The words "climate change" are pretty unequivocal, stating that we can expect change. "Change" implies things that we can't necessarily predict, in as much as we can predict anything weather related. Currently, most of the east coast is shutting down. Our power grid does not contain enough on-site, distributed generation to keep separate places powered when others go down; they're all part of a grid. Our mobility options are shutting down – including roads for single-occupant personal vehicles. Schools are closing, and businesses with them. The economic loss solely from all of this cessation of activity will be staggering. Yes, the inevitable destruction counts as GDP – great! growth! – but the on the ground reality is that this is bad for the people and other living things in the storm's path, it's bad for our national economy, and it's bad for the world. That doesn't begin to consider the environmental, health, or community impacts.

We could keep arguing senselessly about whether climate change is happening, but what's the point? Look at the weather events of the last year, and then let's get out that ol' can-do American attitude toward leading and finding solutions to problems. The nice thing about science is that it doesn't care if you believe it, but that doesn't absolve us of taking advantage of what could otherwise destroy us. 

So, a road map: when you take office next year, I'd respectfully suggest you fundamentally re-prioritize: focus on local, sustainable energy production – even if connected by regional or national grids. Focus on localized food production systems, even if connected by regional or (inter)national distribution systems. Focus on creating and supporting myriad mobility options – not just more roads for cars. And last but not least, focus on creating regulatory certainty around carbon. Cap it. Trade it. Market base it, but let's get serious about adapting and leading in this changing world. Doing this will not only show that the US can still lead… it may even (gasp!) create fantastic, massive new business opportunities around which our entrepreneurs can plug exciting, new, money-making, job-creating, tax-generating solutions! Ooooh… and there may even be "externalities," side effects such as cleaner air, healthier kids, cleaner water, and other trivialities. 

Respectfully, 

Constituent #257,000,241 (I may be off a bit on the number)

PS: Sorry if I'm long-winded. Turns out that snarky missives about saving the world don't really fit on Twitter.

The short answer is… the trip.

The longer answer has a few sections. I'll try to lay it all out below:

1) Surprise. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Poland. I expected to love Copenhagen – and I did. I knew I'd be glad to again be in the cacophony of Turkey, and I was. I had no idea I'd love Poland. It's an amazingly vibrant country, beautiful and writhing (can I use that word in this context?) with opportunity. I want to figure out how to do business there. The Chinese already have. It's an exciting place.

2) Food. The whole darn trip was full of amazing eats. From the hotel breakfasts (the one in our Ankara, Turkey hotel was particularly incredible; I've included a few photos below, and you can't even see the olive bar) to wine-soaked Parisian lunches, we ate like kings and queens. That's not hard to like.

3) Access. I've met some amazing people in my life, but this trip was a seemingly never-ending parade of amazing people. From one meeting to the next, we continuously met with people in whose company it felt an honor to be. Quite the experience.

4) Tour guides. I've always sworn off guided tours as a waste, preferring to find the deep back roads less traveled. I still like that method of travel… but good tour guides can really shape an experience. Three examples that stand out: at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, we were guided by a woman with decades of art history expertise. She curated a massive museum into an incredibly informative, 1.5hour tour. It was spectacular. Similarly, in Warsaw, we were given a tour of the Old City by a guy who seemed to know everything about Warsaw, and I learned more than I'd learned in quite a bit of reading on the town. Finally, the Auschwitz tour was incredibly provocative (see previous post on Krakow to read more about that one).

5) Time. It was an awesome experience (in the true sense of the word) to simply have time to think about the world and one's place in it. I will long be grateful for that opportunity.

Finally – moving back to a nutshell: it was a very fun, incredibly educational experience.

From Warsaw, we caught flights to Paris, the massive pension strikes happily not affecting our ability to get to the City of Lights.

I love Paris. It is an incredible city, buzzing with an energy I’ve found in only a few cities (London, Tokyo, and New York, to be specific). It’s full of incredible architecture, an endless array of boutiques, cafes, bars, and alleys to explore.

Upon arrival at CDG airport, we were hustled into a waiting mini-bus and shuttled to Elysee Palace, the home of the President of France. There, we were taken through security by a member of President Sarkozy’s cabinet, only to be told we must wait in the courtyard (i.e. couldn’t proceed to the room in which we were to be meeting) as the President was about to leave. We waited, and waited, but sadly, he didn’t come out; finally, our escort decided we’d best go, as he was needing to get back to running the country. Yes, it’s a busy life.

Our stay in Paris continued with a series of amazing, if somewhat grueling meetings (our longest day went from 8:15am until…approximately 11 at night, though I’m not totally sure, with almost no breaks). We met with a pair of French journalists in the restaurant where the Obama family ate when last in Paris, and there heard their stories of the changing face of journalism and the news in France. We met with the Executive Producer at the relatively new TV station, France 24, which broadcasts simultaneously in Arabic, English, and French (and which, incidentally, has a great iPhone app), who told us of their effort to provide a more comprehensive competitor to CNN and the BBC. We also met with the leaders of a defense think tank, of a massive public park, and of the French equivalent to the US Chamber of Commerce.

It’s fair to say that by the time we got to France, my group was exhausted. All of us had been in more meetings than we could remember, with short nights the result of amazing, if “working,” dinners followed immediately the next morning by more of the same, coupled with a heavy travel schedule (everyone had at least five cities in 24 days; I had the most, at 7 cites). We were all relatively sick of our clothing, and looking forward to no longer washing our undergarments in hotel sinks. However, I also believe it’s honest to say that we are all emotionally, and intellectually, invigorated. It was an incredible trip, a trip of a lifetime, and one that will not soon be forgotten. The friendships developed in those 24 short days will, in many cases, I believe, persist for years.

As I’ve noted, we were in meetings for hours every day. Many of the conversations led my mind to new business possibilities, new opportunities to engage in the world. In a rare turn of events in a person’s adult life, we were endlessly learning, with no obligation to turn those lessons into any immediate “outcomes.” We met people from all walks of life, people doing every kind of work, and were able to talk politics, economics, sociology, and culture, with no expected result save gaining a better understanding of the world and our places in it, and further developing the Transatlantic relationship. It was an incredible experience.

Below, some images of Paris.

My hosts were with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they were wonderful. We discussed politics and the state of the world over a spread of olives, poached pears and gorgonzola, Polish cheeses, and wine; needless to say, I was in my element.

The next two days flew by in a whirlwind of meetings and tours. I met with a senior urban planning consultant, with newspaper editors, and with the founders of Poland’s version of the Huffington Post. The food was amazing, with visits to local restaurants proving that Poland is every bit the culinary destination. We also got a tour of the old town, as well as the Warsaw Uprising museum (opened last year), which were fascinating. I’ll do my best to summarize my learnings below.

Poland was the first country invaded by the Nazis in WWII, with Germany rolling in on 1 Sep 1939. 16 days later, the Soviets, too, declared war on Poland. The country was sandwiched, with enemy troops rolling in from both sides. The Nazis got to Warsaw and began cutting it up, bombing the historic downtown and moving Jews to the newly-created Jewish Ghetto. The citizens of Warsaw undertook the Warsaw Uprising, determined to fight the Germans. It was amazing – they lasted 63 days, and scored some impressive victories, given that they were regular citizens with few provisions and weapons fighting a legitimate army. In the end, of course, they lost. Warsaw is divided east/west by the Wisla River, and at the end of the fighting, the Soviets controlled the east side and the Germans the west.

Hitler decided to make an example of Warsaw, to demonstrate to other European cities that resistance was futile and would be met with aggressive destruction. As such, Nazi troops continued the destruction of Warsaw long after the Uprising had been beaten, bombing the historic Old Town endlessly to the point that, at the end of the war, it was approximately 85% destroyed. The Soviets were, of course, allied with the US. Nonetheless, they sat patiently on the east side of the river as the Germans destroyed the historic capital.

Amazingly, post-war, a decimated Warsaw population returned and began to rebuild. Warsaw’s pre-war population had stood at ~1.1M; post-war, it was at 450k. However, the citizens began to re-build the old town from its very ashes, literally using bricks from fallen buildings to rebuild them. They eschewed more modern construction methods and technologies in favor of recreating an authentic version of the old city – and were so successful that Old Town Warsaw is now a Unesco World Heritage Site. It’s a beautiful place, and all the more incredible when one considers it was literally razed 70 years ago. 

Jumping back to modern Warsaw, our last dinner was in the company of a true legend, Janus Onyszkiewicz. A leader, with Lech Walesa, of the Solidarity movement that led to the downfall of Communist rule, Janus went on to become a Member of European Parliament, a member of the Polish Parliament, and the Polish Minister of Defense. An accomplished mountaineer, he also summitted K2 and Annapurna. Needless to say, it was incredible to be in the company of such a historic person, and I was again blown away by the caliber of people with whom this program enables us to engage. Oh – and the dinner was fantastic.

Below are photos of the Old Town (entirely rebuilt), a beautiful park, a Chopin statue, and of our last dinner, where we were served by a number of people. The gentlemen with white hair, in between my colleagues Brandon and Katya, is Janus.

I’m writing this en route back to the US, the travel for my Marshall Fellowship now coming to an end. However, this has also given me time to reflect a bit. So, with that…. Back to Poland.

I think it’s safe to say our group had low expectations for Poland – sadly, we all had visions of Soviet-era concrete buildings, drab landscapes, a beaten-down place. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We arrived in Krakow first. It’s a beautiful city, simply gorgeous. The town is dominated by a gorgeous castle, the Wawel Castle, which dates from the 1500s . Krakow was, happily, spared destruction during World War II, so it also has the largest city square in Europe, an amazing place surrounded by sidewalk cafes and hosting regular markets, performers, and the like. We began our time in Krakow with a liter of hot beer – yes, hot beer, mulled similarly to wine (with, I believe, cinnamon, cloves, an orange, and some honey). It was deliciously perfect on a snappily-cold day. The Old Town city center is also surrounded by a gorgeous green belt, with two walking trails and full of people nearly ‘round the clock. Simply put, it’s a lovely city.

While there, we met with an American-Polish professor, who filled us in on Polish life and history of the last few decades. We also shared drinks with the professor and a few of her students, which was great, giving us further context for the current situation in Poland.

Below are some photos of and from the castle, and one in the main square.

(Warning: this blog post from here on out is a bit heavy)

Closing out our stay in Krakow, we visited Auschwitz-Berkenau. As students of history know, this was one of the worst of the Nazi concentration/extermination camps. Auschwitz was the parent camp for approximately 40 camps of varying sizes and purposes; some were pure concentration camps – places prisoners (mostly Jews) were sent to live while working for the Nazi war effort. Others were closer to pure extermination camps, their purpose being fairly obvious. We heard awful stories of the methods, the severity, the extent of the exterminations, and needles

s to say, it was horrible. We visited both Auschwitz and Birkenau, the former a relatively small (but brutal) place, the latter an enormous complex that at its height had five gas chambers and crematoriums running beyond capacity.

I have visited a concentration camp before, Dachau, in Germany. It was, in some ways, similar – impressing upon me the horrendous atrocities committed to so many. It was emotionally draining and memorable. However, our tour guide left me with something far more substantive on this trip. Specifically, he pointed out the following:

People visit these camps and see the atrocities, learn the stories, and seek meaning. In most cases, they seek that meaning through empathizing with the victims – a very human response. However, he continued, it is crucial, indeed arguably more important, to try to understand the motivations, the emotions, of the Nazis themselves – for it is only through this understanding, through gaining some sense of how the Holocaust came to pass, that humanity can ever hope to put an end to genocide everywhere.

Our guide continued by pointing out that there are four behaviors that lead to genocide (prepare here for oversimplification, of course): having a national culture that does not place a high value on human life; identifying a group, seen as not quite fully human, as the “other;” vilification of the “other” by the mainstream society, devaluing their lives; and finally, people willing to undertake the extermination of the “other” (by that point, the only “solution” to the problem of the “other”). Obviously, as he went on to point out, not everyone can stop genocide… but we can stop violence directed toward others in all its forms – whether in the form of domestic violence, racial violence, or by supporting organizations working for human rights across the globe.

His point really hit home for me; as I thought about it, I realized that I wanted to believe that somehow the circumstances of that time – an economically depressed Germany, an incredibly charismatic, morally-bankrupt and convincing leader (Hitler) with some equally morally-corrupt lieutenants, that somehow these circumstances were unique, and thus, couldn’t happen again. Of course, anyone knows it not only can happen again, but it has – to wit, the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot, or the genocide in the Balkans in the 1990s. Indeed, as I’ve previously noted, the term “genocide” was coined to describe the Ottoman annihilation of the Armenians (though that particular piece of history is still debated by some in Turkey).

History continues; we must all be witnesses and provide voices for those without. While this has been repeated many times, it is worth remembering the following quote:

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Below are some photos from Auschwitz, including of the end of the train tracks where incoming prisoners (mainly Jews) were divided for either work or immediate extermination (by one of the gas chambers).

First, it has grown significantly; in one conversation we had, with a man I’d guess to have been in his 60s, he remembered an Istanbul of his youth of around 600,000 people; it now is estimated at over 18M, and growing. Imagine the infrastructure needs of running a city with that kind of growth rate! Many of these immigrants come from the country, from less-developed areas, bringing with them different social mores and tremendously mixed skill-sets. Somehow, though, Istanbul has thus far managed to integrate them into its (fast-changing) culture and structure.

Istanbul has also, in my view, grown up considerably. My memory – admittedly not great, and traveling then as a college-aged back-packer (as opposed to a professional on a highly organized tour) – is of a far more chaotic city, a dirtier city, a city where we felt ourselves to stand out as tourists. Today’s Istanbul has (as our guide described it) too many tourists, almost overwhelming its infrastructure (the two main tourist attractions, the Aiya Sophia and Blue Mosques, draw an average of 12,000 visitors every day of the year), it has all the major brands (Diesel, H&M, MAC, Sephora, and of course all the usual fast food restaurants, including quite a few Starbucks), and its prices have gone up. Even the Grand Bazaar, which I recall as having been a chaotic, developing country-esque shopping experience of bargaining for hand-crafted goods, now has the requisite tourist-oriented handicrafts, but also highly glossy jewelry stores, leather shoes wearing the Prada and Boss logos, and numerous other shops. And here, too, the prices have risen with the gloss.

The mosques remain amazing; the Hagia Sophia was built in the 3^rd century as a Greek Orthodox Church (interestingly, the Greek Orthodox Church’s headquarters remain in Istanbul, a hold-over from its days as Constantinople), modified in the 6^th century, and eventually became a mosque. Following the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the church became a museum, and it serves as a fascinating exhibit. Similarly, the Blue Mosque, still in operation as a mosque but likewise dominated by tourists, is an incredibly beautiful building decorated in large part with blue tiles, from whence comes its name.

The city remains fascinating, and just chaotic enough to still feel somewhat out of the ordinary. While there, I explored some of the backstreets, we had meetings with various leaders (including, in my case, the founder of the Turkish Slow Foods movement), learned a good deal about Turkish culture, and had more amazing food. Indeed, our final night in Istanbul featured a spread fit for a king, with a seemingly endless stream of mezzes accompanied by Raki (a local drink similar to Ouzo, the licorice-flavored Greek alcohol that becomes cloudly when mixed with water), and accompanied by great conversation.  Phew! I’m now in Warsaw, having been in Krakow between the two cities, but move on tomorrow to Paris.

Photos below include:

1) first lunch in Istanbul, with my colleagues Bob Aber, Tamara Prather, Turkish MMF program coordinator Ceylan Akman, Turkish program assistant Petek (?), Anna Schleunes, and Elizabeth Aguilera.

2)  the Blue Mosque

3) the kitchen of the founder of the Turkish Slow Foods movement

4) The mezzes (appetizers) at our dinner the last night in Istanbul.