On July 11, 2008, more than 100 participants arrived in Svalbard in the high Norwegian arctic and boarded the ship National Geographic Endeavour. Click here for a complete list of participants.

We listened to the music of vast silences near the top of the world, and felt the heave and subsidence of the sea. We watched seabirds, wild reindeer, walrus, and polar bears living and moving to a different rhythm.

But we were not on vacation. Sponsored by National Geographic, the Aspen Institute and Lindblad Expeditions, our voyage was called the “Arctic Expedition for Climate Action.”

Aboard the ship were leading Republicans and Democrats; labor and business leaders; environmentalists and journalists; scientists and religious leaders; community activists and young people. We spent a week expanding our knowledge about the accelerating changes in the global climate – changes that threaten not only the Arctic and its peoples, but all of us and the rest of our planet, as well.

Among shrinking glaciers and melting sea ice, we came to a fuller understanding that global warming poses real and serious threats: to civilization; to wildlife, forests and the ocean; to fresh water; to agriculture; to human health; to justice; to the poor; to those who are yet to be born—and to peace.

In addition to the climate crisis, we discussed resource consumption and waste, human population pressures, declining ecosystems, and the disproportionate impact of climate change on the world’s poor.