I highly recommend watching “Chasing Ice” — a documentary about the efforts of photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey that shines light on the effects of climate change, directed by Jeff Orlowski.
The message of the film is simple, and it’s one we echo daily here at AIMS Power: The Earth is becoming warmer, faster than ever before, and we need to try to counteract that in any way possible. If you don’t believe me, watch the film, but also take note that this year is the seventh-warmest year in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization
The film conveys this message with breathtaking time-lapse video of the controlled-demolition-like retreat and shrinkage of the world’s glaciers.
You truly must see this if not for the nature and importance of the message then most definitely for the sheer awe-factor of witnessing these monstrosities collapse into the world’s oceans.
The fact is that 95 percent of the Earth’s glaciers (outside of Antarctica) are either retreating or shrinking, and through the past decade or so, it’s done it at a rate twice as fast as the cumulative movement during the 100 years prior in some cases, according to Balog. The problem isn’t that we can’t handle it technologically, economically, or even policy-wise. The problem, he notes in a Ted Talk, is one of perception.