Iceland held a funeral for the first glacier to lose its official glacier status due to climate change.
There’s something sad and poetic about that. Something ancient, massive, beautiful, and awe inspiring has been killed… and we all know why it was killed.
A plaque was laid down that says:
“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 it.”
This is a tragedy and a reminder that climate change isn’t a hypothetical issue for us to face in 2050. It is a real problem happening right now all around the world. Iceland loses 11 billion tonnes of ice per year. Scientists expect all of Iceland’s more than 400 glaciers (which cover 11% of the country’s surface) will be gone be 2200.
An Australian mammal, the Bramble Cay melomys has gone extinct due to climate change destroying its island habitat. Many other animals are threatened with extinction such as bumblebees, whales, apes, the Monarch butterfly and more. 1.5C degrees of warming will lead to a loss of 80% of the world’s coral reefs and 2 degrees will destroy them ALL. Atoll nations Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Maldives, and the Marshall Islands are at great risk of rising sea levels. Farmland in Fiji is becoming too salty due to climate change and entire coastal villages must abandon their ancestral homes and their cultural connection to their lands. The Torres Strait Islanders are being threatened by rising sea levels, destroying land the Indigenous Peoples have a deep spiritual connection to. The effects of climate change are here. We are already suffering the effects and we haven’t even reached the worst of what’s to come.
Meanwhile governments around the world deny climate change. Australia is the 3rd largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, contributing a massive carbon footprint. Our emissions are rising.
And this is all because oil/fossil fuel companies have been paying people to lie about climate change for decades. Exxon KNEW that climate change would warm the climate BACK IN THE 70s and decided profits were more important than saving the environment. Governments have known about climate change for DECADES but big business donations have made them drag their feet or create misinformation campaigns to divide public opinion and allow them to get away with inaction.
Anyone who denies climate change is a fucking liar.
Any politician who doesn’t act on climate change is evil and destroying the planet.
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