We already told you that carbon dioxide could pass a daily average of 400 parts per million (ppm) sometime this May — an atmospheric concentration not seen in human history, and generally a sign that we’re passing into the climatological period known as “the gnashing of teeth.” The New York Times now reports that we’ve Usain Bolted past that milestone:

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

The front-page story then trots out a sad-face-mask Greek chorus of credible climate scientists whose responses justifiably run the parental gamut between “I’m not mad at you — just disappointed” and “get out of my house.”

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Translation: “Get into college? Not with those grades.”

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

“How can you live like this? I didn’t know your room could even get that dirty.”

“It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a Columbia University earth scientist.

“I don’t know why your father and I even try anymore.”

“It takes a long time to melt ice, but we’re doing it,” Dr. Keeling said. “It’s scary.”

“You do great when you apply yourself to something — like those damn videogames.”

“If you start turning the Titanic long before you hit the iceberg, you can go clear without even spilling a drink of a passenger on deck,” said Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at the Pennsylvania State University. “If you wait until you’re really close, spilling a lot of drinks is the best you can hope for.”

“I told you to take the dog out, but it’s too late. Now you have to clean up the carpet.”

“If you’re looking to stave off climate perturbations that I don’t believe our culture is ready to adapt to, then significant reductions in CO2 emissions have to occur right away,” said Mark Pagani, a Yale geochemist who studies climates of the past. “I feel like the time to do something was yesterday.”

“This is the last time I’m going to tell you. I’m going to Moe’s.”

The worst part is there are more do-not-pass-go milestones to come: Hourly readings above 400 ppm started last month, daily averages are reaching 400 ppm now, and it’s likely a monthly average above 400 ppm will arrive in the near future. Unless we can stop blasting through carbon thresholds, Science is poised to be very disappointed in us for the foreseeable future. Go to your room.

Gretchen Rubin has found the secret to happiness. OK, that may be overselling it a bit, but she’s made it her literal business to get closer to it through The Happiness Project. Initially a namesake best-selling book, it’s since morphed into a series of books (the latest: Happier At Home), a blog, a rapt online community, and an ongoing movement to unify science, psychology, and culture in the pursuit of deeper contentment. Of course, with such an amorphous destination, she’s learned the truism behind the cliché that it’s “more about the journey” — but maybe don’t use the J-word word around Rubin.

“Some people want to talk about a journey,” Rubin says. “Well, that’s not an idea that resonates with me – I love the idea of a project. That’s something that whets my appetite.”

Nervous supporters worried that her prescription for happiness might intimidate readers at the starting line; some equated the idea of a “project” with onerous homework. But Rubin, a Yale Law School graduate and former editor of the Yale Law Journal, opened her process to public dialogue and sought to engineer her methodology to apply to any personality type. That dialogue continues to this day on The Happiness Project.

“There’s no one right way to do it, because people are very different,” she says. “People have different vocabularies. I love making resolutions, and having lists, and charts — and for some people that would drive them crazy. But for some people it is about a journey — so you have to find the approach that works for you, the metaphor that works for you.”

We talked with Rubin over the phone about The Happiness Project, and how personal moves toward a happier life can lead to a better, healthier planet for everybody.

Q. What inspired this initial journey to tackle something as all-encompassing as happiness? How did you boil down tackling such a huge-sounding project?

A. I was stuck on a city bus in the pouring rain, and I thought, “What do I want from life, anyway? I want to be happy!” It hit me like a flash. So I went to the library and got this giant stack of books about happiness to figure out what I could do. It seemed very confusing in the beginning, because there’s a million different pieces, and everything’s tangled up with everything else. It was very intellectually challenging to figure out, where do I start and how do I do it in a systematic way. So I drilled down into things like home, possessions, body, neighborhood. Every month I focused on a different aspect of life and figured out what concrete resolutions I could do to make my experience of life happier.

Q. Were you predisposed to do this? For instance, you have a law degree, yet you made a definitive choice to be a writer — a choice that would seem to be informed by a move toward happiness.

A. Certainly that experience showed me you can make a change that will profoundly affect your life. It had a big effect on me. I was inclined to believe I could make my life happier.

When I started I was pretty happy — which is pretty true around the world. [If you look at studies], the majority of people say they are pretty happy. But I realized that I didn’t spend enough time thinking about if I could be happier, or even appreciating the happiness I already had.

Q. I think a lot of people might think of “being happy” as pure relaxation — lounging on a beach, say. But for you and your followers, it can seem like a much more engaged and active process than that.

A. It’s really a mindful examination of your life, your values, and your own interests. You have to find the approach that works for you, the metaphor that works for you. What truly makes you happy [or] unhappy? How would you bring that into your life? For someone like me, having a chart where I check it off is a great way to make sure I keep up with the things that I do. And for someone else, they might find a different way.

Q. If someone is feeling stuck, where do they start to jump-start the process of finding a better way to personal happiness?

A. One thing that I see is that people are just exhausted. They train themselves into thinking they can get by on five hours of sleep and it’s just not true. They desperately need more sleep. That’s a very obvious thing, a very simple thing that you can be doing to your detriment year after year.

[Also,] one of the things that contemporary scientists and ancient philosophers agree about is that relationships are a key to happiness. In the end, that is what is the key thing for happiness. So when you’re getting started, anything that’s going to give you new relationships, or deepen existing ones, is something that’ll make you happy. If you’re thinking about joining a book group, or taking a college class, or seeing if someone that seems cool from work could become a good friend — if you put a little effort into it, those are the types of things that can really pay off.

Also, your home: It’s a huge part of our life. We all want to have the feeling that it’s a place of comfort, security, rest. [It's a place of] engagement, but also solitude. It’s important to think, How could I change my experience of just being at home? It can be as simple as framing a poster you’ve had for two years, or making a shrine to France — whatever it might be that makes your home more comfortable and relaxing, more pleasant.

Q. Recently there’s been some work, through the Happiness Initiative and others, into getting policymakers to pay attention to happiness as a metric for success — moving away from “gross national product” to “gross national happiness.” Have you had any involvement or insight into that movement?

A. It’s the subject of a huge amount of study and activity — many people are fascinated by how you measure it, how would you understand how different cultures look at it, etc. I certainly think if people are happier they behave better and are more interested in the problems of the world and other people. But that for me is a justification why people should work on their own happiness. I’m very much focused on the individual — what could you do? Because that’s what’s really within our direct control. [Wider metrics are] important and valuable, but I’m interested in what you could do — what I could do — tomorrow. I’m very practical.

Q. You talk about William Butler Yeats inspiring your idea of “an atmosphere of growth” being essential to happiness: “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” You say that can include growing in monetary or material wealth. How do you separate that from pure consumerism, or a focus on negative material growth within the pursuit of happiness?

A. They are conflated. People will talk about desire for any object as materialism, when what they mean is an overemphasis on the power of objects to make us happy [or give us] prestige — which is clearly not something that makes us happy. On the other hand, I feel like many people who are focused on talking about materialism completely dismiss any role for possessions in a happy life. That is just not the common experience of mankind — look around. The common experience of mankind is that people are very engaged with possessions. Possessions allow us to project our identity into our environment, they are a reminder of the people and places and activities that we love. There’s a lot of aesthetic feeling tied up in objects.

One of the things about human nature is that when [humans] love something, they kind of want to own it. People go to museums, but people who love art who can afford it seem to buy it. There’s an impulse, and it’s not all about “materialism” — when we use that [term] in that negative way. I think [materialism can include] respect for beauty, wanting to claim something, or endorse it in a way. I think it’s very complicated. Ever since law school, I’ve been very interested in people’s relationship with objects and possessions. And so this has always been an interest of mine, and it’s only a small part of happiness, but it’s very complicated.

Q. How can people differentiate between those types of materialism?

A. People feel very worked up about the relationship between happiness and money, happiness and possessions. [But] for the average person, you don’t have to figure it out on a philosophical level. But you can ask yourself, “are my possessions making me happier or not?” I’ll probably be happier if I get rid of everything I don’t need, don’t use, don’t love, and I’m surrounded by things that I really use and want, and give everything else to someone else who can do a better job. I’ll be happier if I don’t use retail therapy as a way to change my mood, if I try to respect the environment, and my own budget, and not get carried away with it.

Q. You came up with an interesting phrase regarding this complex relationship to possessions — “spending out.” Can you tell me a bit more?

A. When I wrote about it, I thought I was the only one in the world who had this issue, but it turns out to be very common. I have a hoarding nature, where I’ll save things, or I won’t use them because I feel like I can’t risk that something would happen to them. “Spend out” reminds me that I should use things up and put things into circulation. That implies ideas, too. I used to have this impulse: “That’s a really great idea, so I have to hold that in reserve in case I need it.” Now I realize it’s better for creativity to always pour that out. Use it up, and that’s when you get more. I’ve learned to trust in that.

One woman told me a story about how when her mother died, they cleaned out the house and found a set of china that [the woman] had never seen in her entire life. Somehow no occasion was special enough for her mother to use that fancy china. So now she uses that china every day. Use it up, put it to work, let it break, let it run out. Another friend bought fancy truffle oil, saved it, and then it went bad. Holding things back needlessly is actually wasteful — it’s the same as throwing it away.

Q. I know you’ve read some of our own David Roberts’ idea of the medium chill — “stepping off the aspirational treadmill, forgoing some material opportunities and accepting some material constraints in exchange for more time to spend on relationships and experiences.” How does this square with The Happiness Project?

A. One thing I caution against is false choices. I can work all the time, sacrifice my relationships, and have a lot of money, material goods, and success; or I can have healthy relationships, but abandon my ambition and settle for “good enough,” and work less. Is that the only choice? Is that the only way to do it? I don’t think so. I think there are plenty of people who have very strong relationships with family and friends and are also ambitious and successful. It’s true that it’s easier in some professions than in others, and easier for some people more than others. I’m always very wary when it’s like “I can have a few close friends or a lot of superficial friends.” Is that the only choice?

Often, when you look at people who are very high-performing, they tend to be the people who are very disciplined about taking time for relationships, taking time for travel, taking time for hobbies. You read about these crazy super-successful people, and they often have world-class art collections and are constantly jetting around. I don’t have energy to leave my neighborhood — how do these people found giant foundations and get involved in all these things? I think you have to be cautious when you pose a two-track possibility, because life is not like that. It’s not that simple. “I can get married now, or be alone for the rest of my whole life.”

Find out more at the Happiness Project website or on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

In an ongoing quest to Prove All The Things We Already Know To Be True, Science™ has just confirmed that a single sip of beer is all it takes to make our brains soar with sozzled joy. Really, Science? I could’ve told you that. I just did that science last night! And maybe a little at breakfast! And it’s possible I’m doing that science RIGHT NOW AS I’M TYPING.

My dismay at not getting a co-author credit aside, this is good news. The surge of dopamine that reminds me how much beer loves me gets triggered pre-intoxication, right when that heady, alchemical mix of barley, hops, and yeast hits my tongue. See? “Crippling alcoholism” has nothing to do with it, MOM! Here, I’ll let the science folks explain while I go get us (me) another cube of Keystone:

A group of researchers led by David Kareken [Ed. note: lucky!] of Indiana University came to the finding, published today in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, by giving tiny amounts of beer to 49 adult men and tracking changes in their brain chemistry with a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, which measures levels of various molecules in the brain. They chose participants with varying levels of typical alcohol consumption — from heavy drinkers to near-teetotalers — and even tested them with the beer they reported that they drank most frequently. Because they used an automated system to spray just 15 milliliters (about half an ounce) of beer on each participant’s tongue over the course of 15 minutes, they could be sure that any changes in brain chemistry wouldn’t be due to intoxication.

Interestingly, the amount of dopamine release per person wasn’t random. People who had a family history of alcoholism (as reported on a survey) showed notably higher dopamine levels after tasting beer as compared to others.

Family history of what? Didn’t hear you, bro — too busy icing Trey in this kegstand comp. Look, the takeaway is that we’ve answered one of the greatest mysteries of our time: “Tastes great.”

Now if you’ll excuse me:

This will surprise and shock you: It is sometimes hard to stay positive and be an environmentalist. Between Big Oil prematurely ejaculating over suburban lawns, the goddamn weather taking aim at my precious Russian River Pinots, and the very ocean dusting the Great Barrier Reef before I can afford to go there, can you blame me? Kermit — chemically sensitive amphibian, browbeaten husband, and dolorous crooner that he is — perhaps gives us the patron cliché we deserve.

All of which means I approach our theme this month — Happiness! — with some trepidation. It’s not that we Gristers aren’t adept at handling looming catastrophe; we just often swallow it with sarcasm and a black humor more cold and remote than the love of God. When it comes to dancing to the tune of the apocalypse, we’ve got moves like a teenage Blue Ivy Carter, and an f-bomb or 75 never hurts. When things get really bad, we can just report as-is and do this:

But this month is not about that! This month is about a deep and fulfilling happiness — a “human flourishing” that has wide implications for a more sustainable human future. (David Roberts calls it “eudaimonia” — marketing GOLD.) This is capital-H Happiness, world-changing stuff — not just acting like an asshole to feel better about the dump. Roberts will point us in that rightfully hallowed medium chill-y direction, and hopefully other experts like Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project will totally rearrange our shizz and way of thinking. (And they’ll do it without ayahuasca. Probably.)

But it occurs to me that I could also possibly try and reverse my internal bummer machine. As a quick exercise, I’ll take a look at yesterday’s lame-o news and try to simply look on the bright side. Here goes.

• Skiers and snowboarders to Obama: Save our snow! Let’s just go ahead and rip that Band-Aid off. I’m a lifelong skier, so not being able to catch a lift, tip my gnartender, and shred pow sandwiches all day bums me out. But: Fellow Bros and Brosephines are DOING something about it! First a letter, then Obama crushes a couple at Silverton … next thing you know, BAM! Carbon tax. Sweet.

• Lake Erie’s Great Garbage Patch is even denser than the one in the Atlantic. I started to get really depressed about this. Nobody wants to dip a hand into Erie’s famously tropical swimming beaches and emerge looking like this. But then the internet told me that Erie used to be worse, so this might be an improvement. Thanks, internet.

• Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities. This one was tough for me, because what did utilities ever do to anybody else? They just sit there, power my fridge with coal, and gawp at me with those big ol’, TVA puppy eyes. Then solar panels (which are made of POISON, btw) come along to crush them with modern renewable energy opportunity. Of course, then I reread the post six times, like I always do with Dr. Grist’s posts, and actually understood it. Bright side achieved.

• Slingshot-based condom applicator definitely deserves a $100,000 grant. Agreed. Happy!

• Coal-mining jobs on the rise under Obama. Look, did Obama hire the coal miners? Did he personally go out there and ask like 200 dudes to start digging under his Hyde Park manse and pull out 115 million tons of carboniferous shale from beneath Sasha’s disused swingset? No? Then I’m happy, goddammit [slams door].

OK, so this is going to take some work. I’m just going to stare at this Lao Tzu of the pinniped realm and have some chai. With Old Crow in it. Bring the blood pressure down. Next week is another week — full of shitty news, but more informed by our deeper, doper investigation into Happiness.

Together we can do this. Pass the paint thinner.

We blab a lot about distributed energy, but ExxonMobil’s doing something about it. Its patented delivery system — now undergoing beta testing in Mayflower, Ark. — puts energy in your lawn, on water, on birds, and in your pants so you’ll never have to go without. Check it:

More Mayflower reading:

• Exxon’s Arkansas oil spill ain’t pretty [SLIDESHOW]
• Arkansas town in lockdown after oil spill nightmare
• Good news, Arkansas: Tar-sands oil isn’t oil-oil
• ExxonMobil spills chemicals in Louisiana while cleaning spilled oil in Arkansas

Or, you could always just look at this guy. Aww:

Just one more week to earn $25K.
Give five bucks to make our day.

YO! It’s Ted and Jen and we’re here to say,
Grist needs your help in a major way.
Dawg, we’re cursed, this $#*! is wack!
Gotta speak in verse so we’re spittin’ rap.
We’re way behind and beggin’ on our knees.
Grist needs your help to earn some G’s!

3,000 gifts: That’s the magic number,
To break the spell and feed our hunger.
Please grind out a gift if you can,
And we will bank another 25 grand.
If Grist has helped you learn or laugh,
Please send some dough on our behalf.

See how this curse got us straight trippin’.

Peace,

Fresh Ted and DJ Jazzy Jen
Grist Master MCs

P.S. Giving online make you a wreck? You’re also welcome to send a check: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

P.P.S. If we reach our goal by May 15, Grist will receive $25,000 from a generous donor.

Oh, Heartland Institute. We thought you were climate-sanity adversaries on par with Sauron, but your latest PR move reminds us more of Wile E. Coyote: desperate overreach followed by spectacular flameout.

Let’s get up to speed. Ahead of its 7th International Conference on Climate Change (which is basically like Burning Man for deniers, but with more peyote and charts), the Chicago-based climate denial think tank launched a billboard campaign on the Eisenhower Expressway that equates belief in climate change to mass murder. It did so by featuring the looming mugs of Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski, Fidel Castro, and Charles Manson next to the phrase, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”

Its reasons were plain: “Still believing in man-made global warming … is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.” But before the Heartland Institute folks could realize their dream of launching future billboards connecting Osama Bin Laden with wind power or John Wayne Gacy with backyard chickens, massive public outcry led them to cancel the campaign. LOLsob:

We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters, but we hope they understand what we were trying to do with this experiment. We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.

I won’t get into quaint optimism of launching a modern PR “experiment” by billboard (what internet?). I can’t even take umbrage at the fact that the Heartland Institute hopes to paint us kindly climate advocates as bunker-dwelling psychos with stockpiles of C4. Mostly, I’m just sad that I won’t ever get to have a highway commute filled with an unending parade of psychotic killers and genocidal madmen serenading me with universal truths and acknowledged facts.

But you know what? Someone famous (and probably from Hollywood) once said that you must be the change you want to see in the world. Because one should never ignore the advice of famous people, we at Grist have taken the liberty of continuing Heartland’s noble mission.

Behold: a rogue’s gallery of some of the world’s greatest killers, sociopaths, despots, and evildoers — all sharing incontrovertible truths and proven science fact.

P.S.: We’re just getting started.

Here at Grist HQ, we’re in the unique position of receiving a press release about every targeted Earth Day campaign in existence. No matter what we say to the collective PR hive mind, come Earth Day they always make sure we’re fielding pitches like a young Joe Garagiolo. And bless ‘em for it, because with the dire state our atmosphere’s in (insert second Sriracha joke here), we sure could use the yuks.

We figured you can, too. Here are some of our favorites this year.

Cheap Trick headlines Earth Day rally on the National Mall: Can’t say that dad-rock granddad-rock will bring in the kiddies like Wiz Kalifa or even Flaming Lips (they headlined in 2009), but Rick Nielsen windmilling on his signature gazillion-necked guitar is a powerful argument for wind energy.

Celebrate Earth’s 400th birthday with … Ed Norton?: OK, we get that it’s pretty much all been downhill since Primal Fear, but did Edward Norton really approve that image? (But seriously, Ed’s a U.N. biodiversity ambassador, and as all U.N. ambassadors know, the Earth is only 400 years old. Just ask Angelina.)

Ford teams up with Adrian Grenier: We thought we had Earth Day celebrities covered with Ed, but Entourage’s Adrian Grenier sneaks in on a technicality: “He’s sexy, FWIW,” says an anonymous staffer.

NASCAR to plant trees at Santa Rosa Elementary School: NASCAR Green Clean Air tree planting. Never mind that NASCAR is fucking the Earth with its very existence.

Extrabux will plant a tree for every purchase made: Go ahead and buy that hoochie dress from Forever 21. It’s also a forest now.

MyRegistry.com eco-friendly babycare products: “If you’re expecting, support our planet this Earth Day by registering for an organic hammock to rock your baby to sleep in, or an eco-friendly diaper bag to carry bottles and baby wipes while on the go. Before your baby can take his first step or utter her first word, he or she can make a contribution to the environment.” Do you guys carry a Baby Einstein for irony?

Earth Day? More like Earth Gay: No jokes here, since this is one campaign we actually dig: Out For Sustainability expands eco-awareness for the LGBTQ community and beyond. They’re spreading to four cities this year and 20+ next year.

Some crap is free: Not everyone’s selling something on Earth Day — some folks are just givin’ it away. Get free reusable bags, Origins skin cleanser, Pottery Barn sunflower seeds (huh?), burritos from Chipotle, green cleaners from Whole Foods, and “scenery” from our national parks, who’ll offer free admittance on Earth Day.

The Real Housewives of Orange County go green: “The ladies take a ‘glamping’ trip to Santa Barbara and one housewife dishes about her decision to drive a Prius.” A Prius?!? BE still my heart: Who says reality TV doesn’t create role models?

Earth Day 1970 revisited: Don’t let that handsome tree fool you: “Free-market” Earth Day is code for “no Earth Day at all.”

MAVEA water filtration pitchers: “We can’t think of a better way to commemorate [Earth Day] and rededicate yourself to a healthy, sustainable lifestyle than with a MAVEA water filtration pitcher.” Really? I can think of about 3,000 better ways, and about half of them involve destroying MAVEA water filtration pitchers. The other half involve Adrian Grenier. (Also, a note to MAVEA’s spelling-bee champion: Can you help me locate this “While Foods” you mention in your press release? I’ve never heard of it.)

TREE WRITES A BOOK CALLED A Kindle Saved My Life
[Ed. note: Original emphasis preserved because it's inscrutably awesome.]: “The author, known only as The Tree, writes that he hails from a forest that supplies a major book publisher and penned A Kindle Saved My Life to express his gratitude for the new lease on life afforded him by the e-reader. The Tree informs and entertains, sharing tree-saving tips and views on topics from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to famous actors who’ve played trees. The Tree even weighs in on Chaz Bono’s gender change (and explains why it’s relevant).”

Nothing says ‘Earth Day’ like ‘national tragedy’: From an actual Care2 email received by a Grist staffer: “Good morning. Wednesday is the 45th day since the murder of Trayvon Martin. Also, remember to keep up with our Earth Day coverage every day in April! Have a wonderful holiday.” We have no words.

Earth Day is for pets, too: “What better way to celebrate Earth Day than by treating your cat a lush, edible bed of oat grass or a pinch of Certified Organic Catnip?” My cat celebrates Earth Day by murdering invasive spiders and sleeping, thank you very much.

Zlango Icon Messaging “Goes Green” this Earth Day: “Users can now add even more personal expression to their mobile messaging with unique icons that share emotive, funny and serious sentiments about Earth Day with a set of funny, cheeky and even educational icons that add a ‘green’ dimension to everyday messages.” Seems to me the only dimension I need to add to everyday messages is DELETE.

That’s about all we can stomach this year. In the meantime: Happy Earth Day, Earth! You don’t look a day over 388!

When writer and outdoorsman Mike Lanza realized climate change was staking a full-scale assault on our most beloved national parks, he didn’t just lament about how his kids wouldn’t get to experience them the way he did. Instead, he saddled up his entire family — wife Penny, son Nate, 10, and daughter Alex, 7 — with packs, kayaks, and climbing gear and embarked on a year-long mission to visit them all. His new book Before They’re Gone: A Family’s Year-Long Quest to explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks chronicles the adventure. He took some time to answer a few questions about our changing parks, life-list trip planning, and educating the next generation about climate change through adventures in the great outdoors.

Q. What moment did the idea to take your kids out for this book hit you? 

A. I had been researching and writing stories about the impacts of climate change on national parks and wilderness, and increasingly understanding that much of this fallout will occur within my kids’ lifetimes. But in September 2009, I returned to Glacier National Park to backpack for six days and met briefly with a leading federal scientist there, Dan Fagre, whom I had interviewed two years earlier for a story about the park’s glaciers. At that time, his models forecasted the glaciers in the park all disappearing by 2030. When I spoke with him again in 2009, he said they had revised that previous forecast because warming and glacial recession had sped up faster than anticipated: The projected year for no more glaciers in Glacier National Park was now 2020. I thought, Wow, my kids will be just 19 and 17 then. This is not far off in the future — it’s right around the corner.

Alex hiking in the Grand Canyon.

I started thinking more and more in the fall of 2009 that we should get the kids to these places that mean so much to my wife and me as soon as we can. It wasn’t as if glaciers were going to disappear the next year. But it’s easy to get caught up in life and not achieve the goals you set, not see the places you want to see. I’ve long believed that you have to just have to get out and do things because you never know what’s in store for the future.

Q. A lot of people would love to do something like this, but they couldn’t ever dream of pulling it off. How’d you do it? What were the biggest logistical hurdles?

A. Part of the answer is that this is what I do for work. But I did this even years ago, before I made a living at it. Planning 11 major trips in a year’s time is definitely a lot of work. I researched where to go, reserved permits, arranged travel (some trips involved flights and lodging), packed and sorted and dried out and repacked gear numerous times, wrote hundreds of emails to outfitters and other people in the know, and figured out where to shoehorn each trip into the calendar. We made six of the 11 trips between late June and late August 2010; we weren’t at home very much that summer, and that alone can get tiring. In the busy lives that most people lead, to do things like this you have to plan months in advance and put dates on the calendar, or it’ll never happen.

But that said, we don’t look back on that year and think about the hassle of trip planning and travel. We think back on all the amazing experiences we had and the places we saw. At one point during our last trip for this book, canoeing in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park, right after my son, who had turned 10 by then, and I had sat in our canoe watching a dolphin swim laps around a small bay for about 20 minutes, he said to me, totally unprompted: “You know, Dad, thinking back on this past year, and all the trips we’ve done, I think it might be my best year ever.”

My kids gleaned a rare kind of perspective from this experience that I believe will guide them for the rest of their lives.

Q. Were you worried for your kids? How did you deal with issues of safety?

A. I think it’s natural for any parent to worry more than necessary and it’s probably impossible to cure yourself of worrying. Penny and I had long, serious conversations about the wisdom of taking young kids backpacking in grizzly country; or sea kayaking in waters patrolled by orcas, where capsizing could mean dying of hypothermia within 15 minutes; paddling among alligators in the Everglades; or rock climbing, among other concerns. We’ve had the misfortune of seeing people die in backcountry accidents, so we know how dangerous the wilderness can be.

Alex and Nate in Rocky Mountain National Park.

But frankly, I’m more worried about my kids growing up without a love of the outdoors than I am about their safety in the backcountry. I take the same approach when they’re with me in the wilderness as I always have on my own trips. I want to know as much as I can about the environment we’re entering and how to manage its potential hazards. I explain this stuff to them; they’re remarkably good about avoiding dangers, although I still keep a close eye on them. I think that, statistically, they’re at greater risk on the drive to the park than they are on the trail.

Q. Which place was your favorite? How about for Nate, Alex, and Penny?

A. We’d all rank sea kayaking in Glacier Bay, Alaska, among our favorites. Incredible scenery with glaciated mountains rising thousands of feet straight up out of the sea, glaciers calving bus-sized blocks of ice with explosive cracks, and wildlife like you can’t see in many places: brown bears, sea lions, seals, bald eagles, an abundance of bird life. We all loved backpacking in the Grand Canyon because it’s so spectacular; the Everglades for the exotic birds, alligators (though Penny was petrified of them), gorgeous sunsets, and wilderness beach camping; as well as cross-country skiing to frozen waterfalls and thermal features in Yellowstone. I’m a big fan of Glacier National Park, where my kids saw their first mountain goat up close. Penny really liked backpacking in the North Cascades, a place where the two of us have a lot of personal history. Our kids considered backpacking the Olympic coast one of their favorites, for the fascinating sea life found in the tide pools, and, of course, because they played on the beach every day.

Alex and Penny canoeing in the Everglades.

Q. Were there any places that were so tragic (or that had changed so much, or threatened to change so much) as to taint the experience? 

A. Honestly, no. Having done so much research, I saw these places partly within the context of knowing what was in store for them and how much change has already occurred. But I think it’s impossible to taint the wonderful experience of getting into the wilderness in a national park. It’s the kind of thing a child never forgets, and that can, I believe, change the course of your life. The outdoors has certainly done that for me — I didn’t grow up doing these activities. I only started hiking after college, and for 25 years my life has revolved around the outdoors. I’d like that for my kids.

Q. Getting to all these places obviously required a lot of carbon. Did that ever trouble you?

A. Yes. I’m kind of a nut about energy consumption. I’m the one who’s constantly turning off lights in empty rooms in our house and insisting that our family can ride our bikes around town instead of drive, even when the weather’s crappy. Right now, with my wife at work and the kids at school (I work at home), my thermostat is set at 60. I bike or walk local errands year-round, so I’m able to keep my personal car trips to four or five per week, and I put about 12,000 miles a year on my Subaru Outback (I used to drive twice as much when I commuted to a job), while my wife drives a Prius. So I try to be conscious of minimizing my carbon footprint, but recognize that I’m like a lot of people in that my work and preferred forms of recreation require some travel.

Part of the colossal challenge we face in reducing our emissions is getting beyond the sense of hopelessness that is exacerbated by guilt. Yes, we’re all part of the problem. But we can accept that responsibility while at the same time taking positive action. We have to take whatever personal steps we can each take to reduce energy consumption and simultaneously demand societal progress on climate policy of our elected officials. I hope people will always long to visit our national parks. I don’t think Americans will decide to stop traveling. To truly address this problem, we have to change our energy systems. I hope my book helps motivate that kind of change.

Q. On what level did Nate and Alex comprehend the significance of the trip? How did it affect them emotionally?

A. Nate was 9 when we started, 10 when we finished. Alex turned 7 a week before the first trip (she hiked one 10-mile day and climbed 4,000 feet uphill on another day in the Grand Canyon, a week after her 7th birthday — do I sound proud?); and we did the last trip, in the Everglades, a month before she turned 8. So Nate, who loves science and reads voraciously, had a better ability to understand the issues surrounding climate change, and he and I actually had fairly intelligent conversations about it. Alex developed a more refined comprehension of the subject than the average 7-year-old; in fact, probably more than the average adult (sad to say).

Nate and Alex hiking in Glacier National Park.

Q. Everyone knows a child’s mind can sometimes cut through a lot of BS to reveal an unvarnished, simple truth about a complex issue. Did you hear Alex or Nate saying anything like this in regards to climate change, or your trip in general?

A. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from something Alex said. We were day hiking to Upper Yosemite Falls, and reached a point about 1,000 feet above Yosemite Valley where the trail rounds a bend and you get your first full-on view looking up at this column of water free-falling 1,430 feet, spreading out in a massive white curtain that gusts of wind periodically blow sideways, making the waterfall appear to tilt in defiance of gravity. Staring up at it, Alex asked me, “How does the water get up the mountain?” Of course, from below, the waterfall appears to magically erupt from the rim of this enormous granite cliff. So I explained to her that, way up there beyond sight, there’s a lot of snow melting that feeds the creek flowing over this waterfall.

One inevitable outcome of warming temperatures is that there will be less snowfall in the High Sierra, as in mountains around the globe. There already is measurably less snowfall, in fact, and snowpacks across the West melt out two to four weeks earlier than 60 years ago. More winter precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow. Waterfalls and streams will reach peak runoff increasingly earlier in spring instead of in early summer, when more hikers and tourists are in the park. There will be profound and widespread impacts on virtually every animal and plant species, which are adapted to having water available in summer. I saw my daughter’s simplistic question as a metaphor for a fast-approaching future in which we will see the impacts of not having water on the mountain.

Q. How can you keep the lessons you learned on this trip alive, long after the trips become memories and everyone goes back to school and regular life resumes?

A. In the year that has passed since our last trip for my book, we’ve had many conversations in my family about climate change, and my kids are able to speak confidently when their teachers talk about it at school. I think the subject interests them in part because they’ve had such a personal, visceral experience in places that they now associate with global warming.

The whole family at Glacier Bay, Alaska.

As for the outdoors, it’s really so central to our lifestyle as a family that it’s not something we have to make the effort to remind them of. Nate (now 11) went backcountry skiing with me for the first time this winter. All of us took our annual four-day ski trip to a backcountry yurt that we do with another family. When we were discussing what to do over the kids’ spring break from school, which was the last week of March, the kids insisted that we go backpacking and slot canyoneering, so we did just that in Capitol Reef National Park. We’re planning a family climbing trip to the City of Rocks in June, a nine-day hut trek in Norway in July, and a four-day backpacking trip in the Wind River Range in August. I have to carve out time for an annual “boy trip” that Nate and I take (we often backpack, but may rock climb this year) and a “girl trip” for Alex and me (she likes to call our father-daughter getaway a “girl trip”).

Q. This is obviously an inspirational tale. What do you hope it inspires people (specifically, parents with kids) to do?

A. I’ve heard many parents say to me, “We used to do this stuff before the kids came along.” Don’t stop getting outdoors because you have kids. Go out and have fun with your kids, starting when they’re babies, choosing activities appropriate for their age. It can be a lot of work with little ones, and not always fun, but I always saw it as an investment in my future because I was hopefully instilling in my kids a love for the outdoors. Now I’m reaping the payoff. For parents who were not previously outdoors people, start now at whatever level that’s within your mental and physical comfort zone. Kids aren’t fine china; they’re stronger and more resilient than we often give them credit for, and their curiosity and enthusiasm will inspire and reward you. And talk to them about climate change.