I’m finally back in Doha, same place as when I wrote that first entry so many ages ago it seems. I’ve landed a few hours ago and can’t really sleep, still on some weird time zone. It’s a good time to put things together.

We started this adventure with the idea of connecting Antarctica and climate change. The story’s actually pretty simple, we make CO2; CO2 destroys the world. Of course there are a few steps in between. Global warming, heating oceans, melting ice, krill dies, penguins die, seals die, orcas die. Circumpolar current stops working. The world goes haywire. Sea levels rise; malaria, thirst and hunger spread. Rioting breaks out, wars break out. Watch an Inconvenient Truth. Read what scientists and politicians have said about climate change; think about Copenhagen and what happened there. There are a lot of issues here, there are a lot of challenges and there is a lot of movement. The main message here is lets cut CO2, lets save Antarctica, lets save the world.

Listening to everyone on the trip, and observing their reactions over the last few weeks you begin to realize that there’s more to the story. Climate change is still a huge issue, don’t get me wrong, but it’s only a part of the story. I might have said this before but here the earth speaks, it chatters it shrieks it yells and it whispers. Antarctica is livid; it shakes you. The waters draw you in, the penguins and the seals… they come close to your heart. We came here all of us with our eyes open and we found wonders. I can’t tell you how people down here have run out of words; Webster’s would make a killing.

I’ll get to the point. There are three stories we get from Antarctica:

1. The story of Antarctica is the story of the value of unspoiled places. There are unspoiled places everywhere. Some of them are obvious like empty patches of desert by the sea. Others are not like a ripple of hills in between the highways covered in asphalt and steel (potentially an unspoiled place). Think about Qatar. Even here the environment can be vibrant if we give it a chance. Go see the flamingos floating off the coast by the mangroves. Listen to the hawks shrieking as they dive for fish. Go see the reservations in the East after the rain; they look like the African Savannah. See how the wind shapes the sand dunes, how they inch their way to the sea. Once you get this taste of Antarctica, of unspoiled nature, you start to see it everywhere and you being to realize how important it is, not only for the happiness you get out of it either. Take the scientists figuring out how to learn new ways to produce things from nature. They’re trying to understand how tiny spiders make materials stronger than steel and sea creatures make shells tougher than advanced ceramics, all without waste, all without heat. Think about all the medicines we get out of the environment. Think about climate change, our poisoned water sources, our disappearing natural resources. The list goes on. Antarctica is a taste of that value for which we don’t know how to account. Just because we can’t figure out its value doesn’t mean that we assume it has none.

2. Sustainable development is about exploration. There are no easy answers to how to do sustainable development. It’s like those explorers from long ago. They looked at the map and said, “Look, there’s a blank spot. I wonder what’s there.” Then they sailed off the face of the Earth. Columbus did it for gold. Shackleton did it for glory. The Vikings did it for fish. We do it for the environment and our future. Sustainable development is something of a blank spot on our maps. We still don’t fully understand the ways in which our actions affect the environment and how the environment in turn affects us and will affect our children. What we do realize is that we are not developing in a way that makes the most sense given how important the environment is. It’s like when the Europeans first tasted spices; before then they had little interest in the East. After then the whole world changed. Sustainable development is the drive to responsibly challenge the normal ways of doing things in the hopes of finding a better solution; it’s sailing of the map in order to find land.

3. We all have responsibilities to explore how our actions interact with the unspoiled places around us. You don’t have to be an environmental engineer to help the environment. Look at the process engineers in gas plants working really hard to make sure everything is run efficiently, no water is wasted and no energy burnt for nothing. Think about the green architects trying to build buildings in a way that make the least possible CO2, that use the least possible energy and that blend in with the environment as much as possible. Think about all the writers and poets inspiring us towards sustainability. It takes activists and politicians to make new laws. It takes engineers and bankers to make better plants. It takes homeowners and office workers to turn off the lights and it takes students and teachers to keep the lights on. We all have responsibilities to see how we can help fill in those gaps in the map and to explore the value of unspoiled places.

The main message here is let’s cut CO2, lets save Antarctica, let’s save the world.

Ok it was great chatting with you guys I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Keep the questions coming and I’ll try to answer them as best as I can. I’ll be sharing a few good resources regarding what you can do and how you can find out more information about this new world. Right now for most of us it's about learning as much as we can. Please check out www.2041.org to find out more info about what they do and read their blog about what happened over the last two weeks (you can see how our perspectives are different or the same).

All the best and peace

Abdulla AlMisnad