Nepal must be a wake-up call that we’re living in a climate emergency (Image: Getty)
This time last year I stood in blinding light on a ship moored at the Tarr inlet of Alaska’s Glacier Bay, deafened by cracking and calving ice and rocked by the swell of surging undercurrents. As the captain rotated the vessel to give full view of the staggering Margerie and Grand Pacific glaciers, on-board rangers pointed out breathtaking wildlife: minke and humpback whales, sea otters, brown bears, bald eagles. Explaining that almost all of the park’s thousand-plus glaciers have been thinning and receding over recent decades, one told us, “Come back in a couple of years and what you’re seeing today won’t look like this. The Earth’s crust here is rising as fast as the heavy ice melts.”
Has Donald Trump ever visited his own most dramatic national park? I’m guessing not. Because only a deaf, dumb and blind kid or a blinkered fool could face such stark proof of climate change and call it a hoax.
This time last week, nearly 7,000 miles from Glacier Bay over the Arctic Circle, past the North Pole and down through Siberia and mainland China, deadly evidence of it occurred in the Himalayas. The lower part of a glacier in Nepal close to the border with Tibet collapsed, causing a huge volume of ice, mud and rock debris to invade the Lende Khola tributary of the Bhote Koshi river. It burst its banks in a Biblical flood, sweeping away entire communities and killing hundreds, with thousands still missing. “Not much we can do,” shrugged a friend during yet another shocking news report. “It’s so far away, and it’s nothing to do with us.”
Feral idiots remain oblivious of harsh reality: that our planet’s most vulnerable countries and their breadline communities are suffering the consequences of our own selfish ways. We are to blame for far more global warming and climate emergency than they are. Nepal contributes a negligible percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet Himalayan communities are paying the highest price. What we ignore and fail to act on costs them their lives.
I have an old musicbiz pal called Sheila who calls the Himalayas home. “I’m in Northern India, west of Nepal,” she says. “Our Himalayan range has already lost its glaciers. They disappeared over the past 30-odd years, so this catastrophe couldn’t happen here. But other annual events are increasing in severity with each monsoon: landslides, road, bridge and building collapses, sewage and water pipes breaking. This is all due to over-construction, bad building practices and rampant corruption. But we’re thanking God that this is minor compared to Nepal.”
Every peak-and-valley region worldwide is now watching the interferometric radar: the instrument that measures imminent glacier collapse. Meanwhile, every one of us must pick up the phone, call the Red Cross, and donate whatever we can afford.
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