Ely, Minn. – February 16, 2007 (AgNewsWire) Dogs may be pulling the sleds for world-renowned arctic explorer Will Steger’s latest expedition but the trip will be powered in a large part by ethanol.
When Steger was looking for sponsors to support his Global Warming 101 expedition, he decided that the ethanol industry would be a natural choice.
“I’ve been talking up the benefits of ethanol for 18 years,” Steger said. “I wrote a book in 1988 and in that book I talked about ethanol as being one of the solutions. It’s best for our economy and our national security and above all supporting our people in the rural areas.”
So, Steger approached Ron Fagen, president of Fagen, Inc. in Granite Falls, Minn., about the idea last year and Ron not only jumped at the opportunity he brought the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC) on board as well.
“Will’s been doing a lot of research on ethanol and what excited him about it, I believe, is that it’s a good, clean, environmentally-friendly fuel,” said Fagen. “Will Steger’s expedition is tremendous. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. This is a person that people listen to and this is a person to help get the message out. We need to do something about this, so we’re going to support him.”
Steger says the purpose of the trip is to put a human face on the issue of global climate change by drawing attention to the people who are the first to be affected by it.
“We plan to give the Inuit, or the Eskimo people, a voice. They are at ground zero of global warming. Their entire culture is changing along with all the wildlife that they evolved around. These are innocent victims of global warming,” said Steger. “We need to see that global warming is real and that it is affecting other people.”
Steger and his team will join four Inuit hunters on a 1200-mile, four-month-long dogsled expedition across the Canadian Arctic’s Baffin Island. Each day, the team will use innovative technologies to post video, images, sounds and text to the www.globalwarming101.com website, and communicate with online participants in an educational curriculum, according to team member and educator Abby Fenton of Boston, Mass.
“Right now we have six lesson plans that are all aligned to national standards that are available for free, easy to download, for junior high through high school and then we have a set of over 50 activities based on global warming and those are also free,” said Fenton. There are also a variety of other educational materials on the website, all of which will be updated on a regular basis throughout the expedition.