‘Letter to the Future’! Iceland bids farewell to glacier ‘Okjokull’ lost to climate change
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Reykjavik, Aug.19: World is now making strong efforts to face climate change; these efforts are not enough! Climate change is now visible in every nook and corner of the world.
Giving a strong message to the world, Iceland has marked its 1st ever loss of a glacier to climate change as scientists gave cautions that hundreds of other ice sheets on the subarctic island risk the same fate.
As the world recently marked the warmest July ever on record, a bronze plaque was mounted on a bare rock in a ceremony on the barren terrain once covered by the Okjokull glacier in western Iceland.
Around 100 people climbed up the mountain for the ceremony, including Iceland’s prime minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir, former UN human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, and local researchers and colleagues from the United States from who initiated the commemoration project.
Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson pronounced the Okjokull glacier extinct about a decade ago. But on Sunday he brought a death certificate to the made-for-media memorial.
“I hope this ceremony will be an inspiration not only to us here in Iceland but also for the rest of the world because what we are seeing here is just one facet of the climate crisis,” Jakobsdottir said.
The plaque bears the inscription “A letter to the future”, and is intended to raise awareness about the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change.
This plaque reads- “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”.
The symbolic death of a glacier is a warning to us, and we need action," former Irish president Mary Robinson said. This was Iceland's first glacier to disappear. But Sigurdsson said all of the nation's ice masses will be gone in 200 years.