Can We Save Everest From Pollution and Melting Ice?

[Music] this is the sound of Climbers on Mount Everest in this video I shot last year they are crossing the kumbu glacier that's the highest Glacier in the world and yet a lot of the ice up there is quickly turning into water and forming strange ponds and paddles surrounded by melting ice towers and SS Conrad and dawa you've both spent a lot of time on that Glacier should we be worried about how climate change is transforming the mountain an unequivocal yes yes of course and do you think there's anything we can do about it we can but I think the Focus right now in the short term should be on saving ourselves more than saving the mountain because I think the mountain is going to be here much longer than we're going to be if it if we keep on doing what we're doing I near term it's going to be it's going to be very difficult welcome this is Onin ice a podcast by icewm media in partnership with the Bali Peak Outlook Foundation we bring together the best athletes scientists and innovators to discuss Concrete Solutions for accelerating the transition to a more sustainable way of living I'm your host Pao bosin and I'm just stoked to welcome our amazing guests today let's put it like this if you've watched any film about alpinism or mountaineering then you've heard his name before Conrad Anker is a legendary American climber he's appeared in a number of documentaries the Wildest Dream meu torn Fine Lines just to name a few and now he joins the on tonight's podcast it's an honor to speak to you Conrad thank you Paulo appreciate being here you're currently in Nepal how's the climb been going over there yeah I H spent the winter here in Nepal specifically the kumbu area so we started out with the kumu Climbing Center vocational training for high altitude Nepali um Nepali and climbing enthusiasts and celebrated 20 years of that and then went ice climbing for a month and then the um first 10 days of March uh clinick and climbing with the icefall doctors um who you got a chance to meet with last year and with you in Katmandu we have another Superstar and I'm not just saying that because we're friends dawa Steven Sherpa is an entrepreneur a mountaineer and crucially a prominent climate advocate in Nepal he's a board member of the Bal Peak Outlook foundation and well he's basically the co-creator of this podcast thanks for accepting my invitation to come on as a guest dawa you run an expedition company and is it busy right now uh yeah the short answer is uh it's very busy uh Everest seems to get busier and busier the mountains of Nepal do seem to get busier and busier and there's been a boom since after Co well that's very relevant to our main question today which is how can we protect Mount Everest and other pristine Mountains from the environmental crisis they are facing you mentioned there's a boom as many as 60,000 tourists visited the Everest Valley last year bringing of course dollars and business opportunities which is great for Nepal's economy but tourism also brings some big environmental challenges garbage and pollution is a big one especially as climate change is completely transforming the mountain so I'd like to start with that Conrad you've been traveling to Everest for three decades how much has the landscape changed since you first visited yeah my first trip to the kumu valley was in 1990 and we climbed Amad blam and um looking back this past winter and then U correlating my visual experience with images from 1990 that um the photographer Chris Noble took on our Expedition it's amazing how much um of the High Altitude cryosphere and so the cryosphere is the ice Mass that's in the mountains everything from hanging glaciers with srax to larger glaciers to Ice Frozen in between the cracks the the glue that holds those mountains together but in looking at the mountains they look anemic they um it's just been so warm there's been two warm monsoons and two warm Winters and so Nepal is is even though there are four seasons there's two seasons that Define Nepal and really I'm going in there and the key part about the monsoon is the greatest snow accumulation and also the greatest snow loss over is in that period Winter's cold and windy the jet stream comes down it's that break in the jet stream before the monsoon comes up that allows climbers to to get up Everest but in in seeing this now we the mountains just look they're very dry and to back this up always listening to other climbers um uh Andreas gel the polar skier that ski down Camp to they were in ever space camp two years ago postmonsoon to catch good snow and at ever space camp it rained every day and they they were just like we were watching Ice Melt before our eyes and so if it's warm that's one thing but you compound that with water and um it's very obvious the kumu glacier is is receding but also at that same time deflating and there's less volume and mass on the glacier dawa how would you describe those changes as a person who grew up here and whose family has been in the valley for Generations Conrad's been here a long time i' I've been here a fraction of that time maybe half that time in the mountains in the last 20 years I myself have seen so much uh changing and I go to Everest Base Camp every year and every year the The Pinnacles are lower the Pinnacles at base camp the ice Pinnacles and then you also see the level of the the glacier getting lower and lower so I mean I've seen it in my own Lifetime and my family's been in the kumbu now for uh 19 Generations uh we've been there and so from what I hear from my father and then my uncles's I mean it's a it's a very different uh place than what they grew up with I mean I'll give you a very uh clear example just within my own family uh my dad was one of the first kids to to learn to speak English in in Sir Edmund Hillary school and as such he got a job as a as an interpreter uh at the age of 11 and he went with a Japanese team when he was 11 years old to LSI which is just uh south of the the Everest massive um and there they camped at what is today um the the imja uh the imja lake if you go to imja Lake today it is about uh 2 km long over a mile long um I think it's over 100 m deep uh but when my dad was there uh 60 years ago that was all ice and you know he remembers actually being on the glacier playing on the glacier uh now you need a boat to go where he was so that's that's a huge change uh in just one generation so basically there are lakes that didn't exist before glaciologists say they actually threaten the local populations and inj lake is is a big one and one of the main ones right yeah that's correct uh and we live with sort of the the emotional uh aspect of it not the academic aspect of it and I'll explain what I mean by that is we get a lot of researchers who come there and I've worked with quite a few teams as well who go there and research you know what has changed in the last decades how deep is the lake you know how big is it how fast is it growing and so on but I've also been on the other other end of the the emotional side is that um two years ago uh a small uh little uh Pond broke out at the L Glacier wasn't the inja Glacier it was the L Glacier which is they side by side and then the the phone started ringing all over the kumbo and even here in cap at 2: a.m. in the morning I got a call saying that that inja Lake had burst out and all the people were running and I had to call everybody I knew and I I had to tell them like get to Higher Ground right away and I have a little Lodge down in in F Bing and have people there and I had to tell them you know like run you know get out of the the the valley get to High Ground as quickly as possible and this this wasn't the first time it's happened as well about eight or nine years ago when the entire Valley evacuated when they thought that inja had uh burst out uh and this is going to happen more and more because it's not just dija there's far more uh Glacier Lakes now forming in the mountains uh and that's a very big concern for us because not it's not just a glacier melting into a lake it's actually threatening the lives and also the livelihoods of the people there so if one were to burst out and people did survive it what then they've lost their homes they've lost their their fields they've lost their cattle they've lost everything so then how do you you do how do you go into the future so those are you know concerns that um me and my family live with Conrad as a foreigner how do you feel about what you see when you see the mountain and its people affected by climate so much yeah it's um it's a treat to be a guest in the kumu and to experience it and I enjoy being there for the the mountain scenery and more over the people and the culture that are there and uh welcoming and on a personal level with the kumu Climbing Center we began our program 20 years ago in partnership with uh napole climers and we would go skiing during the uh during the course in this last two seasons there hasn't been enough snow for the villagers to ski um in the potato fields and on the slopes around town which is a big everyone loves skiing and um and skiing is a all Inc in term it includes children on on kerosene jugs flying down the mountain and other people anything that slides there's all sorts but it's a joyous moment and it's also very important for the sustainability of these communities they need the moisture the precipitation for their potatoes and barley can you just tell us in one sentence what the Climbing Center is to encourage responsible uh climbing practices in the community supportive based program so that's the overall mission statement but vocational training for Nepali climbers not necessarily high altitude workers but anyone from Nepal that wants to learn more about climbing um whether from a professional sense or they're just inquisitive and they want to learn how to climb so 1,480 students so we're 20 shy of the 1500 Mark have graduated and um it's um yeah we talk about um science we talk about climate we teach uh Earth sciences and and natural Wildlife appreciation in the course of the [Music] program so we've talked about the visible very real consequences of warmer temperatures in the kumu Val to complete this picture if you look at those magnificent Everest Landscapes today there's another thing you'll notice and that's a lot of garbage famously Everest was labeled the world's highest garbage dump in many sensationalistic Headlines by the Foreign Press including National Geographic And yet when I came over to base camp last year dawa I saw much much less pollution than I was expecting as you and I have been talking about that's also thanks to you although I know you don't want get credit for it because you've been working to address this issue for many years can you please tell us what you have done and also what's left to do so when I first started climbing um I went to um Everest in 2007 and at that time I was there was a particularly disgusting incident that you know I realized that Everest was yeah it was was pretty bad right it needed to to be cleaned up um and basically I had to set up camp on top of an old toilet site and um that that experience you know haunts me to this day and you know it was it was really sad for me because you know we pray to the mountain um she is considered holy uh yet you know we were polluting her and I think you know uh at that time what I thought was that you know it was up to us uh the Mountaineers and especially the sheras who are there all the time go in year in year out to do something about it because the foreign Mountaineer unlike Conrad of course and and and and a few like him the foreign climber will only come once in their life and then they'll never come back again but we are there year in year out and it was up to us to do it and in the past cleaning mountains any mountain let alone Everest cost so much money so it it was in 2007 that I realized an opportunity and that opportunity was the fact that uh all the sherpers were going up with a lot of loads uh and setting up camps you know depositing the oxygen and food Fuel and then coming back down with empty backpacks and so what I did was I reached out to all my my buddies all my friends all the Sherpas at base camp and I said Hey listen if you find any trash on the way down uh just collect it and and bring it to base camp to me and every day we'll we'll weigh it and I called it weighing and the paying so the whole scheme I called it cash for trash and so cash for trash actually I didn't you know I didn't think it was going to be that that uh successful to be honest the first year I ran it the next year that was after 2007 2008 I ran it for the first time and in that one season I ran out of money very quickly uh we ended up collecting six tons of garbage just that one year and in subsequent years now there's been less and less and less garbage um that you know we've been collecting uh so much so now that at least at base camp I can you know say that there's no garbage um there the only time that we now find garbage at base camp is right after the monsoon when the glaciers melt and when my sherpers go there all the old garbage has been melting out um I have even found uh a little bottle uh an aspirin bottle or medical medicine bottle with an expiration date from 1962 and this is all been you know this is all uh swallowed up by the glacier many decades ago and this is getting spit out now uh so um you know the lower parts of the mountain we've been cleaning um you know I'd been cleaning but uh the upper parts of the mountain were were always tough for me to do simply because you know just asking people voluntarily to do it uh was not going to cut it because it requires technical gear oxygen you know and a lot more uh dedication and so that's when uh Bali uh you know and I partnered up and we set up a cleaning team that would go into the de zone right up to the summit and clean right from the top to the bottom and that's how that partnership grew and to this day now we've done every year cleanups at base camp we've done clean up at every single base camp of an 8,000 meter in Nepal and we are committed to keep doing this until there's no garbage left uh and you know I'm very proud to say that uh We've collected more than 26,000 kg of garbage until now and we'll we'll keep we'll keep at it and we've also taken the Lessons Learned on Everest and we've used it in the lower down valleys uh with u uh projects like uh the carry me back project and we can talk about that a little bit later well just for context before we do listeners should of course appreciate how hard it is to bring garbage or anything back from not only from the top of Everest for obvious reasons because you're at C 4 I think you're at 8,000 M so it is quite challenging even just to get there let alone bringing down stuff right but also the rest of the valley like the the whole kumu valley and the trails that lead to base camp there's more than 30 miles of trails that aren't accessible to vehicles and so all of that basically needs to be brought down either by foot or sometimes by head hel opter it needs to be flown out so what is carry me back and why is it helping carry me back is a project uh that uh the bip Outlook Foundation is supporting um and it's being implemented by the sagata pollution control committee and uh our local partner sagata next as well and um basically it is uh utilizing this the problem source as also being the solution and what I mean by that is the tourists are the ones U that are creating the pollution and directly or indirectly right and so all these this pollution this garbage goes into the local pits and so on and so um you know that the pits have been growing and growing and you know either they're being you know the garbage is being burned and then buried which is not good for the air is not good for the ground or it's just being left alone uh which is not good for the ground not good for groundwater and definitely not good for the Wildlife who come to dig it out um so carry me back basically is collecting all this garbage own as well as newly produced garbage separating it and then shredding it into little um little manageable bags of 1 kilo each that any tourist or any tracker who is going down to lla can voluntarily carry down and this has been very successful uh it the the collection center right now is in nam and already 10 tons of garbage has been taken down to lla and at lla the local Airlines have uh committed uh to fly the garbage for free and have already done so so they've done it for the last three or four seasons now uh bringing all this garbage from the Everest region to kandu for free and in kandu we have a garbage um recycling uh company called Blue wte to value and they then take it over and then they upcycle it or recycle it so it's sort of like uh closing that Loop and bringing all the garbage down and uh keeping the Kumo clean sustainably so there's a lot going on in Nepal right now in this space now there are new rules for tourists who visit and can you tell us a little bit what has the nepales government put in place and is it enough it's not perfect and it's an ongoing uh dialogue right um but there it is a step in the right direction and you know uh the one that is very uh famous right now all around the world people are talking about it is you know having to carry po bags off the mountain uh off of Everest um I mean we've been doing it I mean I've been doing it since 2008 already um and I I'm I know that Conrad and and and um the the wider climbing Community has been doing it for many years before that yeah there's um I mean that the human waste on the glacier is is definitely a consideration so um and it has a multiplying effect because then um people get sick if they're at the South Coal it's debilitating and then that puts people at risk um and then now the outflow by dugla has a pretty high eoli count and that's coming from human waste that's been on the glacier and then um just sort of flowing out of there and it's um yeah on uh props to dawa for changing the narrative how people approach waste and and how to look at it and and sort of getting a um a nationwide part of it but um a lot of the the rubbish that we see on on Everest is distracting its visual um a lot of microplastics that are in there but what's really changing the glaciers the ice of of um the Himalaya is people like myself getting in a jet and flying across oceans to get there to visit and the other part I was in the kumu uh this winter for 78 days and I began my Trek from lla and I finished my Trek from lla and um the amount of people that are that hike to base camp or to kalap and then fly out is I mean that there's something and I was there at the helipad helping out with some friends and overheard this conversation from um a couple that was waiting to get picked up and they were like oh this is the best and it's so boring and we've already seen it and they were just they were kind of justifying the price they were paying for the helicopter by saying they wer going to see anything but you hike down the valley you have an entirely different view so um encouraging people to to go as minimal as possible and then to hike and Hike is hike out hike in um helicopters are there for rescue they're there for um Human Resources um and things like that um I was rescued by the helicopter in 2016 and so I I see their value but the um the amount of hel tourism up and around base camp is something that is that needs to be studied and understood yeah not not only the the hel tourism but just tourism in general I don't think um I'm not aware of any uh sort of uh study being done about what the carrying capacity is of the Everest region in terms of number of tourists and you know adding to to Conrad's Point here about you know uh studying what heli tourism impacts might be we need to do a a larger study of what the impacts will be when the road finally touches lla and people are no longer dependent on the seasonal flights but can drive any time of the year uh All Seasons to the region I think we're going to be seeing numbers go from 60,000 a year to 600,000 people a year and then what's going to happen so um I think again coming back to the point about the the local government making these rules and regulation I think it's good because they've started to already take into consideration the future and I think they need to keep on doing this keep on um addressing issues that might happen in the future before the problem even arises I just just want to add a note for viewers who may not be familiar with the Everest Valley lla is the place you fly to from catmandu in general and then from there you have to walk up to base camp but there are helicopters and so some people just buy helicopter trips to expedite their visit and that way you work in tourism so this is also how you you you you make money and uh what you do for a living so what's the right balance between offering packages offering Comfort convincing tourists to come but also protecting the environment and thinking about what the mountain can actually sustain I think it's been proven now that in places like Nepal um where tourism is uh where the local people are so dependent upon tourism that tourism um needs to go hand inhand with Environmental Conservation because if they go at uh if they're at odds with each other is going to do more damage to both sides um let me give you an example uh some of the places that are as beautiful as the Everest region in Nepal that see no tourists uh Wildlife poaching Wildlife smuggling as well as illegal Timber I mean the you know those are the biggest industries if tourism isn't there so there def you know tourism is a Force for good because it makes people protect the natural uh environment because they understand that there is a financial or economic value in keeping it let alone of course the spiritual um and even the emotional value of having a pristine environment um but you know at the end of the day it it you know if it impacts the the fact that you whether your kids can go to school or not if you can you know buy new clothes for your wife or not uh you know those are important things as a as a provider in your family and if you can't answer that then you are going to find for an alternative solution to make sure that you can provide for your family and if it's not tourism it'll be something worse so tourism is a Force for good in the context of Nepal and the type of tourists that we get here are normally also people who love the mountains who love the natural environment that's why they go through the pain of walking weeks on end through the mountains right and so this is the type of Tourism that we want as you both mentioned all these environmental issues we've been talking about have consequences they are interrelated and they have far-reaching effects if you think that roughly 1 billion people in India and China rely on the Himalayas for water for example and if we start at the top of the mountain climbers are first in line to witness the damage brought by higher temperatures now climbing has always been dangerous but Conrad is it even more dangerous now because of climate change my observation on the kumbu icefall and some of the higher angle steeper routs is that they are becoming safer and easier with climate change and everyone's going to freak out the economist had an article just this past May saying that 17 deaths 11 of those deaths of last year which is the highest year of mortality on Everest were due to inexperience but imagine if you will a river coming down at flood stage and if you're a boater a kayaker you understand it's absolutely crazy and everything like that when it's really low water you can sneak around and lower water is is more tranquil so there's um yeah it it's more dangerous in the height of summer when the ice is not holding things together so if you've tried to chip ice off of your s sidewalk um and you live in a cold climate when it's really Frozen you understand how important that is and then when it's there's a little bit of water underneath you can move it all off in a day and we hit those tipping points when when people are in the mountains in these climate tipping points warm events yes it's going to be more dangerous but um D and I were talking about the fact that there's less ice coming down through the icefall it's not being replenished yes it's still a very dangerous place but you don't have that mass of water cascading down so um yeah and roots that I've observed over the decades in the kumu there there what was a hanging Glacier with a Sak a crumbly Edge and it calves off and falls down those have now melted back and it's the mountains aren't quite as fearful as they once were they don't have that that power to them so um but again this is my observation and um you know we're going to break with the norm here on the thin ice podcast because dawa and Conrad are like yeah there's less ice there and it's not moving as fast and things you know we have other things to be concerned about yeah so just talking about Everest and the dangers there um what I have noticed is not on the climbing route itself so like not on the ice fall but you know on the western shoulder on the Lola pass that we're getting much bigger Avalanches coming off of that um and every year the glacier does seem to be receding higher and higher up um and I remember in 2010 um there was a huge Avalanche that came through from the Lola pass and dusted all of base camp and then the icefall doctor at the time annima and my uncle pmba both at that time in their 60s both said that's the biggest Avalanche we've ever seen at base camp and you know I was quite surprised by that um you know to be able to witness something like that you know and and today those Avalanches coming from the Lola path for the Western shoulder they're happening quite frequently the ones that come all the way into base camp and dust everything um last year I in the in the fall I had um a team at base camp well away from the um nup nup is another Mountain on the average massive and there was an avalanche that came off of nup uh probably one of the little tongues that you know coming down from from the the nup is that the West face I want to say yeah North Northwest Face North Northwest face and um it actually um blew the the entire Camp away and it injured a couple of of my Sherpas and this was this was you know um in in the it was in October early October so uh you know these sort of things are happening quite often now um so I don't know I think it's a transition phase and when all that ice is gone from above Base Cam and then it recedes far enough Back That Base Cam's going to be fine uh but in the meantime we are seeing these big big Avalanches coming in hitting Base Cam uh not always injuring anybody but anybody who's close to that like when they're going on their way to the the icefall or if they're in the icef and it's coming from uh the Western shoulder then there is um you know potential to get hurt or killed and in fact in 2014 uh that did happen and and over a dozen shephers did get killed in in an event like that and I and I hope that in a way uh either the SRA sto melting and grow again and don't don't collapse so often or they completely melt away so that they don't because at the end of the day the result is that people are getting killed da with your Expedition company you take the responsibility of bringing people to the top of the highest mountains on on earth and the risk of death is very real is that getting more complicated now and how do you navigate those risks I think the the biggest risk and has always been is is when it comes to mount ning is the weather and although Technology's greatly improved in recent years and so the number of uh people getting caught out in bad weather and getting killed is far less now than it used to be in the past um every meteorologist that I speak to is saying that the the weather is getting more and more unpredictable and severe weather systems are no more and more becoming the norm now so leaving everything aside just not being able to what the weather is going to be doing and the severity of that the the weather um if it becomes uh you know malicious is uh the consequences are going to be much more serious at the end of the day when something goes wrong in high altitude uh it's the Sherpas that have to come in there and and save the day uh and as long as you have enough Sherpas on your team who are able to to do that work to to execute a rescue operation or whatever the whatever they need may be then you have a better chance of of um being safe on the Mountain uh then of course having more oxygen available more resources available all of that um unfortunately though that all costs money and the the trend on Everest is to sell cheaper and cheaper not you know sell better and better uh and that unfortunately does put climbers at risk um both sh and foreign climbers Conrad of course you have had a lot of experiences and you've seen things going wrong people who have watched your films know that you have experienced grief and the death of climbing partners and and close friends um I hope you don't mind me asking but has that changed your perspective on climbing and the way you approach your practice Yeah climbing is what I do it's been my life and it um yeah comes at a steep cost in terms of loss of people and and all that but I'm also an atheist I live in the moment I live in the present I appreciate people and yeah if climbing brings me joy I'm going to keep doing it so I don't know how to answer that I still struggle with it before I go to sleep with the and having raised our boys they're now adults um yeah the consequences of loss are pretty um are pretty significant but at the end of the day with 7 billion people where we're at now on this planet and um as long as you're not harming other people and you're not undo harm to the environment then we should um yeah it's and clamors are good people I mean when D and I climb together it's he and I are the team our enemy is Gravity the weather some of the things we talked about but of course when we play some sport we have a a shape made by humans with a clock a ball rules all that other stuff and we're pitting human against human and so we're creating an artificial sense and that's what team sports are and why we love watching football matches and the World Cup and all and all of that we get it but the the basis of way in which humans communicate when they're in Outdoors Taps into this very Primal like this the oldest part of Being Human we're still out there and we're still going against the the the environment and and building that connection with people is that's the the magic of climbing that would the Sherpa community of course also faces these questions every day as you said Sherpas have to come in and save the day if something goes wrong so how do you feel about these dangers and about this risk it is a a business that me and my family have been in I mean I was born into this um into climbing into mountaineering and um we like Conrad uh we have lost so many good people and it's the the it's one of those things uh you know um that when you say bye to someone there's always something you know in the back of your head uh you know and you always you always uh pray I mean I I am spiritual I'm a Buddhist uh and I do my prayers I know there's a good life after this one for those who do good and that's what I believe in and um that's you know the that's why I do a lot of the things I do I know that you know working in the mountains and trying to make it a better place will give me um more Merit for the next life um but at least when it comes to this life you know I would also like to see that um you know we are safe I myself as well as all the climbers that come with me all my Sherpas um and um yeah it's uh it's very tough but like I said the there are very few alternatives to this and and especially in a country like Nepal the biggest source of employment for young people in Nepal is to go and work as migrant laborers in the Middle East in the Gulf countries which arguably is not much safer than climbing in the mountains so um you know given the choice I I you know mountain heing is better um because at least you're in your own country you have respect Global respect and you make equal pay or even more pay than you would do in in the Gulf country so if we could just make it safer if we could make it better in any way then you know we need to put every effort behind it now circling back to our main question before we wrap up what can actually be done to protect Everest and people on it ever is going to be there but it is a barometer of what we're doing to the environment and so if if we can't figure out the Everglades in Florida which is a swamp land and we can't listen to what Everest is telling us then we're muting the information that the the world is giving Humanity on how to address climate change and in in that sense uh specifically to Everest a comprehensive caring capacity study that would be um outline how many climbers can visit the mountain from a ecological Planet standpoint health of the the glaciers um a sociological standpoint a cultural standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint building all that in there so Denali in uh North America highest point there has a has a caring capacity of 1400 climbers a season um akaga Mo Blanc a lot of these popular mountains have that and um once there's that carrying capacity you can address how people get there three different ways one is the old school way which was ability if you're not good enough the Mountain's going to sort you out and that's but now with a strong infrastructure you can do it by money which is at $11,000 this season $115,000 next year is is a pretty high barrier to go into it or you can do it by complete lottery so just randomize numbers and your number is there you have both mentioned that you both want to do something about this what would you like your legacy to be in terms of environmentalism yeah they're um raising awareness and understanding and sharing the knowledge so yeah they're it's difficult to you know being as a person I am being born into white privilege I was introduced to climbing by my parents and so I got a head start and I've been able to live a life of leisure climbing mountains and so there's um but raising awareness and bringing the the conversation to the people that have power and hopefully holding them accountable um but it's also the I don't know I don't I don't wake up in the morning think about my legacy I I wake up in the morning and hold on because life is taken off every day is a new adventure um but one thing if I if I may to comment before we in the process of wrapping this up for D was step and his family he mentioned that they were 19 Generations that they were there since they immigrated over from Tibet and and that that it's only been 73 years since 1951 when the first Western Expedition came into the kubu and that's three generations and to see uh from subsistence Agriculture and to see that amount of change in three generations is is is remarkable and is very fast from a when we think about things so it's all happening very quickly and that does that also give us hope that we can turn things around very quickly as well turning around Global CO2 levels isn't going to happen it's quickly I mean we have really got to work on it we're at this point in human civilization where we know what's happening to the atmosphere this blanket of CO2 and methane that we're putting up there is a result of human activity and we're seeing the fastest warming in the last million years or as best we can scientific Ally ascertained in a short period of time and the rate it's going now that within 100 years the the himala could be completely ice free unless we can adhere to the the global warming targets that we have and and collectively as a Humanity it's it's um yeah I don't want to sound like a pessimist and but it's pretty serious I mean climate change is Nepal is a consequence Nation um they're taking the consequences of a um High per capita fossil fuel consumption which is myself is a citizen the United States and um yeah they they suffer the consequences yet your nation isn't isn't responsible for the amount of consequences you will um say from my side um coming back to what I said in the beginning you know in the in the short term there's not much we can do about the mountains about the melting uh doesn't mean that we shouldn't um because in the long term something will change it'll have to change but at this time um myself I'm focused more on helping the local people uh helping the sherper people from the kumu Val specifically in addressing all these problems um so from garbage from climate change so another uh thing that we've um another project that we've also done successfully is to build the the flood barriers at fiche which is directly below the kumbo glacier so B peek Outlook and and myself um we implemented that project with the local municipality with the local government um and we plan to do many more and so addressing any uh any problems that the local municipality might um have flagged up you know we'll see how we can get involved and and and do that um and so in the short term it's more about saving lives and livelihoods for me because the problem's already here um but having said that uh you know um the the root of the problem is climate change requires a long-term approach uh and as I mentioned earlier we've been here for 19 Generations my family has been in the abish region now for 19 generations and um you know I'm just part of that um of that Legacy and you know my great-grandfather was the first bambo the first uh um the first leader of the the Everest region uh officially recognized by the the Nepal government my um that was my great-grandfather my grandfather was called the protector of the sherpa Heritage by the uh the Abbot of the Kucha Monastery my dad was one of the first people to get an Western education and he did a lot of things um in mountaineering in steering mountaineering policy in Nepal and I hope hope to continue with that Legacy going forward and I think my call is in um addressing the issues of climate change and making sure my people are going to be safe in the future uh addressing climate change well I'm sure not only in Nepal dawa but everywhere in the world there will be alpinists who will be inspired thank you so much for our conversation today there is much more to say about Environmental Protection and uh what's happening on Everest is affecting the rest of the world as you both mentioned and that's something will keep covering and will cover more in depth in future episodes I'd like to thank for now our great production team onon I has original music by nadir casim our script editor and editorial adviser is Dave vet and thanks as always to the Bal Peak Outlook foundation for supporting this podcast the foundation as you explained dawa aims to defend mountains in Nepal and around the world from the impact of climate change and excessive tourism check out their website that's Bal Peak outlook.org Bal Peak outlook.org it's also on your vest dawa so it's easy to find on the ice is a production by iceworm media make sure to hit the Subscribe button and download our shows please also give us a review on Apple Spotify YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts see you next time goodbye [Music]

Channel: Iceworm Media

Views: 58,256

Keywords: Everest, YouTube, Disaster, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, Meru, David Lama, Torn, Documentary, Dawa Steven, WWF, Fine Lines, Free Solo, Alex Lowe, Flood, Hiking, Khumbu, Climbing, Ice Climbing, Glacier melt, Nepal, Tibet, planet, global warming, Sherpa, mountaineer, death zone, Montblanc, trash, pollution, base camp, everest base camp trek, trek, flight, tourism Nepal, summit, oxygen, entrepreneur, startup, cardiac arrest, helicopter, helitourism, helicopter rescue, Earth Day, #earthday, climate change, India

Id: _XldpTlZIcE

Length: 48min 7sec (2887 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024