Look around in Iceland  and you will observe a deep respect for nature and a sustainable lifestyle.

 

When you are driving through the Golden Circle, or even on the way to the airport, you see thermal geysers spouting and begin to understand how the country can be powered largely by geothermal heat. Icelanders take full advantage of this natural energy. Bathing in the warm, thermal heated pools is deeply ingrained in their culture. As tourists, we got a taste of this in the lovely Sky Lagoon. The natural wonders include dramatic waterfalls, which are a huge asset for tourism, others are harnessed for hydropower.

 

Throughout the country, and even in our hotel room, waste containers all came with three receptacles—one each for general waste, bottles and cans, and paper—to allow for the collection of clean waste suitable for recycling.

 

Iceland, “the Land of Fire and Ice” is proud to show visitors its glacial lagoon, clogged with translucent blue icebergs, and black sand beaches covered with clear, diamond-like chunks of glacial ice, stunning to see reflecting the coral sunset. But Icelanders are very conscious of the increasing glacial melt and how climate change is impacting their land, and they incorporate education on the climate crisis into their guided tours and museum programs. As our tour bus drove for tens of miles along the fourth largest glacier in Europe, we were reminded that glacial melt is “leaving glacial speed and entering human speed.” 

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“This glacier will be gone in one hundred years,” he informs us.

 

But, who can really imagine that a glacier with ice to a depth of three Empire State Buildings, could ever melt?

 

The modern new museum, Perlan (the Pearl) is designed to teach visitors about Iceland’s volcanoes, glaciers, geology, and wildlife. A highlight is the planetarium’s Aurora Borealis show. Another is the wall of puffins leading to a life size video of whales and marine wildlife, then on to a trek through a reconstructed ice cave, a highlight for me. As we wound our way through a chilly maze of blue ice tunnels, I came upon a pedestal topped by a chunk of ice, only a foot high. I turned to walk away, but, curious, looked closer, and saw the plaque at the foot of the display. It was a reproduction of Andri Snaer Magnason’s “Letter to the Future”, a eulogy for the Okjokull (Ok) glacier, the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status due to climate change. The Letter reads simply:

 

“A letter to the future

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier. In the next 200 years all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.

August 2019, 415 ppm CO2”

 

Magnason’s powerful words brought world attention to the monument placed beside the remnants of Ok glacier and to the potential consequences of losing our glacial ice. 

 

On the death of the glacier, Magnason emphasizes that, “Glaciers are not vanishing and becoming nothing. They are becoming a rising ocean that will come splashing at the city gates of the world. Sea level rise threatens coasts worldwide, including Connecticut. "Every centimeter of sea-level rise exposes another 2 million people to annual flooding somewhere on our planet," states Professor Andy Shepherd of Northumbria University.

 

As the glacial melt accelerates, the cold water entering the ocean is causing a change in the PH of the ocean, causing ocean acidification, and affecting the ocean currents. These changes may impact our weather patterns, amounts of rainfall, agriculture, and even render large areas of Earth uninhabitable. It is hard to comprehend how a change in PH of 0.3, which sounds so small, can have such devastating impacts on our world. 

 

Magnason argues that we humans cannot truly comprehend climate change because we are not connected directly to its causes. We do not see the oil burning or the ocean currents slowing. He maintains that “The issue is larger than language.” I highly recommend Magnason’s book, On Time and Water, to you. He goes deeply into these issues and much more, including the history of his own family and Icelandic myth.

 

In 2010, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in southern Iceland, spewing ash high in the atmosphere and halting air traffic throughout Europe for days. This powerful eruption can be understood by driving through the resulting lava fields that cover hundreds of square miles, or viewing the footage of the natural disaster. Yet, the 150,000 tons/day of emissions produced by the volcano, as shocking as it was, is dwarfed by the emissions from 100 million tons of oil that humans burn daily. We burn 660 times as much as that great eruption each day, and yet we do not see it. 

 

How can we communicate the urgency of the climate emergency if we cannot comprehend it?

 

I would welcome your thoughts on this question, for a future article.