In preparation for the IAE, I am reading ‘Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness’, the book by Robert Swan, OBE (with Gil Reavill). An exceptionally well written book and therefore a true joy to read.  An open and honest story, absolutely funny at times, always sophisticated and informative, inspiring, human, and – on occasion – horrifying… Why on earth would one want to walk 900 miles through that devastating icy landscape, defying gruesome storms and freezing to the bone? And then do it again – walking 550 miles to the North Pole… It takes tons of courage, and a good dose of stupidity, as Robert Swan admits himself… I warm-heartedly recommend this book!

At the beginning of his book, Robert Swan sums up some of the consequences we may expect by 2041 if current trends continue – I quote:

• Greenhouse-gas emissions, if they follow current trends, will rise to 700 gigatons per annum (700 billion tons annually), a level projected to induce a five-degree rise in average global temperature over the next century. Global warming will have become a reality, triggering extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and resource shortages that will cause widespread disruptions to life as we know it.

 

• Given current use patterns and rates of increase in energy demands, global oil production will drop below twenty million barrels a day – the accepted level necessary for sustaining industrialized civilization.

 

• Soot from the coal plants and “black carbon” from cooking stoves in China and India, falling on the surface of glaciers in the Himalayas, will cause them to absorb more rather than reflect sunlight, shrinking them by 75 percent and disrupting the water supply for billions of people.

 

• Sea levels will have risen .5 meters, given current trends in accelerated glacier and ice-cap melt on the margins of Greenland and Antarctica. A half-meter rise renders untenable one-tenth of human shoreline habitation. For example, half the roadways in Cairns, Australia, will be underwater. Extreme sea level – the measurement of high seas during hurricanes and storm surges – will displace 200 million people and impact a fifth of the world’s population, over 1 billion people.

 

• The last Alaskan polar bear will have starved to death in the wild – again, extrapolating from current trends, in this case of bear-habitat destruction and population decline. All in all, in 2041 extinction rates on earth will have approached an unimaginable threshold, with 1 million land-based species gone forever.

 

• The last of the snows made famous by Ernest Hemingway will have melted off Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, and the last of the glaciers will have disappeared from Montana’s Glacier National Park

 

Quoted from ‘Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness’
by Robert Swan, with Gil Reavill

Here is the urgency, for us to be smarter and more creative than ever before…

You can also have a look at NASA’s website – click here.