Did you know that the average American child spends 53 hours per week staring at some kind of electronic screen? Worse, the average boy or girl spends less than 7 minutes engaged in outdoors, unstructured play every day!

Today, National Wildlife Federation hosted a national summit on children and the outdoors to explore the indoor childhood problem and what we can all do at the local, state and federal level to halt this dangerous trend.

More than 60 organizations from around the nation joined the summit by webcast to hear from national health and child experts. Just a few of the startling statistics:

- By the time most children go to kindergarten, they have spent more than 5,000 hours in front of a television – enough time to earn a college degree;

- Obesity among children ages 6-11 more than doubled in the past 20 years, to 17 percent;

- Lack of outdoor time an inadequate doses of sunlight are creating a generation of children deficient in Vitamin D, which can lead to heart disease, diabetes and bone problems.

The reality is we’re raising a generation of “inside kids.” And the implications – physical and mental – are serious, not to mention that it spells disaster for the future of conservation. Who will be there in 20 years to protect our precious wildlife heritage if everyone is inside texting?

Dr. David Rutstein, Acting Deputy Surgeon General, spoke at the summit, and said one of the prescriptions to help treat – and prevent – obesity in children, is to provide them enough unstructured outdoor time. Well, that’s exactly what National Wildlife Federation’s Be Out There campaign is all about!

John Grant, CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta and a director on the NWF board, said that even in urban cities, families can find outdoor space right outside their door in neighborhood parks that offer kids the chance to get exercise and also get their creative juices flowing. “

We can all start by getting better informed about this growing problem. I encourage you to go to Be Out There to learn more, and to find ideas for how you can inspire children to “Be Out There” in nature. NWF has lots of guides and activities to get you started. So grab the sunscreen and go!

P.S. I’ve been attending National Wildlife Federation’s 74th annual meeting in Houston, TX this week. It’s an inspiring event, with conservation leaders from our 47 state affiliated organizations coming together to debate and set policies, discuss conservation challenges and share success stories. But I’ll admit, by day three, the hotel conference room I spent too many hours in was beginning to remind me of a meat locker, and I was yearning for a Green Hour.

You might think Houston is just one big concrete jungle. But I managed to find a terrific green space, the Houston Arboretum, not far from the hotel. My hotel concierge recommended I take a cab, as she thought the 2-mile walk would be too far (I walked back after realizing just how close it was). And my cab driver needed a GPS to find the park, which he had never heard of. The winding drive through dense woods was as foreign to him as the inner-city streets were to me.

In the course of an hour hiking the trails in this hidden park, I spied several box turtles, tadpoles, squirrels, a water snake, and a magnificent yellow crested night heron that looked like a statue in the swamp until he ever-so-silently moved his head to fish.

The experience has left me inspired – and it just proves that you can find a little green space just about anywhere, even in the middle of downtown Houston.

I talked to Larry Schweiger, and here’s what he told me:

“This agreement keeps the process moving forward to a more effective agreement in 2010. But we will need far more ambitious global cooperation to fill in the missing pieces next year. The Senate needs to get busy and deliver the stalled climate and clean energy bill to the president to create jobs and do our share to reduce global warming pollution. And I urge President Obama to continue his consistent leadership on climate change by moving forward with action under the Clean Air Act.”

I have to agree. While the climate negotiations have produced some steps forward, the work is far from done. We have a long way to go in order to get a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement among developed and developing nations, and not a lot of time to do it.

We still don’t have a domestic policy in place to reduce global warming pollution or to unleash private investments for clean energy. Without that, we will not regain our global competitive edge and we will continue to be a stumbling block to a binding global climate agreement.

The lesson I learned was that we seriously need to step up our efforts at home to produce legislation that sets the U.S. on an ambitious path to aggressive limits on global warming pollution.

I say we should make Earth Day, 2010 our goal to pass a strong climate and clean energy bill in the U.S. Senate. Anyone who feels an obligation to leave behind a better world for their family and safeguard wildlife for our children’s future should join our fight to change the forecast for people and wildlife.

National Wildlife Federation is working to solve a big problem: uncontrolled cattle ranching, which is right now the single biggest cause of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon, and subsequently, a major source of global warming pollution.

When millions of acres of rainforest are wiped out to make room for cattle or the crops that feed them, it removes a significant CO2 sponge that had been holding carbon in the ground. When the trees are cut or burned, massive amounts of CO2 are released into the atmosphere. Right now, tropical deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s global warming pollution (PDF) – an amount equivalent to the total emissions of China or the United States, or more than that produced by every car, truck, plane, ship and train on Earth.

A recent article in the newsletter of the Yale School of Forestry tells a stark story.

I interviewed NWF’s international policy expert Barbara Bramble today about an event she hosted at COP15 about what’s being done to address this problem:

I had no idea that the leather boots I’m wearing could very well have come from the hides of cattle being raised on clear-cut land that was once Brazilian rainforest, and may actually have contributed to global warming.

Barbara explained it to me like this:

What can be done? An effort led by NWF and local organizations in the Amazon is underway to improve local law enforcement and develop incentives for ranchers to use sustainable ranching practices that avoid massive deforestation. At the same time, we’re working to educate big retailers who buy huge amounts of leather to make shoes, belts, purses and other popular leather products about the source of their material. If big retailers insist that their leather come from sustainable ranches, and reward responsible ranchers with more business, these products become more valuable, which becomes a win-win for the ranchers and the rainforest.

In August, NWF hosted a roundtable in Brazil that brought together major retailers, leather manufacturers and large ranching operations to discuss the potential for creating a tracking system not unlike the Forest Stewardship Council’s timber tracking system. By tracing leather products back to the actual ranch on which a calf was raised, retailers – and we the customers – can be assured our leather products are not contributing to global warming. Barbara and her colleagues are going back to Brazil in January to continue this important work.

To learn more about about protecting rainforests, go to www.forestjustice.org.

Hello from Copenhagen! This is Christine Dorsey, communications director for National Wildlife Federation, and I’m on the ground in Copenhagen at the United Nations climate conference, or as it’s known around the world, COP15 – that’s short for the 15th Conference of Parties (to a global climate treaty).

You’ve probably heard or read about this meeting, where heads of state from all over the world are convening for two weeks to negotiate a new agreement on how to tackle global climate change. As you might imagine, this is a complicated effort. There is a lot to consider – how quickly must we cut global warming pollution? What level of action should the world expect from wealthy, “developed” nations like the U.S.? What about “developing” nations like China and India, that historically have not emitted nearly the same amount of CO2 as industrialized nations, but are expected to soon surpass countries like ours, due to their fast-growing economies?

Global negotiations of any sort are never easy, and these are no different. To help you better understand this process go to www.nwf.org/copenhagen to read more about the issues at stake in the negotiations.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is joining this process late in the game, and there is a fair amount of frustration among other nations that our efforts to reduce our global warming pollution are not nearly aggressive enough. We’ve spent the last eight years on the sidelines, so the Obama administration has its work cut out for it to re-gain the trust of the rest of the world and offer up a plan for doing our fair share. News that President Obama will attend the last day of the negotiation is an excellent sign that the U.S. is serious about finding a path forward to a new global agreement.

I’ll be following the talks from the conservation perspective: National Wildlife Federation is working to improve elements of the agreement that would protect tropical forests – which can house enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, not to mention wildlife. We’re also helping keep the pressure on the U.S. negotiators to come to the table with a plan that aggressively reduces U.S. global warming pollution.

You will no doubt see some distracting headlines along the way. Climate deniers backed by Exxon-Mobil and other Big Oil interests are out in full force using every dirty trick in the book in a desperate attempt to derail climate progress.

But they are far outnumbered by those of us who know the truth: the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing, and the burning of fossil fuels is the culprit. We have an obligation to our families to address this problem, and now is our time to act.

Check back here often to follow the progress. I just got off the plane, so I promise photos and video later! And please post comments and questions for our NWF delegation.

Photo via Flickr’s White Red Flower

Saturday was our last day of riding, 56 miles from Dyersville to Bellevue, on the Mississippi River. We ran into the 3 Romney brothers, sons of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. They rode the last day with matching t-shirts with their names and ’08 on the back.

I saw Josh and Craig Romney on the road and passed them, yelling out the biking etiquette “On your left!” as I went by Later, they caught up with me at a roadside stand selling fresh watermelon. I said hello and got Josh talking about global warming. He said his father accepts that global warming is real, though thinks the jury is still out on how much human activity is to blame. Regardless, however, he said Mitt believes there needs to be a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. When I asked him why his dad pulled Massachusetts out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) at the 11th hour (despite his administration having been a big part of creating it) he didn’t have an answer and launched into the need for other countries like China to be mandated to cut emissions.

He did say the US needs to do it’s part in reducing emissions, but that his father wants to be sure we use all available technologies, including nuclear power. I asked him if we had time to build the number of plants it would take to really address the problem and he acknowledged that nuclear is not the silver bullet and that other technologies like wind and solar need to be part of the mix.

Bottom line – He had many stock answers we hear from politicians and didn’t have detailed responses, not that I would have expected that from the son of the candidate in the middle of a bike ride across Iowa. I urged him to ask his father to make global warming a priority, and he claimed that Mitt talks about it “in every speech.” Really?

So, our wee has come to an end. I’m in the Dubuque airport on my way to Chicago, then Albany, NY and then Burlington, VT. Our team is all on our way to our perspective homes to rest up. It’s been an incredible week. We’ve spoken personally to at least 1,000 people, most of whom live (and vote) in Iowa. Our global warming message was seen via our jerseys by thousands of others. We signed up about 250 new activists and have a minimum of 100 people eager to buy a “Cycling Against Global Warming” jersey (if we ever decide to sell them!).

Mission accomplished! Thanks for reading, and stay connected to NWF as we mobilize our networks to bring meaningful global warming legislation passed and signed by a president who will make confronting global warming a priority.

As they say along the bike route when a cyclist leaves the road: Rider Off!

Yesterday, I took a break in Fairbank and took a spin around town in a horse and buggy, compliments of a local Amish farmer. He and two of his 10 brothers and sisters were giving buggy rides. The Amish live such interesting lives (at least I think so). This older teen, Freeman, farms for a living. They grow nearly all their own food and sell the rest to the local community. They use horses to plow their fields, grow diversified crops and for the most part don’t use motorized vehicles or equipment. While some may see this as an “old-fashioned” way of life, I think we can learn a lot from the Amish. Their carbon footprints are negligible. As we all try to adjust the way we live to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we may want to think about just how independent we can be of fossil fuel based energy – by using less electricity, using alternative modes of transportation when we can (like biking to work if it’s feasible!) and growing more veggies & herbs. You don’t need to be an Amish farmer to do these things, but they sure do exemplify what’s possible!

It’s on to Dyersville today. A little rain along the way, but so far no storms. I’m liking the cooler weather (80s as opposed to 90s), but I’m still drinking lots of water and Gatorade – about 60 ounces of water and maybe 30 ounces of gatorade a day. I can tell you one thing – the dry, cracked ground in the corn fields is getting a little help from the thousands of cyclists who don’t want to wait in line for the portalets! Oh, and I had my first “Walking Taco” yesterday. It’s a bag of doritos and taco fixings heated up that you can eat on the go – yummy! More tomorrow…

OK, back to politics. We never did see Sen. Edwards on the road with Lance. But we saw some small Biden ’08 posters, a couple of kids with Rudy ’08 signs, and some big Ron Paul for President billboards out in some fields. The prevailing question from cyclists going passed the Ron Paul signs was: Who is Ron Paul?

But Edwards was on the road with Lance for a few miles, according to news reports.

Some news reports say Democrat Joe Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, was scheduled to ride today, and Republican Mitt Romney’s sons are riding tomorrow.

Kate Hofmann spoke with Christy Vilsack, wife of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. She was volunteering at a Clinton campaign booth. Kate said Mrs. Vilsack was very eager to discuss global warming, and asked Kate some probing questions that she said she would relay to Sen. Clinton. The message – make global warming a priority in the campaign!

Our team has spoken to so many local and state politicians this week, as well as hundreds of Iowans and others on RAGBRAI. The overriding theme – Iowans really get the issue of global warming, and want some action from political leaders.

We’re headed to Independence, IA today. Three days to go! Send me some comments or questions, will ya?

Later in the day, we ran into Sen. Barrack Obama’s campaign, which was set up as riders rode into Hampton. Clinton’s staff set up shop there as well. Obama, too, has co-sponsored the Lieberman-McCain bill. His staff was less receptive to our NWF team. Not rude, but not interested in talking to us. Neither, really, was Clinton’s staff. Apparently, if you’re not an Iowa caucus voter, they don’t want to take the time to talk. Not very savvy, but I suppose it’s to be expected.

Tomorrow, former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, will be riding with Lance Armstrong. Armstrong invited all presidential candidates – of any party – to ride RAGBRAI with him. Edwards was the only candidate to take him up on it. Lance wants to talk to all candidates about cancer. His Livestrong charity is front and center for him on this ride.

Ranger Rick made an appearance at camp this evening. He was a big hit with the kids, of course. But adults wanted their photo taken with him, too. We got a few more activists to sign up with us thanks to Ranger Rick!

More requests for our bike jersey…More on Wednesday, when we ride to Cedar Falls (68 miles). Until then, ride on!

We rode from Spencer to Humboldt on Monday – about 80 miles. We stopped in Laurens to meet with the Laurens Sun publisher – he took our picture and the paper will do a story about our effort. Turns out the publisher is a longtime member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and he was very familiar with NWF. He said he’s not too up to speed on global warming, but he recognizes it’s a problem.

When we got to camp Monday afternoon, KGAN-TV out of Cedar Rapids was waiting, wanting an interview with Don and Miles Hooper, who are our father-son duo from Vermont (Don works for NWF) who are riding and presenting a slide show about global warming on a couple of evenings this week. We’re hoping the interview will air today (Tuesday) at noon and/or 10 p.m., and also on the FOX affiliate in Des Moines at 9 p.m. When asked what the NWF team was doing to address global warming, Miles was quick to say, “We’re riding our bikes across Iowa – isn’t that the best mode of transportation?”

We’ve spoken to several farmers in the last day or two – corn, soybeans and more corn – farming is definitely THE industry in these parts. Farmers we’ve spoken to say they are seeing the effects of drought – many of them are older and hoping to leave their farm to sons or daughters. They’re concerned about what is in store for the future. Ethanol is popular here, though some farmers are concerned there will be too much production. I saw one filling station where E-85 was $3.26 per gallon. Regular unleaded gas was at about $3.09.

So far, no presidential candidates, but Lance Armstrong invited any and all of them to ride with him. Former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, is the only one who has taken him up on it and will be out riding with Lance on Wednesday morning. We’ll be on the lookout.

OK – the quick Lance update – I rode with him! For about 3 seconds. He and his “Livestrong” gang came past me and Kate Hofmann. He said, “Hi guys.” We didn’t realize it was him until he was past us. I tried to speed up to catch him…yeah, that didn’t last. Miles rode with him later – he was so excited to meet him, he forgot to say anything about global warming. Ah well, he’ll try again today! But we all have our jerseys on!

Today, we’re headed to Hampton. Tonight, Ranger Rick will make appearances at camp. There are lots of kids doing the ride (talk about getting your Green Hour! These cycling families are amazing!), so we expect he’ll be a big hit at camp. More later!

This morning, we were up bright and early and most of us were on the road by 7 a.m. for the 77+mile ride to Spencer. Team NWF looked swank in our “Cycling Against Global Warming” bike jerseys. We’ve had several requests to buy them! This was probably the best way we’ve found so far to get people to engage in conversation. It was incredible to see 10,000+ cyclists overtake every town we rode through. But the communities really love it – think of all the economic opportunity this sort of event brings to these small farming communities.

This evening we did our first presentation in Spencer featuring Don and Miles Hooper, our father-son duo who are riding and speaking to audiences about global warming. It was not a big crowd – we had to compete with an appearance by Lance Armstrong…but we did get a few new Iowa activists who are interested in helping get presidential candidates to make global warming a priority in the 2008 campaign.

I have it on pretty good authority that former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) will be riding with Lance tomorrow and Wednesday. We’ll be on the look-out for them both. I also heard that former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) will be around – not sure if he’ll be riding. I also heard that Sen. Sam Brownback, R-KS, is riding, but we haven’t seen any trace of him.

Tomorrow we ride another 77 miles from Spencer to Humboldt. We’re crossing a pretty conservative part of Iowa – very beautiful, and the people could not be nicer. Every community has opened its doors to RAGBRAI cyclists. We’ve chatted with several farmers – corn and soybeans are the crops around here – they are feeling the drought and it concerns them. We saw some giant wind turbines – and with a big head wind most of the day – I now know first-hand why Iowa has such potential to produce energy from wind! We’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of farmers who agree that we need to make addressing global warming a top priority. In fact, we’ve come across few true skeptics – oh, they’re around, and a few let us know, but for the most part folks really understand we need to take action right now.

More tomorrow!