Ah yes. Global warming aka Al Gore's piggy-bank.
I am sick and tired of all these "knowledgable" pundits asserting pontifically that we are doomed by this phenomena unless we take immediate preventive action! What ACTION? Close all the smoke-belching factories and lay-off millions world-wide? Make everyone buy a bicycle? No CO2 emission here! Sure, we are contributing to global warming ,in some fashion, but mother nature is the real culprit. Scientists have shown, by core samples, that the planet earth goes through phases over millions of years. What we are seeing now is the end of a retreating ice-age, and none of us will live long enough to see the REAL warming era
return to fry the earth. All the band-aid approaches espoused by the save-the earth people will do nothing to slow down nature's inevitable march toward a warmer planet earth.Enjoy youselves!

Posted By Willie on May 23, 2008, 11:34 AM

Well, this list leaves me distressed, not least of all because my home city is on it.

That aside, I do end up taking articles like this one into consideration when planning trips. I figure I have to prioritize somehow, so why not move endangered destinations up a few notches? I'd rather enjoy the Galapagos and Mt. Kilimanjaro now than take my chances. Although I'm fairly confident I'll be able to enjoy New York for a long, long time.

Posted By Michelle on May 23, 2008, 3:47 PM

By golly Willie is on to something here! We should continue driving our gaz=s-guzzling SUVs. Since this is all Mother Nature's fault, I no longer see a good reason to drive an economy car that gets 40mpg. I think I'll sell that tomorrow (or maybe just hold onto it since having lots of cars would probably be considered a financial asset by people like Willie) and get that ExpeNaviLorer I've always fancied. After all, nothing better than clogging our roadways with bloated 4x4 SUVs that will probably never go off-road anyway.

As an aside, when will people finally accept that the "S" in SUV is for Shopping Mall? Really, when was the last time an SUV owner did anything sport- or utility- based? (Hint: rarely)

Back to my original point (actually Wise Willie's original point), be damned with all the conservation efforts people! Let's eat more so we can grow fatter and slower. Let's drive bigger trucks because they protect us in crashes from bigger trucks (see definition of circular argument...). Let's burn more fossil fuels because there's plenty of them in Axis of Evil countries. I could go on and on, but why bother? I doubt this will be posted anway.

inca jones

Posted By inca jones on May 23, 2008, 11:48 PM

The fact that the US government has declared the polar bear an endangered species is actually good news. The polar bear was already endangered, and recognised as such by most countries in the world. Recognition of this fact by the US government means there is a legal obligation to do something about it.

Willie has swallowed the oil industry propaganda that this all about grand geological change. It aint. Sure, the earth is on a warming trend geologically but this is happening much more rapidly and is likely to be much more extreme purely as a result of human behaviour. This is a process that would normally take thousands of years but is now taking place in a couple of decades. We can actually track the vast changes that have taken place since the industrial revolution, which is a nanosecond in geological terms.

Posted By Caitlin on May 25, 2008, 7:05 AM

Kudos to Inca Jones!-he/she tells it like is, no one gets what is going on in our world!

Posted By sunshine on May 26, 2008, 5:52 PM

National Geographic's Center for Sustainable Destinations releases the results of a similar survey every year in Traveler magazine. If interested in the topic, it's worth checking out.

Find here...
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/info_and_resources.html#Destination_Scorecards

Posted By Patten Wood on July 14, 2008, 1:04 PM

This kind of news definitely influences our travel plans...we're planning a trip to Kilimanjaro in 2010, so we can experience the snow at the peak before it disappears...

Posted By sudo on October 16, 2008, 1:32 PM

Seeing places before they disappear - or become unaccessible. We had an opportunity to see Lebanon in 1975 - just about the time it became a very dangerous place to visit. We passed that by (to my great regret) to see some of Yugoslavia - which later had a a period where it was very difficult to visit. We managed to see Bosnia before some of its great monuments, like the bridge at Mostar, or Sarajevo. We were so taken with the country, we came back to see Kosovo and Macedonia. You have to make difficult choices all the time - if you get the chance to visit a great place, do it!

Posted By Susan McNeely on March 5, 2009, 7:12 PM