An Inuit Elder Speaks
Ithluk was recorded by Cien Fuegos in July, 2007, during a rainstorm in the Valley of the Ancients on Greenland.
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 and save Greenland from melting. But even though there is enough water bound up in the Greenland ice sheet to raise sea level by 21 feet and drown the cities of London and New York this program had a limited reach.
And now, in August 2020 a headline in the British Guardian read: Greenland ice sheet lost a record 1 million tons of ice per minute in 2019. The research was done by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.
The climate crisis is heating the Arctic at double the rate in lower latitudes, and the ice cap is the biggest single contributor to sea level rise, which already imperils coasts around the world. The ice sheet shrank by 532 billion tons last year as its surface melted and glaciers fell into the ocean.
Scientists say “If we look at the record melt years, the top five occurred in the last 10 years, and that is a concern. But we know what to do about it: reduce CO2 emissions.”
Updated August 2020
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
