It was raining while I, along with the rest of the Extreme E Arctic X Prix crew, stepped on the Greenland ice sheet. Some of our local guides told us it was a rare thing, something they have only seen a handful of times in their lives, but not impossible. What should have been impossible, however, had happened days before: yes it rained on the top of Greenland.
Stopping at a growing spill as we listened Professor Carlos Duarte tell us what foreshadows this rain. First of all, rain means that the air temperature is warm enough to generate liquid precipitation, something that has not happened in recorded history. The rain then clumps on top of the ice sheet, causing the sun to heat up and melting the ice under the rainwater. It helps the growth of algae, which attracts the sun instead of reflecting it and, as you may have guessed, warms the ice even more.
Our trip to the iceberg was completed in the name of science: everyone was given a vial and told to collect ice balls; the shape means that there are sediments inside that the ice has formed around in the same way that a cloud forms, and this sediment comes from the forest fires of the northern hemisphere, but it could not shake the sensation that we contribute to the problem. It felt like a climate tourism.
Climate tourism is, in essence, the name of the growing trend of people traveling around parts of the world who are experiencing more difficulties as a result of climate change. Local guides had shared stories the night before about how they have begun to see an increase in tourists eager to see the icebergs before they leave. At the same time, these tourists carry garbage, intrusion and emissions.
Having flown from San Antonio (Texas) to London (England), then from London (England) to Kangerlussuaq (Greenland), I felt a little out of my perverse indulgence at the end of the world. After all, he had jumped at the chance to attend the Extreme E event because he had always wanted to see the beautiful, inhospitable country of rocky mountains and bushes covered under thousands of feet of solid ice. And my desire to see these milestones has grown in recent years, as the urgency of rapid melting (sometimes up to 8.5 billion tons of surface mass will melt in a single day) seems to have forced my hand. .
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Balancing this line between climate tourism and legitimate change has been difficult to reconcile in normal life, and it only grew with more difficulty with Extreme E, which makes it absolutely prevalent in all the steps we had here with a mission in mind. once all the races are over. I felt it every time I ate (in my own kitchen to avoid excessive waste), used the bathroom (where we were encouraged to cover our poop with other compostable materials to make mulch instead of washing them) and, yes , while we were collecting ice samples in a small road to measure the amount of sediment that was being collected in the Greenland ice sheet as a result of the forest fires.
I’ve read several people criticizing Extreme E’s goal of raising awareness about climate change – we’re all aware it’s happening, right? And I won’t pretend to agree that there has to be serious action, not just talk. And while Extreme E is overcoming this barrier by doing field research, I can definitely agree: it’s hard to reconcile work with play. It’s hard to jump into a career weekend when you’ve always been asked to take a critical look at the impact each step has on the world. I want to agree that we should pay attention to climate change simply for its own good, but obviously that hasn’t worked. We need something else to get attention and draw her to the problem.
That is, in part, where I think Extreme E stands out. It draws attention to the impact of climate change in very specific places, which is crucial in helping us locate the severity of what is happening. It is one thing to hear that five million people have died. Another thing is to describe this number so that you can imagine it on a very human level. Yes, we can hear over and over again that climate change is bad and that it is causing widespread destruction of the planet, but the planet is very difficult to visualize.
Standing in the ice sheet of Greenland with a climate scientist, tour guides and locals with families who have been here for generations was exactly that. It brought the impact of a land that quickly transforms into view. Although we walked along some rocks to the leaf, the locals mentioned that it had never been so difficult to reach the ice, that they had never seen it rain in this way, that the look and feel of the ice have been seen drastically. he changed in the last five years in ways that previous generations of his family had never seen. Then, we heard Professor Duarte explain to us that Greenland ice is essentially the Earth’s temperature regulator, which is why it is so important, that it brought the point home.
I recognize that it can be difficult to convey that feeling through a television screen. It’s much easier to relate to a person you spent the night before drinking beers with and who spent the morning telling the story, science, and folklore behind certain places you’ve been. But it’s something the racing series would also do well to highlight more strongly in their broadcasts.
In person, Extreme E really draws you into the impact each move has on the site. And fa to understand. But those same feelings don’t translate to home viewers, many of whom remain confused about the series ’mission. This is not a permanent flaw in the series, which is still discovering the best way to operate. However, it is a privileged opportunity to learn.