Tests have begun to replace Denali National Park’s fleet of “noisy, carbon dioxide-spewing diesel” engine buses, as the AP puts it, with new hybrid vehicles. If they’re adopted, it would improve what’s already one of the most impressive outdoors experiences in the U.S. Except for a few days a year, visitors can only travel the Denali Park Road in one of the park’s 110 buses, and if the new buses are cleaner and quieter than the current models, the experience will only get better. 

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From the ever-burning coal pit in Centralia, Pennsylvania, to the giant circle of trash floating in the eastern Pacific, this tongue-in-cheek article from Good magazine offers a travel guide to the many man-made disasters in America, conveniently spread from sea to not-so-shining sea. Take this excerpt on the Salton Sea in California: “Chemical reactions turn the surface red and lime green, causing massive, odiferous fish die-offs, and sick fish poison the more than 400 species of birds that live here.”

Related on World Hum:
* Japan’s Mount Fuji: Icon, Garbage Dump
* Illuminating ‘Dark Travel’

Photo of Salton Sea by mst7022 via Flickr, (Creative Commons)

Eco-conscious travelers might be pleased by the new accommodation trend that’s spreading through Europe: the hay hotel, which, as far as I can tell, is just an old barn that’s been freshened up a bit and (hopefully) doesn’t smell strongly of manure. Travelers sleep in a dormitory setting atop piles of hay. No pillows. No blankets. Just hay.

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The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding didn’t suffer physical damage from the deadly earthquake that left 90,000 people dead or missing earlier this year. But spooked tourists cancelled trips to the region, leaving only about 300 people visiting daily—about one-tenth of the normal volume, NPR reports.

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What’s it like seeing a panoramic view of Colorado’s Roan Plateau? With all that wild beauty, you’d think it would be a beautiful thing. But from the cockpit of an EcoFlight plane, you see its dismal fate: Rich with fossil fuels, it’s been dissected by gas fields. Bruce Gordon started the Aspen, Colorado-based company in 2002 to give people aerial tours of U.S. public land threatened by such development and environmental malfeasance. 

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Located in the Kattegat, an arm of the North Sea, Samsø has 22 villages, 4,300 residents and a renewable energy cooperative that’s drawing accolades from around the world. The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert visited the scenic isle and described how Samsø, which uses clean sources such as wind turbines and biomass for fuel, became an exporter of renewable energy in about a decade. Way to go green, and so beautifully.

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* Can ‘Burning Man’ Go Green?

Sierra’s Matthew Taylor is skeptical. North America’s most well-known gathering of counterculture enthusiasts seeking radical self-expression attracts more than 40,000 people to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert annually, climaxing with a symbolic incineration of something very giant. Last year it was a 99-foot-tall wooden oil derrick, intended to symbolize the “crash of our fossil-fuel-addicted civilization.” But some volunteers from the Burning Man festival, which takes place for eight days ending each Labor Day weekend, say the pyrotechnics demonstrate environmental irresponsibility in seriously troubled times.

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Travel through a viable Northwest Passage gets closer by the day. From the Independent: “The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic—and worrying—examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.”

Related on World Hum:
* The Implications of a Viable Northwest Passage
* Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet

Forgoing a car or taxi (and its fumes) in favor of public transportation, walking or biking is one way you can green your vacation, says Grist magazine. Other tips include going on service-oriented vacations to work on an environmental project, buying locally-made goods (do those Greek warrior booties say “Made in China”?) and exploring an area near your hometown rather than on the other side of the world. 

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Last year, when I was driving through the Mesara Plain in southern Crete, I found not the green farmland I remembered as a kid but a cascading plain of desiccated land. Some swathes looked like desert, covered only by dehydrated foliage. The island has always been dry, with resourceful farmers literally working the land to life. But I’d never seen it look as dry as this.

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Bad news from the UN: A lack of snow on snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro. Shrinking glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains. Disappearing Lake Chad and Lake Victoria. An almost 400-page report released yesterday by the United Nations Environment Programme contains the details—and many scary satellite photos.

Related on World Hum:
* Are ‘Climate Tourists’ Wreaking Havoc on Fragile Land?

Photo of Mount Kilimanjaro by pintaa via Flickr (Creative Commons).

The Great Plains may be regarded as something of an “emptied prairie,” at least in my under-appreciated childhood home of North Dakota, but conservationists are transforming the land into an American steppe wonderland for nature lovers, Joshua Kurlantzick writes in The New York Times. The revived prairie is already attracting thousands of tourists keen on prairie wildlife safaris to spot American bison, mountain lions and pronghorn antelope.

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