For our children's sake, we have to start speaking it
Thomas Friedman, The Observer The Guardian 10 Aug 08;
Sometimes you just wish you were a photographer. I simply do not have the words to describe the awesome majesty of Greenland's Kangia glacier, shedding massive icebergs the size of skyscrapers and slowly pushing them down the Ilulissat fjord until they crash into the ocean off the island's west coast. There, these natural ice sculptures float and bob around the glassy waters near here. You can sail between them in a fishing boat, listening to these white ice monsters crackle and break, heave and sigh, as if they were noisily protesting their fate.
You are entirely alone here amid the giant icebergs, save for the solitary halibut fisherman who floats by. Our Greenlandic boat skipper sidles up to the tiny fishing craft, where my hosts buy a few halibut right out of his nets, slice open the tender cheeks and cut me the freshest halibut sushi I've ever tasted. 'Greenland fast food,' quips Kim Kielsen, Greenland's minister of the environment.
We wash it down with Scotch cooled by a 5,000-year-old ice cube chipped off one of the floating glacier bits. Some countries have vintage whisky. Some have vintage wine. Greenland has vintage ice.
Alas, though, I do not work for National Geographic. This is an opinion piece. And my trip with Denmark's minister of climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, to see the effects of climate change on Greenland's ice sheet leaves me with a very strong opinion: our kids are going to be so angry with us one day. We've charged their future on our Visa cards. We've added so many greenhouse gases to the atmosphere for our generation's growth that our kids are likely going to spend a good part of their adulthood, maybe all of it, just dealing with the climate implications of our profligacy. And now our leaders are telling them the way out is 'offshore drilling' for more climate-changing fossil fuels. Madness. Sheer madness.
Most people assume that the effects of climate change are going to be felt through another big disaster, like Hurricane Katrina. Not necessarily, says Minik Thorleif Rosing, a top geologist at Denmark's National History Museum and one of my travelling companions. 'Most people will actually feel climate change delivered to them by the postman,' he explains. It will come in the form of higher water bills, because of increased droughts in some areas; higher energy bills, because the use of fossil fuels becomes prohibitive; and higher insurance and mortgage rates, because of much more violently unpredictable weather. Remember: climate change means 'global weirding' not just global warming.
Greenland is one of the best places to observe the effects of climate change. Because the world's biggest island has just 55,000 people and no industry, the condition of its huge ice sheet - as well as its temperature, precipitation and winds - is influenced by the global atmospheric and ocean currents that converge here. Whatever happens in China or Brazil is felt here. And because Greenlanders live close to nature, they are walking barometers of climate change. That's how I learnt a new language: Climate-Speak.
It's easy to learn. There are only three phrases. The first is: 'Just a few years ago...'
Just a few years ago you could dogsled in winter from Greenland, across a 40-mile ice bank, to Disko Island. But for the past few years, the rising winter temperatures in Greenland have melted that link. Now Disko is cut off. Put away the dogsled.
The second phrase is: 'I've never seen that before...' It rained in December and January in Ilulissat. This is well above the Arctic Circle. It's not supposed to rain here in winter.
Steffen said: 'Twenty years ago, if I had told the people of Ilulissat it would rain at Christmas 2007, they would have just laughed at me. Today it is a reality.'
The third phrase is: 'Well usually... but now I don't know any more.' The river that was always there is now dry. The glacier that always covered that hill has disappeared. The reindeer that were always there when the hunting season opened on 1 August didn't show up. No wonder everyone here speaks climate now - your kids will, too, and sooner than they think.
