The Arctic: Last Days
While the politicians fiddle, the world warms, unbeknownst to all except those nearby who wait, watch and bear witness. The Arctic may be down to its final few seasons as being the white desolate wilderness we have seen, read about or imagined. While, I, like everyone else, spend my days in holiday distraction, I not only feel a personal responsibility, but a kind of disquieting urgency to play a small, albeit, insignificant part in awakening that sleeping giant that lies within. The one we always hear about. The one that will bring us to our senses, and the world to its knees, before it is too late.
In Greenland, hunters and scientists, describe in heartbreaking detail how climate change really feels …
“The ground beneath my feet is trembling. In front of me there is a great white wall of frozen water 700 metres high, sparkling in the sun as though threaded with silver dust. I have been deposited by a helicopter on a rock nearby, to watch the fastest-retreating glacier in the Arctic. For a moment, there is silence, and the ice sheet looks as durable as rock. But then there is a low sound, like a slow sigh from the bowels of the ice, and suddenly a bomb blast seems to echo in all directions. A gargantuan chunk of ice has crashed off. It smashes down onto the earth as a newborn iceberg. From here, it will sail out to sea, and liquefy. It leaves behind a gash in the ice sheet that looks like a long scar. However many times you may have seen this on television, there is nothing like seeing it for yourself.
Soon there is silence again. The ice seems as serene as it ever was. But then there is another sigh, another explosion, another iceberg. And on it goes, all day, all summer. The people of Ilulissat in Greenland watch the corpse of the ice sheet floating past them in the form of freakishly large icebergs.
The last days of the Arctic as we know it appear to have begun.”
Photography: Camille Seaman
Intelligent Life
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