These words from Wendell Berry take on more meaning all the time: “The thought of what was here once and is gone forever will not leave me as long as I live. It is as though I walk knee-deep in its absence.”
I’m prompted to think of this after watching a PBS program titled “Frozen Obsession” that followed Oden, a Swedish icebreaker, on an 18-day cruise into the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to study the effects of climate change. The crew was made up of a couple dozen oceanography students who focused on climate change as critical scientific and social issue confronting today’s world.
As I observe it, mitigating the negative effects of climate change is happening too slowly. One particularly upsetting episode showed an ice sample containing plastic particles suspended in the arctic waters. Science tells us the glaciers are melting, oceans are rising, unusual monsoons occur, unproductive droughts choke agriculture, and so much more.
Our descendants will live in a different world.
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