarily a game for the candidates, which would explain the differences in results:

Unlike the Milgram experiment, they do not recruit people by telling them it's a scientific experiment, but telling them they are candidates in a game show, which is totally different: Throughout the experiment, the candidates think that they are playing a game, which totally changes their perception of events.

“What would you do?”

However, this experiment will not remain without effect on viewers, as it makes each viewer reflect upon their own values, as Olivier Mauco on his blog Game in Society points out [fr]:

The great strength of this experience is that everyone may be one of the guinea pigs. The injunction “What would you do,” reinforced the proximity, not the empathy but the positioning. […] This is a moral debate because this debate is driven by relations between individual and a value system.

Many bloggers have wondered what would they do. But few dared to answer, like Jean-Marc Onkelix a Belgian viewer and blogger, who courageously expressed [fr] his doubts:

Would I have done any differently? Am I capable of committing, within the scope of any kind of authority, an act so irreparable, so far from my world view, so different from my morality? It's a duty for me to respect all individuals without discrimination, should I be one of the torturers? I confess I am tempted to say no, but in these cases, are all the necessary discernment, the vision of reality, still there? Are we ready to push back in spite of everyhting and risking our own interest to stay consistent with our morality?

If we take this poll as any indication [fr], it seems that a majority of Internet users think they are capable of resisting authority. It will be interesting to see whether the future will prove them right.

Climate Change Skeptics Incited by Leaked Emails

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:00:27 +0000

On the eve of the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, the scientific community that studies global warming has recently come under the spotlight. The reason: hundreds of emails and documents spanning exchanges between officials from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) between 1996 and 2009, have recently been hacked and posted online, as confirmed by the New York Times.

According to climate change skeptics, the emails supposedly offer evidence that scientists manipulated data to match predictions of temperature changes made by computers. The scandal has already become popularly known as “Climategate” although many scientists and bloggers insist it appears to be a case of attempted political manipulation.

Documents hacked

The emails and documents have been posted on a Russian server, and continue to be shared on many websites and over the P2P networks.

Robert Graham, a specialist in computer security, issued, on his website Errata Security, a few assumptions about the hacker:

The data is oddly specific. Only Phil Jones e-mails were copied, and a lot of the data that was hacked is specific to certain climate controversies. If it was not an insider, it was certainly somebody familiar with the central debate about reproducibility of climate reconstructions. The fact that they posted the data to an anonymous FTP site in Russia also points to somebody who is active in the hacking community. This narrows things down. I suspect that at the end of the data, they'll find some sort of computer administrator working for CRU.

The CRU quickly acknowledged the theft and the authenticity of documents, through the voice of its director Phil Jones, one of the main participants in the scandal.

“Mike's Nature trick”

The climate change skeptics have seized on Climategate as evidence that there is room for doubt about the reality of global warming. Several blogs and news websites have linked to the “suspicious” emails. An email from Phil Jones got the full treatment on several blogs and news websites for mentioning something called “Mike's Nature trick” that refers to a “trick” used by Michael Mann to “mask a decline” (instead of an expected rise) in temperature. “Did they invent the numbers?” asks Sophie Verney-Caillat on Rue89.com [fr].

Skeptics have their answer. Jean S, on the website ClimateAudit, shows graphs from several different sources that help illustrate claims of data manipulation.

A coordinated manipulation

Lubos Motl Pilsen, who describes himself as a “conservative physicist” on his blog The Reference Frame, says he read through the files and emails thoroughly. He sees evidence that scientist not only invented data, but also manipulated stakeholders. He found a file “explaining 20 recommendations for a good propagandist”, on how to “use emotions”, the necessity to “connect alarm with ‘home' not with ‘faraway regions', and so on”. Additionally, he writes, “the climate scientists also synchronize their efforts to block certain papers from being published, or even eliminate a journal (Climate Research) from a de facto list of peer-reviewed journals”.

This plot to discredit climate change science has been enabled by mainstream media, according to bloggers who reprimand their stance. Vincent Bénard, on his blog Objectif Liberté (Destination Freedom), describes [fr] how (french) media failed to follow-up:

Par contre, il est tout à fait regrettable que les médias, et notamment les médias hexagonaux, adoptent sur ces questions, de façon quasi pavlovienne, la thèse des chercheurs du GIEC. Ils adoptent de ce fait une posture purement idéologique et oublient toutes les bases du journalisme sérieux: vérification de l'authenticité (faite par le New York Times et ses pairs anglo-américains), analyse, recoupements, et conclusions. Nos journalistes environnementaux écrivent d'abord la conclusion, puis l'habillent d'analyses à l'emporte pièce, en tenant pour acquis un seul point de vue et en dénigrant par avance toute opposition.

It is quite unfortunate that the media, including french media, jump on these questions about the thesis of the IPCC scientists, in an almost Pavlovian way. Their stance is purely ideological and they forget all the basis of journalism: confirmation of authenticity (by the New York Times and its Anglo-American peers), analysis, crosschecks, and conclusions. Our environmental journalists write the conclusion first, and then adorn it with smart analyses, assuming a single point of view and belittling any opposition in advance.

Image from vadlo.com

“Much Ado About Nothing”?

UEA and CRU have refuted the charges that any of their data is false. In an article posted on the website of the university, they state that 95% of climatic data collected has been published. According to them, “… there is nothing in the material stolen which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation.”

According to ClimateChange, a group blog by American and European scientists, the plot the skeptics claim to have unveiled is nowhere to be found:

There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders' from our socialist / communist / vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Concerning the Mike's Nature trick, they state that's all about vocabulary :

Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all.

The Newtongate

The blog Carbon Fixated, dedicated to photosynthesis and climate change, dismissed the plot with humour. He imagined what would happen if letters from Newton to other scientists had been made public:

If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, [you] should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.

Transparency

It is unclear what impact Climategate will have on the Copenhagen summit, but we can hope it may at least have had a positive effect of encouraging transparent debate, as suggested by the famous American physicist Richard Feynman in 1974:

It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked – to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.”

France: Language Lessons in the Park

Lester Bolicenni — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:06:22 +0000

Sarah Hay blogs about the French lessons she gives to a group of young Afghan asylum seekers in a park in Paris. “They’re incredibly keen that I learn the Pashto for everything I teach them to the point of comical mishap, for example when I taught them the word metro…”

Online Tools to Monitor Climate Change

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:41:37 +0000

Leading up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December 2009, here is a sample of online tools to monitor climate change. Using these tools, ordinary people can learn more about the effects, and help push decision makers to deal with solutions.

In the field

Tracking climate change impacts generally starts in the field. James Balog, a photographer, has been to Alaska, USA, to record time-lapse ice cap melting. You can see the stunning results of his photography in this video:

If you don't have expensive cameras and spare-time to journey to Alaska, another approach would be to read the experiences of people on the frontline.

On the Frontline of the Climate Change is a project cataloging first-hand stories on the impacts of climate change, in indigenous communities, on small islands, and other vulnerable communities. The forums contains numerous recent contributions by email, mostly from South Asia and Africa. One contributor and consultant for African development, George Katunguka, writes from Uganda:

The impact of climate change has not received much prominence in my country Uganda but such changes and its effects are painfully being felt. In 2025, Uganda is likely to experience water stress according to recent report on water resources. People are dying of starvation and hunger like the recent case in Teso Region, Eastern Uganda; there are changes in water ecosystems like the dwindling levels of Lake Victoria; unpredictable seasons, loss of soil fertility and loss of agricultural output and hence increased household poverty and its implications. What are we doing to avert this looming catastrophe?

From outer space to Google Earth

Observation from the field can be double-checked from high ground. Space is the lookout from which to observe and analyze earth as a whole. It's difficult to get a seat on a spaceship, but fortunately, it's easy to find online satellite images from above.

Satellite pictures of Aral Sea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan 1973/2004

Besides space agencies and companies offering their services to NGOs, scientists and common people, the United Nations Environment Programme created an online atlas indexing the changes occurring in different parts of the world through decades. All the satellite pictures can be viewed on Google Earth's virtual globe, as their official blog reports:

In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it.

Many more resources can be found on blogs and websites of international organisations. Readers, feel free to add your own sources in the comment section.

Science for decision makers

Observation is a core issue for decision makers. Governments initiate surveys to understand the phenomenon and how to mitigate the impacts.

The European Commission and European Space Agency initiated a space program in 1998, called the Global Monitoring Environmental Security (GMES), to sketch real-time changes from multi-source data. The project is due to report back in 2014, with an annexed security segment.

Developing countries impacted most directly by climate change, have taken a similar steps like the recent satellites launch by India to study climate change. Such information can help countries plan for new environmental and economic policies.

In South Africa, a new economy-oriented tool has been created for exactly this purpose. AllAfrica reports :

Now, an analytical tool based on a study, Mapping South African Farming Sector Vulnerability to Climate Change and Variability, has been developed to help policy-planners identify the communities most vulnerable to climate change and help them prepare for radically different farming conditions.

Safeguarding the world's cultural heritage

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:22:24 +0000

Many organisations working to preserve global cultural heritage - both tangible and intangible - have been using online media to support their efforts.

On October 6, the World Monument Fund (WMF) published the 2010 world monument watch list plotting the dozens of villages, buildings, bridges and monuments at risk of destruction on an interactive Google map. The WMF in New York is one of many organizations, like Global Heritage Fund, World Heritage Center (part of UNESCO), financing projects to preserve world cultural heritage sites.

Becoming a heritage site

While a nomination for cultural heritage site or monument can be a useful step on the way to acquiring funds for preservation, an additional benefit can be a general rise in tourism to the sites in question. Moreover, the nomination often stimulates national or local pride.

Singaporean university lecturer Tan Wee Cheng created a Facebook group, asking for Singapore sites to be included on the World Heritage list:

As at the end of Dec 08, there are 878 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 145 countries but none in Singapore. Are there really no sites in Singapore worthy of such an honour? I have visited a few hundred WHS round the world and am convinced that certain sites in Singapore deserve to be listed, for they do posses what UNESCO calls sites with “outstanding universal value”.

Conflicts can also help influence decisions. After the violent clashes between ethnic Uighurs (Uyghurs) and Chinese Hans in Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city, a petition had been submitted online to claim World Heritage Status for the city, threatened to be demolished.

Online video claiming World Heritage Status for Kashgar

Man is a threat

Humans themselves are almost always the source of the dangers, as this article written by Dr. Anjana Khatwa, education coordinator for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage, points out:

Threats to World Heritage Sites come in many forms: armed conflict and war, wanton destruction, natural disasters, pollution, poaching, unplanned construction and uncontrolled tourism.

This idea is shared by WMF President Bonnie Burnham in her address for the launch of the 2008 World Monuments Watch List of Most Endangered Sites:

On this list, man is indeed the real ennemy. But, just as we caused the damage in the first place, we have the power to repair it, by taking our responsibility as caretakers of the world’s cultural heritage seriously. So today we are sounding the alarm, using the World Monuments Watch List to demonstrate, through the vivid examples of beloved places around the world, the importance of working together to meet these challenges and join forces to protect our world’s shared architectural heritage.

Innovating answers

Since 2003, UNESCO has also been working to safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage like languages, dances, and handcraft techniques. New technologies and the Internet could be a necessary breakthrough in preventing some cultural and intangible heritage from vanishing.

CyArk, a non-profit entity, is working on the “500 Challenge”. This project intends to make a digital model of cultural heritage sites by laser scanning, to create an open archive of the data.

Rapa Nui Cyark project

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) also has a project to preserve and protect oral and intangible heritage, Creative Heritage Project: IP Guidelines for Documenting, Recording and Digitizing Intangible Cultural Heritage:

New technologies provide communities with fresh opportunities to document and digitize expressions of their traditional cultures, meeting the strong desire of communities to preserve, promote and pass on their cultural heritage to succeeding generations.

This is a credo shared by Malian blogger Boukary Konate, in talking about African folk tales [in Bambara] on his personal blog, Fasokan:

Bi bi in na, an bɛɛ bɛ k’a kɔlɔsi sisan k’o ko ninnu bɛ ka ban dɔɔni dɔɔni. N kɛlen kɔ ka n yɛrɛ ɲininkan, ye jaabi min sɔrɔ, o de ye ka u sɛbɛen an ka kanw na, k’u bayɛlɛma kan wɛrɛw la, k’u bila ɛntɛrinɛti kan. O b’a to u tɛ tunun wa u na lakodɔn mɔgɔ wɛrɛw fɛ.

We all observe their disappearance, and after thinking about it a lot, i found the solution: to write them down in our language, to translate them in another languages, then keep them on the Internet. It will prevent them from disappearing and allow other people to learn about them.

Global: New list of endangered cultural heritage sites

Lester Bolicenni — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:44:07 +0000

On October 6, the World Monument Fund will publish the 2010 Watch list, a biennial program drawing attention on endangered cultural heritage sites around the world.

USA: Pilgrimage into the Wild

Lester Bolicenni — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:09:03 +0000

On August 24, two young hikers, a 19 year-old American and a 21 years-old Chinese man were found lost on Stampede Trail, near Fairbanks, Alaska. Troopers who discovered them said they wore only urban clothes and carried little food. It's not the first time unprepared travelers have been found in this wild and inhospitable area.

Like others before them, they had set out to see the “Magic Bus”, one of the two main characters of a best-selling book, Into the Wild from 1996. It was later adapted to screenplay by Sean Penn who also directed the movie in 2007.

The book, by Jon Krakauer, tells the true story of Christopher “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless, a college graduate who left behind friends and family for an odyssey through American roads that would lead to his fateful goal: Alaska. He was found dead in 1992 in a converted public bus that used to be a hunters' shelter.

There are still questions about the actual cause of death, ranging from starvation to poisoning or injury that lends mystery to the story.

Christopher McCandless in the front of the "Magic Bus" (photography found in his own camera)

According to The Star newspaper in Canada, about 100 people from around the world follow in McCandless' footsteps on pilgrimages every year. He is considered a symbol of freedom and man's return to nature.

Pilgrimages to the bus

Adventure traveler and blogger Dan of The road chose me, describes the difficulties he had journeying all the way to the spot where McCandless died.

I met two cool Austrian characters, Thomas and (roll the ‘R’) Roland on the Dalton Highway and it took all of 10 seconds to convince them to join me on a trip to ‘The Bus’. We were able to drive about 12.5 miles down Stampede Road before we had to leave the vehicles behind and continue on foot. The first hour and a half of hiking the next morning saw us travel on a really good quad trail, through some small swamps, through a couple of shin-deep river crossings and spat us out at the edge of the Teklinika River.

They wandered upstream, and found a place to cross the river. “I was more than a bit scared when it reached mid-thigh in depth and began to really push hard,” writes Dan. Eventually they reached “Fairbanks Bus 142″:

When bus 142 appeared on the side of the trail, seemingly out of thin air I was quite startled […] but somehow wasn’t ready to be there yet. I paused on the edge of the clearing for a moment, then again in the doorway, trying to take everything in. Even though I’d never been there before, it was very familiar - from the description in the book, the movie and also from the pictures I’ve seen online.

I thought The Magic Bus would be a quiet, sad place to spend time - I was quite surprised to find the opposite was the case.

Desecration of the bus

It seems some visitors don't respect this ‘mausoleum'. Fairbanks, Alaska blogger Ed Plumb describes this in his blog The Edventures. About his second visit to the bus, he wrote:

So we arrived at the bus to find it in complete disarray. A handful of windows had been bashed in, broken glass was scattered about, and most of the items in the bus had been overturned. Garbage was strewn all around the perimiter and into the adjacent stand of spruce trees.

Of course, the bus doesn't only attract fearless adventurers or spoilers. Painter and blogger Heather Horton exhibits a painting on her website inspired by her visit to the bus:

"Fairbanks Bus 142", courtesy of Heather Horton

Chris McCandless was on my mind when I worked on this painting as much as he was when I was actually at the bus. Fortunately I took a lot of photo reference which helps to bring the emotions and memories back in a flood. I thought of the 113 days he spent at the bus, what he might have thought about, the windows he looked through, the reflections he saw within himself as much as through the panes of glass. This painting is the beginning of my own journey by examining where he experienced the last, fateful part of his own odyssey.

Unfortunately, these numerous expeditions can be a strain on the local community when costly rescue missions are involved. Consequently, there has been talk among Alaskans of one day moving the “Magic Bus” to somewhere that would be easier for visitors to access.

USA: Video contest on H1N1 flu prevention

Lester Bolicenni — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:32:40 +0000

Corine Clesnes, on her blog Big Picture, notes [fr] that the US government launched the 2009 Flu Prevention PSA Contest, to promote the best ‘viral' videos' on flu prevention.

India: Beer is against Indian culture?

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:11:08 +0000

Amit Varma, on India Uncut, wonders if beer is against Indian culture, after the Indian People's Party (BPJ) protested in opposition to a female minister who attended “a beer promotion party”.

Indonesia, USA: Segway the symbol of US economy failure?

Lester Bolicenni — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:56:35 +0000

Jotman thinks the Segway PT, quoted as “the world's first self-balancing human transporter”, symbolizes everything that is wrong with the American economy.

Nepal: The not so pristine Himalayas

Lester Bolicenni — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:21:23 +0000

On travel blog Worldhum, Joanna Kakissis reports that climate-change watchdog group Eco Everest has created a successful new “cash for trash” program that rewards climbers for the waste they bring down from Mount Everest.