During construction of the ceremonial fire pit for the 2008 second circumpolar meeting, an Inuit elder allowed his one on one conversation to be recorded. This is a moving and wise comment on our common future. In his carefully chosen expression in English lies the urgency in which he attempts to reach out to the Western “Civilizations” – urging us to understand the Inuit plight while at the same time grasping that our own survival is at stake as well. Movingly he also expresses his fears and at times despair to reach us in the West before it is too late for us all.
When I first heard his voice in 2007 I wished I could move radio stations to play this recording every day to show that voices like his can reach us and inspire us to recognize our common future. But even though there is enough water bound up in the melting Greenland ice sheet to raise sea level by 21 feet and drown the cities of London and New York this program had a limited distribution. That’s why I decided to play his appeal again.
In 2008, one year after he was recorded, Greenland had the greatest ice losses ever to that date, three times the amount that Ithluk had observed. scientists then feared that Greenland had reached the tipping point. Jason Box, associate professor of geography at Ohio State Byrd Polar Research Center, said after the 2008 numbers were compiled QUOTE That loss of ice translates into global sea level rises of potentially up to 6 feet by 2100.
Now, in 2015, as I’m sending Ithluk’s voice out for the third time, another tragedy has just occurred that should be a wake-up call. In mid August 2015 the largest section of ice so far broke off the front of the Jakobshaven Glacier in Greenland. According to the European Space Agency, the new iceberg is so huge, that its total ice could “cover the whole of Manhattan Island by a layer of ice almost 1,000 feet thick.
Greenland is the world’s second largest ice body, and melting of its ice sheet contributes about 40% of current sea level rise. According to a new study published in August 2015 in the Journal of Glaciology, in the first part of the 21st century, glaciers are melting faster than at any point in the last 165 years– and possibly any point in recorded history.
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