Natalie's Reflections: April, 2002Life in a sailboat places you in direct contact with the natural world. Day after day, we sense the pulse of the earth in the rhythms of the wind and waves that guide us on our voyage. As we make this journey, one fundamental truth stands above all the others - we are the stewards of our planet for future generations. At this moment, we are sailing toward our first landfall in three weeks. We are almost seven degrees south latitude, about 420 miles south of the equator. After motoring with no wind for four days, we finally have a little wind - but wind from the northeast, not the southeast! If the winds were ranging within historical limits, we would have encountered the southeast trade winds somewhere between 2 degrees and 5 degrees south latitude. Those winds would blow us toward our destination. Because our sailboat is coming from the northeast and cannot sail straight downwind in the winds that are blowing right over the back of our boat, we have shifted our destination from Nuka Hiva south to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, and now are shifting our destination even further south to Fatu Hiva as we try to avoid the extra time and distance of tacking or gybing to our destination. These unusual weather conditions are apparently related to global warming, a gradual warming of the earth's environment due to fossil fuel consumption and widespread clearing of forests. This global trend has affected the South Pacific more starkly than the area from which we come. Wind patterns shift, hurricanes ravish areas where they have never before occured, drought destroys crops in areas that have not known drought, coral reefs wither, and the earth's ozone layer is depleted resulting in increased skin cancers. Despite the tremendous need for care and conservation, our nation has disavowed the Kyoto accords and continues its policies encouraging use of fossil fuels and consumption. We hope that all of us, as individuals, will do what we can to foster more responsible public policy among our leaders, so that the U.S. will take a leadership role to conserve our planet for those who inhabit this world after us. |