For decades wilderness areas have provided access and protection to millions of acres of land. Today, climate change is shifting how we think about the importance and management of these places.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

In an earlier episode, we asked what exactly we mean when we say ‘wilderness’? Today we’ll be talking about wilderness areas in the United States. Why do they exist? And what do they accomplish?

Megan Hall: We had Will Malloy from our Possibly team help Charlie Adams look into this question.

Will Malloy: Hello!

Charlie Adams: Howdy Megan!

Megan Hall: So remind me what we mean when we say wilderness?

Charlie Adams: To recap from last episode, wilderness in the United States has been a tool and term for protecting massive amounts of land from human development like cities, roads, and industry.

Will Malloy: But it’s more complicated because Indigenous people already lived in these places. The wilderness areas became wild by removing people from their homes.

Megan Hall: Got it, and if I remember correctly, the Wilderness Act had something to do with creating these areas, right?

Charlie Adams: Bingo. Here’s Peter Mali, the National Wilderness Program Manager at the US Forest Service to explain more:

Peter Mali: So the Wilderness Act of 1964, defined what wilderness is. It also designated, automatically, over 9 million acres of Forest Service land that were being classified as primitive or wild.

Will Malloy: Those 9 million acres were called wilderness areas, and the Act defined them as:

Peter Mali: “…an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Megan Hall: I’ve heard of these places before…but aren’t they all out West?

Charlie Adams: The first were mostly in the West but today there are over 100 million acres spread out across 44 states and Puerto Rico.

Will Malloy:And there are more wilderness areas each year. In 2023 alone three new ones were created!

Megan Hall: So, what’s behind the drive for more wilderness?

Charlie Adams: It depends on who you ask. For recreationists it might be fishing, hunting, or just the solitude. Here’s Cliff Kipp, the Executive Director of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation in Montana to set the scene:

Cliff Kipp: “you’re gonna hear the wind coming through the trees, you’re going to hear water moving across the landscape…you’ll hear your footsteps on on the ground.”

Will Malloy: For Indigenous peoples these wilderness areas are often located on important ancestral lands and are valued for ceremonial purposes and access to food and game.

Charlie Adams: But even if you never visit a wilderness area, you’re likely to benefit from it.

Megan Hall: In what way?

Will Malloy: Wilderness areas often protect large forests and watersheds that support clean air and water for people living downstream and downwind.

Charlie Adams: These forests and wetlands also suck up a lot of carbon dioxide which makes them a key defense against climate change.

Megan Hall: Are there any other ways they help fight climate change?

Will Malloy: Yes! These large, undeveloped spaces also offer homes for threatened plants and animals, who are already vulnerable because of changing temperatures.

Charlie Adams: Wilderness areas also connect areas of nature together, making it easier for animals to travel or move north for cooler temperatures.

Megan Hall: Sounds like a good deal. But won’t climate change affect wilderness areas too? I’ve seen a lot in the news about forest fires.

Will Malloy: That’s right. Just because they help fight climate change doesn’t mean they’re safe from it.

Charlie Adams: Wilderness areas in the West especially have had to deal with drier and hotter conditions making droughts and wildfires more frequent and more intense.

Will Malloy: And not all plants and animals can just pack up and move for better climates. Climate change is happening too fast.

Megan Hall: So, how are Wilderness Areas managing the impacts of climate change?

Charlie Adams: There’s a big debate on that right now. Some argue for a more hands-on approach like actively fighting the bigger and fiercer wildfires.

Will Malloy: Others say the whole point of wilderness is that it’s free from human intervention so we should just be more hands-off.

Charlie Adams: How we define wilderness and its purpose affects how to go about taking care of it.

Will Malloy: After all, these places aren’t just important for the carbon they suck up– they also matter to the people whose culture, traditions, and economic well-being depend on them.

Charlie Adams: No matter how we choose to respond to climate change, wilderness areas will be an important part of the solution, but they’re also not immune from it.

Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks Charlie and Will.

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to askpossibly.org Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or X at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Have you ever wondered why we should save water when it feels like Rhode Island has enough to go around? Today, Meg Talikoff and Juliana Merullo are here to answer that question. Hi, guys!

Juliana Merullo: Hi!

Meg Talikoff: Hey, Megan!

Megan Hall: So, what’s the deal? Why should I worry about my ten-minute shower when we seem to be having a lot more floods than droughts around here? 

Meg Talikoff: First, it’s important to clarify that water conservation has different benefits depending on who is using less water.

Megan Hall: What do you mean by that?

Juliana Merullo: Well, the amount of water people use at home is so small relative to other uses, that it basically doesn’t affect our total water use. 

Meg Talikoff: So, the reason you personally should conserve water isn’t really related to how much water is available in Rhode Island. It mostly has to do with energy. 

Megan Hall: Can you explain that a little more? How are water and energy connected?

Juliana Merullo: It just takes a lot of energy to get water from the environment, treat it, transport it to your house, heat it, clean it when you’re done, and repeat that cycle over and over again. 

Megan Hall: Okay. But, is using energy really a bad thing? 

Meg Talikoff: Well, most of our energy still comes from burning fossil fuels. Which means the more water we use, the more greenhouse gasses we emit. 

Megan Hall: So, energy use contributes to climate change, but how much are we talking about? Is water a big contributor?

Juliana Merullo: It’s not the biggest home energy use, but it’s not small either. 

Meg Talikoff: In the typical American house, water heating alone accounts for about 20% of all the energy use. 

Juliana Merullo: That’s less than heating air, but more than all your electronics and appliances. And it adds up.

Meg Talikoff: In fact, the amount of energy the average American spends on home water services comes out to about one and a half  tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Juliana Merullo: For reference, the average American car creates about four and a half tons of carbon dioxide a year. 

Meg Talikoff: So if you wanted to offset your water use by not driving, you’d have to walk everywhere for over four months a year!

Megan Hall: So I shouldn’t be mindlessly using water. Do you guys have any specific tips on how to conserve?

Meg Talikoff: The most obvious answer is just to turn off the tap when you can. Cutting your shower time in half will naturally cut that shower’s emissions in half, too.  

Juliana Merullo: You could try picking one song, and getting out of the shower when it’s over!

Meg Talikof: Also, something people don’t always realize is that about 95% of the energy cost of home water use comes from heating the water. 

Juliana Merullo: So using cold water can save you a bunch of water-related emissions. 

Meg Talikoff: One easy way to use more cold water is by running your laundry machine on the cold setting. 

Juliana Merullo: If you’re brave, try a cold shower. One recent study found that spending five minutes in cold water (without your getting your head wet) could boost your mood. 

Meg Talikoff: Though, I’m not going to try that one.

Megan Hall: If I’m not ready to commit to a cold shower in the morning, is there anything else I can do to save water?

Meg Talikoff: Definitely – That’s where you can look into buying water-efficient appliances. For example – front loading washers use much less water than top loaders. 

Juliana Merullo: And ENERGY STAR appliances use about 20% less energy than traditional washers. 

Meg Talikoff: Or you could make the heating process more efficient by warming your water with a hot water heat pump, instead of a water heater that burns gas or oil. 

Megan Hall: Okay, I’ve got action items! But what about those “other uses” you mentioned? Who’s using up most of our water?

Meg Talikoff: We’ll talk more about that in our episode next week.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks Meg and Juliana!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.

The post Why should I use less water in a wet state like Rhode Island? appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Today, we have a question from one of our reporters, Charlie Adams. What do you have for us, Charlie?

Charlie: Last summer I spent ten weeks working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. It’s a slice of northwest Montana that’s over one million acres!

I’m from the East Coast, so the word “wilderness” used to make me think of pristine landscapes free of humans. Now that I’ve experienced it first hand, I think that’s not exactly right. Which made me wonder- what do we mean when we say “wilderness”?

Megan: We had Iman Khanbhai from our Possibly team help Charlie look into this question. 

Iman: Hello!

Megan: So what exactly do we mean when we say “wilderness”? 

Charlie: It’s a big question with many answers. To get a better idea, I asked rangers, conservationists, and tribal leaders. Depending on who you ask- it’s either a great idea, flawed, or a bit of both.

Megan: Alright, let’s get into it! 

Iman: We can start with The 1964 Wilderness Preservation Act. It calls wilderness “…an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Charlie: Many of us think about wilderness in a similar way, I know I did- it’s the legendary American landscapes home to grizzly bears and wolves, and for a few nights the brave backpacker. 

Megan: Right. Wide open spaces without humans. What’s wrong with that definition? 

Iman: Well, it assumes that there’s a big divide between humans and nature- that we haven’t always co-existed in some way.

Charlie: And that some ways of interacting with the land are more “civilized” than others. 

Iman: To learn more we spoke with Professor Bathsheba Demuth, an Environmental Historian at Brown University.  

Bathsheba Demuth: “The idea of wilderness is deeply tied with the settler colonial project of displacing indigenous inhabitants in North America by saying, Oh, this land is empty. It’s not being used. No one’s really here. And if settlers come in and transform it through agriculture and industry, then it will be inhabited for real.”

Megan: So, the idea of wilderness assumes that nothing’s happening there, so settlers can take it and do whatever they want with it?

Charlie: That was the original thought. But eventually, conservationists like Teddy Roosevelt worried about losing all of that wilderness. So, they worked to protect certain areas and keep them “wild.”

Megan: Like the national parks?

Charlie: Right. First came the parks, and then came a slightly different form of protection- wilderness areas. The US Government created these spaces to “maintain the wild character of the landscape” and they blocked humans from building or living there. 

Iman: But there was one huge problem- humans already lived there. This land belonged to Native peoples. And the government often removed them to make the areas “wild.” 

Charlie: In fact, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, where I spent my summer, was established on indigenous land. That was more than 80 years ago.

Iman: Smokey Rides At The Door, an educator and former Blackfeet Tribal council member, says native people are still deeply connected to the land they lost.  

Smokey Rides At The Door: “The protein that’s available there from the meat is very important for our health. The picking of wild berries is very important to us. Those are part of our ceremonies.

Megan: So, where do we go from here?  

Charlie: Well, we can start by reimagining what wilderness means. Maybe it’s not as clear-cut as civilization versus nature. Here’s Gabriel de Avilez Row-sha, professor of history at Brown with a thought experiment: 

Gabriel de Avilez Rocha: “When are you ever not in nature? Even when you’re sitting in your car? Or in your living room? How are you in wilderness in those moments? How is nature there? When we look around us, we actually are seeing nature that’s been transformed in different ways.”

Iman: But on a more practical level, wilderness areas can rethink this idea of excluding humans.

Charlie: Some places are already doing this. Bathsheba from Brown says people can enter wilderness areas in Alaska to harvest or hunt food for their daily needs.

Iman: And some park and wilderness systems are starting to do more to acknowledge indigenous people and their connection to these lands.

Megan: Thanks Charlie and Iman. 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “ask possibly” 

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative

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