The Antarctic is left defenceless to tourism
Tourism booms again, but continent has no mandatory protection against visitors by Rod McGuirk Sunday 17 March 2013
Across most of Earth, a tourist attraction that sees 35,000 visitors a year can safely be labelled sleepy. But when it's Antarctica, every footstep matters. Tourism is rebounding here five years after the financial crisis and is now growing fast, with the number of cruise ship passengers visiting doubling in a year.
Although the downturn triggered by the economic collapse created an opportunity for the 28 countries that share responsibility through the Antarctic Treaty to set rules to manage tourism, little has been done. These countries have made 27 non-binding recommendations on tourism since 1966, but just two mandatory rules – and neither of those is yet in force.
A 2004 agreement requiring tourism operators to be insured to cover possible rescue operations or medical evacuations has been ratified by only 11 of the 28. A 2009 agreement barring ships carrying more than 500 passengers from landing tourists – a measure to protect trampled sites – has the legal backing of just two countries, Japan and Uruguay. The United States, by far the biggest source of tourists, has not signed either measure.
The United Nations' shipping agency, the International Maritime Organisation, intends to enforce a Polar Code, detailing safety standards for ships entering both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It was supposed to be force by 2013, but the IMO now says it won't be adopted before 2014, and after that it will take another 18 months for it to be implemented. Alan Hemmings, an environmental consultant on polar regions, said the current lack of standards is a problem because increasing numbers of cruise ships are negotiating the poorly charted and storm-prone seas without ice-strengthened hulls as Antarctic legs are added to South American, South Pacific and around-the-world cruises.
Antarctic tourism has grown from fewer than 2,000 visitors a year in the 1980s to more than 46,000 in 2007-08. Then the numbers plummeted, bottoming out at fewer than 27,000 in 2011-12. The Rhode Island-based International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators doesn't have its final 2012-13 figures yet but estimates close to 35,000 visitors this season, which runs from November to the end of March. The group expects slightly more tourists next year.
It's not just the numbers of tourists but their activities that are changing, said Mr Hemmings, who has been part of a delegation representing New Zealand in some Antarctic Treaty discussions. "What used to be Antarctic tourism in the late 1980s through the 1990s was generally people of middle age or older. They looked at wildlife, historic sites and maybe visited one current station," he said. "Now people want to go paragliding, waterskiing, diving or a variety of other things."
Antarctic New Zealand's environment manager, Neil Gilbert, said more robust monitoring is needed to track the impacts of tourism. "The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the globe. We really don't know what additional impact those tourism numbers are having on what is already a significantly changing environment."
There are fears that habitats will be trampled, that tourists will introduce exotic species or microbes or will transfer native flora and fauna to parts of the continent where they never before existed. A major concern is that a large cruise ship carrying thousands of passengers will run into trouble in these ice-clogged, storm-prone and poorly charted waters, creating an environmentally disastrous oil spill.
To reduce the risk of spills, the IMO barred the use of heavy fuel oil below 60 degrees latitude south in 2011. That was a blow to operators of large cruise ships.
Steve Wellmeier, administrative director of the tour operators' group, said the ban initially slashed cruise passenger numbers by two-thirds. But it was only a temporary obstacle to industry growth; large ocean liners can comply with the ban by using lighter fuels.
Questions:
1. What is the main point of the article?
2. How many tourists go to Antarctica every year?
3. How many countries share control of Antarctica?
4. Why are they having trouble enforcing tourism rules?
5. How has the kind of tourist who goes to Antarctica now changed?
6. What problems could the tourists cause to the region?
60 Years After Man First Climbed Everest, the Mountain Is a Mess By Bryan Walsh May 29, 2013
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Mount Everest for the first time 60 years ago today. Climbing is more common now — and the mountain has become a trash heap
Time can erode even the greatest of achievements, as they’re repeated or surpassed: think Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile, Chuck Yeager’s smashing of the sound barrier, Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. Perhaps that has happened to Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who 60 years ago today became the first people to reach the peak of Mount Everest. It was a mountain that had defeated or killed all who had tried before, and Hillary and Norgay were only able to remain on the peak for 15 minutes before they had to begin descending, low on oxygen. They truly went where no man had gone before.
Today, though, Everest’s peak is a decidedly less lonely place. More than 3,500 people have successfully climbed the 29,029 ft. (8,848 m) mountain — and more than a tenth of that number scaled the peak just over the past year. On one day alone in 2012, 234 climbers reached the peak. As more and more people try to test themselves against Everest — often paying over $100,000 for a “guided climb” — this desolate mountain is becoming as crowded as a Tokyo subway car at rush hour. Climbers have complained about waiting for hours in bottlenecks on the way to the summit, a situation that isn’t just uncomfortable — it’s cold and windy up there — but downright dangerous. If bad weather strikes during one of those bottlenecks, climbers can and do die, as happened in the sudden 1996 blizzard that took the lives of eight climbers near the summit, a disaster that later became the Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air.
But the tiresome, dangerous crowds aren’t the only problems on Everest. All those climbers need to bring a lot of gear — and much of that gear ends up being left on the mountain, sometimes even the summit itself. Mount Everest — once the most remote and forbidding spot on the planet — is becoming the world’s tallest trash heap.
Here’s mountaineer Mark Jenkins writing in National Geographic about the state of Everest:
The two standard routes, the Northeast Ridge and the Southeast Ridge, are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted, with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement befouling the high camps. And then there are the deaths. Besides the four climbers who perished on the Southeast Ridge, six others lost their lives in 2012, including three Sherpas.
Expedition teams have left empty oxygen canisters, torn tents and other leftover equipment along the paths that lead from base camp to the summit. And because Everest is so cold and icy, the waste that’s left there, stays there, preserved for all time.
You can’t necessarily blame the climbers, especially inexperienced ones, for their littering habit. Even under the best conditions, climbing the tallest mountain in the world is exhausting, dangerous work. Dropping used supplies on the mountain rather than carrying them can save vital energy and weight. It’s not exactly equivalent to tossing a beer can in a city park, but the accumulated trash is still steadily ruining a unique place on earth. “You are surrounded by filth,” mountaineer Paul Thelen told Germany’s Die Welt recently.
But the good news is that some mountaineers are taking it upon themselves to clean up Everest. Thelen and his friend Eberhard Schaaf are part of the annual Eco Everest Expedition, which has been cleaning up trash from base camp to the summit since 2008. So far they’ve collected over 13 tons of garbage, as well as a whole lot of frozen excrement and the occasional frozen corpse. (Nothing ever goes away on Everest.) And just recently a joint India-Nepal military team collected over 2 tons of garbage on the slopes of the mountain.
The association estimates that there might still be 10 tons of trash left on the mountain, and if the number of climbers on Everest keeps increasing, that figure will only grow. There’s no beating Hillary and Norgay, who pulled off a feat 60 years ago that many thought was physically impossible. But at least the thousands of climbers who have followed in their footsteps can take better care of this magnificent mountain.
Questions:
1. What is the main point of the article?
2. How many people have now climbed Everest?
3. How expensive can a guided tour up the mountain cost?
4. How is the crowding near the summit dangerous?
5. Why does the trash left up on the mountain stay there forever?
6. How are people trying to fix the garbage problem?
Space tourism: to infinity and beyond?
The first tourist flight into space is scheduled for next year, and it's cheaper than you'd think. But is this the final frontier for luxury travel, or a highly dangerous sport?
Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 17 June 2012
At the west end of a posh part of London, a smart new office opened its doors to the public earlier this year. Its front window proclaims, in large letters, the simple motto: "Space is Virgin Territory". Here, amid the trappings of the past, is travel's future.
Inside the office, young men and women are busy working at computers and telephones while decorators put finishing touches to plush, glass-walled rooms. These are the new UK headquarters of Virgin Galactic, which Richard Branson hopes will create an entirely new tourism market – in outer space.
It has cost Branson more than £162m ($268 million) to design and build a fleet of WhiteKnightTwo motherships and smaller SpaceShipTwo planes, which will whisk customers more than 100km above the Earth's surface, where our planet's atmosphere ends and space begins. The technology is striking and innovative.
Strapped to the belly of a jet-powered mothership, each spaceplane – carrying two pilots and six passengers – will take off from a runway, ascending until it reaches an altitude of 15km. There will be a stomach-churning lurch as the spaceplane is released; its rocket engine will ignite; and passengers will be rammed back in their seats as the craft soars upwards at a speed of more than 4,000km/h. Outside, the blue sky will turn black as the craft hurtles out of the atmosphere.
After 90 seconds, the pilot will cut the engine and passengers will coast in weightless silence as their spaceplane glides into space. More than 100km below, the curve of the Earth will be clearly visible against the dark background of space. Passengers will have six or seven minutes to float round the cabin and indulge in an ecstasy of camera-clicking before their ship starts to arc downwards. Its stubby wings will then be pointed upwards to turn the craft into a giant shuttlecock that will "flutter" back to Earth. Back down at an altitude of around 15km, its wings will be returned to their original configuration and the craft will glide to an airport landing. The day of the space tourist will have arrived.
Among those booked on Virgin Galactic's first mission are Branson, his son Sam and daughter Holly. Angelina Jolie is scheduled for an early flight, as is her partner, Brad Pitt. Others booking the £125,000 journey include Ashton Kutcher, Formula 1 drivers Rubens Barrichello and Niki Lauda, and scientists James Lovelock and Stephen Hawking; Princess Beatrice and Paris Hilton also make appearances on early flight schedules.
Virgin Galactic – which Branson describes as "by far and away my boldest venture" – has so far received deposits from 520 customers who want to escape Earth, albeit for a very short period of time. First flights are scheduled for the end of 2013. But Branson is not without competition, as will be apparent this week in London when delegates gather for the third European conference on space tourism. The event will reveal the startling progress that has been made in an industry that only existed in science-fiction writers' minds a couple of decades ago.
For example, Andrew Nelson, CEO of the aerospace consortium XCOR, based in Mojave, California, is scheduled to report on the progress of his Lynx spacecraft. It is designed to take off and land like a plane. Lynx has room for just a pilot and one passenger, and trials are set to start this year with commercial launches in 2014. The Russian company Orbital Technologies made headlines last year when it revealed plans to construct a Hotel in the Heavens. In this orbiting, four-room guest house, customers will be able to cavort in zero gravity for several days – though at a price: £500,000 for a seat on the Soyuz rocket to take them into orbit and a further £100,000 for a five-night stay. Food will be microwaved, there will be no alcohol and the water will be recycled. On the other hand, the views will be out of this world.
A key common factor for these projects is the price-tag: steep but not prohibitive. It costs around £30,000 to £75,000 to make an attempt to climb Mount Everest, for example, and it is no coincidence that flights by Virgin Galactic and XCOR are priced only slightly higher – to capture the high-adventure tourism market dominated by wealthy people.
This is scarcely bringing spaceflight to the masses, of course, but it will make it more available than has previously been the case. To date only seven people, all billionaires, have bought their way into space for a week's stay at the International Space Station (ISS). The most recent of these was Guy Laliberté, the Canadian founder of Cirque du Soleil, who paid £22m for a flight in which he went to the ISS before donning a clown's red nose for his descent to Earth in a Soyuz capsule.