Photo: Dominic Boyer/Cymene Howe
Iceland is memorializing the loss of its first glacier with a special tribute warning those of what is yet to come.
Next month, the Nordic island nation will install a plaque on the former site of Okjökull in Borgarfjörður — a West Iceland glacier lost to climate change.
Now known as just “Ok” (having lost the -jökull or “glacier” part of its name), the locale is just a shield volcano with no glacial cover.
To make sure Okjökull isn’t forgotten, and to also use it as an example of the dramatic effects of climate change, Howe and Boyer took things a step further and installed a plaque at Ok’s base.
“A letter to the future,” the plaque reads. “Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our 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.”
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“This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” Howe said, in a press release. “By marking Ok’s passing, we hope to draw attention to what is being lost as Earth’s glaciers expire. These bodies of ice are the largest freshwater reserves on the planet and frozen within them are histories of the atmosphere. They are also often important cultural forms that are full of significance.”
Both Howe and Boyer will be on hand for the for the plaque’s instillation on Aug. 18, alongside author Andri Snær Magnason, members of the Icelandic Hiking Society, geologist Oddur Sigurðsson (who first declared Okjökull a glacier-no-more), and the general public.
The hope is that the monument will help raise awareness about the decline of Iceland’s glaciers, as well as the impact of climate change, Howe and Boyer said.
“One of our Icelandic colleagues put it very wisely when he said, ‘Memorials are not for the dead; they are for the living,’ ” Howe said in the press release. “With this memorial, we want to underscore that it is up to us, the living, to collectively respond to the rapid loss of glaciers and the ongoing impacts of climate change. For Ok glacier it is already too late; it is now what scientists call ‘dead ice.’”
source: people.com
