WIll Power: Standout Q&A with Will Steger

INTERVIEW BY Nathan Mueller

Dogsledding from Russia to Canada via the North Pole? Check. Trekking 1,600 miles across Greenland? Check. Traveling the longest-possible route across Antarctica? Check. In the past 45 years, polar explorer and environmental educator Will Steger has journeyed to the ends of the earth to raise awareness for some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. A Minnesota native, Steger is a true eyewitness to the dramatic environmental changes occurring in polar regions. When he isn’t exploring, he and his foundation are working to catalyze national and international leadership on climate change. Momentum caught up with Steger shortly after he returned from “Expedition Copenhagen” with a delegation of 12 Midwestern youth.

Blogging from the U.N. Climate Change Negotiations

by Star Tribune

Arctic explorer Will Steger and his foundation have led a team of Midwest youth on a different type of expedition: taking part in international climate negotations. The 12 delegates from the Midwest have been blogging about their eperience at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Copehnagen the past two weeks.

by Holt-McDougal Publishing:

Will Steger's journals are published in a 6th grade Literature textbook for their "Life Stories: Biography and Autobiography" section. Will is given a four-page spread analysis of writing from the perspective of a contemporary explorer.

American Photo Magazine’s 30th Anniversary issue features Will’s famous lunch break image on a two-page spread. The image is featured as one of 30 perfect pictures in 30 years.

Click here to see the image…

By Will Steger: Published Wednesday, December 10, 2008 MINNEAPOLIS —This past year I had the unique opportunity to return to Ellesmere Island and Greenland in the high Arctic to see firsthand the impacts of global warming and to bring a large online audience of educators, students and media along.

What I found was no surprise: the ice is continuing to melt and the temperatures continue to rise. This summer, two major ice shelves of Ellesmere Island at the northern tip of North America broke up. About half of the summer sea ice on the Arctic Ocean is gone.But climate change isn’t just melting the summer sea ice in the Arctic — it’s being felt right here in Minnesota. We’re seeing changes in vegetation and habitat that threaten to erase our Minnesota treasures and forever alter our important industries like farming, recreation and tourism.

A Hundred Twin Citians Who Make Things Happen.
Will Steger, Environmentalist

No one, with the recent exception of Al Gore, is more closely or widely listened to on environmental topics than the sixty-three-year-old polar explorer and educator. After several decades of Arctic expeditions, Steger, a Twin Cities native headquartered in Ely, has dedicated his life to spreading the word about global warming and its attendant perils. His global standing is unquestioned - his many honors include National Geographic Adventure magazine's lifetime achievement award. Here at home, his audience continues to grow, most notably in corporate and political circles not historically associated with urgent environmental concerns. In October, Steger joined by Tim Pawlenty at a Duluth conference on climate-change-related threats to Lake Superior. The governor had earlier announced tentative plans for a 2008 fact-finding trip to the Canadian Arctic with Steger, whom he compared to Paul Revere "issuing a call to action".

Edited by William Swanson, With Melissa Colgan, Katie Derdoski, Erin Gulden, Sarah Howard, Steve Marsh, Adam Platt, Abby Van Ness, and Megan Wiley.

Why every little thing we do still matters.
by Will Steger '66 : Photo by Mike Ekern '02

As one of nine kids raised in Richfield, Minn., my parents gave us total freedom to explore, just as long as we received good grades and stayed on the right side of the law. At 15, inspired by the adventures of Huck Finn, my brother and I took a motorboat down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans and back; this was my first and last motorized expedition. Then in 1964, as a 19-year-old junior at St. Thomas, I purchased a tract of land on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, three miles from the nearest road.

Read the full article on the St. Thomas Magazine website.

Polar explorer and educator Will Steger plans to lead a 1,400 mile international dogsled expedition across Ellesmere Island in April.

In the 2008 installment of Global Warming 101, a series of expeditions designed to raise awareness of global warming, Steger will lead six people, aged 21 to 26 in the footsteps of legendary explorers and visit ice shelves that have either collapsed or are on the brink of collapse.

The expedition will travel over northern Ellesmere, an area that has undergone significant warming, to document the effect of climate change on the island. These changes include the major break-up of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in the summer of 2002, and the calving of the Ayles Ice Shelf in August 2005.

by Steve Marsh

Will Steger's Arctic Spacesuit

April 1, explorer Will Steger leaves for a seventy-day sub-Arctic expedition to Ellesmere Island in Canada. He won't forget to pack his Wild Things high-altitude one-piece.

"This is how I survive in the Arctic, where teh temperature can range from -55 to 20 Fahrenheit," says Steger. "I wear it whenever I'm outside the tent."

Sam Branson’s story, “The Iceman Cometh” in Esquire Magazine, contains an 8-page fashion photo spread along with Sam’s experience on the Ellesmere Island Expedition. On newsstands now.

by Bryan Walsh:

Do you want to see the effects of global warming? Then head north. Temperatures are increasing faster in the far north than they are in the more temperate zones of the world. Recent studies indicate that the North Pole could be underwater during the summer in less than 10 years, instead of coated in thick sea ice. But seeing the Arctic terrain up close isn't easy, unless you're handy with a dogsled, so Will Steger is going to take all of us there.