Daily Score Blog

This past weekend, my brother and I escaped for an overnight backpacking trip in that rare gem, Olympic National Park. We saw scarcely another soul, but throughout the trip there was evidence that human civilization persisted: the sound of aircraft overhead. Not loud. But often enough that we remarked on it.

So it was apropos that this morning I discovered an article about a project called One Square Inch of Silence, which takes place in the Olympics. It's the work of an "acoustic ecologist" (who knew there is such a thing?) named Gordon Hempton.

To make a long story short:

"I've circled the globe three times in pursuing silent places," he said. "Olympic National Park is the most sonically diverse, and is the national park that has the longest periods of natural quiet that I have observed."

On a recent hike, Hempton stopped along the trail at various times, holding up his sound level meter. At one spot, the decibel level was so low -- just 26 decibels -- that he observed, "Probably the loudest sound was a few drops of the alder leaves back there."

Hempton takes his project so seriously that he actually designated a spot--a square inch to be precise--that is truly quiet. I think that's pretty cool.

The place Hempton designated is, apparently, in a part of the park that's mostly undisturbed by the distant roar of jet engines. It's the sort of place that I suspect many of us would benefit from getting to know, silently.

Want to find that square inch? Read all about it on his website, here.

(The backpacking trip was grand -- thanks for asking. Nothing but crisp autumn sunshine and bears working their way through salal bushes in anticipation of their long nap.)

As reported by the BBC, a new study on the economic impact of climate change....

...suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.

But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says.

As usual, I have no idea if the numbers are right, or even if they're in the ballpark.  But the basic concept -- providing a side-by-side comparison of the costs of climate change with the costs of business as usual -- is spot on. 

I mean, it's pretty commonplace to see global warming skeptics bemoan the "exhorbitant" cost of fighting climate change, just it's all too common to read about the terrible toll that global warming could exact from the global economy.

But presenting the costs of action and inaction in the same breath does far more than let people compare those costs.  It also reminds us that those two choices -- pay now or pay later -- pretty much exhaust our options.  There's no magical, cost free third way:  one way or the other, we're going to pay.  It's just a question of how much, and for what.

Once we collectively get over our magical thinking about climate change -- the thinking that lets us pretend that there's some way to duck the problem altogether -- we may be able to start making some concrete choices. And it seems to me that presenting costs as a given, rather than an option, is the first step to rousing us from our denial.