Recently I joined the board of the Student Conservation Association (SCA). A picture of the current board is below on the left.
The SCA (theSCA.org) is focused on conservation and helping us all take better care of the environment. It does this through a variety of programs – historical preservation, trail crews, fire management, and urban park management – for young people. There is no question that we need to do a better job of treating our surroundings with respect. Changes in the weather and the rising sea levels are stark examples of the damage we have done and continue to do.
No one organization or country can take on all that needs to be done to arrest damage to the environment. But, as is true for any significant social progress, the cumulative effects of many individuals and organizations can be quite impactful. SCA cannot solve this by itself, but it can help.
However, protecting our environment is not why I joined.
My times as a SCA trail crew member in 1971 (the picture of the stylish me in the middle photo in the North Cascades National Park) and 1974 (the photo on the right was taken after installing a latrine in the Olympic National Park) shaped me in significant ways. It is hard to describe how I was shaped but I know that I was.
College shaped me. The CEO of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital) shaped me. My wife Denise has shaped me. There are no more than ten experiences and/or people who have had that level of shaping impact. The SCA was one.
I am not the only one who is different because of their time with the organization.
One of my fellow students from the 1971 group has tracked down nine of the fifteen kids in the group. One member – Jay Morrison – has passed away. Below is an excerpt from his obituary. It gives you an indication of the caliber of the group and what they would grow up to do.
He served as second mate on the US Antarctic Research Vessel Hero as a crew member on the National Geographic – sponsored “Rowing to Antarctica” expedition, featured in that magazine’s January 1989 issue and as chief engineer on the National Geographic – sponsored Sol expedition across the Pacific Ocean to Antarctica.
Jay also wintered-over at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, as the powerplant engineer responsible for maintaining all life sustaining systems. Jay assisted in the startup of the Biosphere II in Tucson, Arizona, contributing specifically to supporting and adjusting the new passive solar system and an onsite natural gas energy center.
I’d like to help the organization continue to have an environmental impact, and more importantly for me, a significant impact on young people. The term is “paying it forward.”
Side note: Figuring out how the climate is changing is complicated and full of noisy variation. An example is the chart below. It plots the Palmer Drought Index over the last 125 years in the US. The index measures the extent and severity of drought episodes. The average is zero. When the droughts are more severe than normal, the Index is negative. When it is wetter than normal the Index is positive.
Maybe you can see a trend, but I can’t.
