Iceland holds funeral for glacier lost to climate change
Mourners in Iceland have gathered to commemorate Okjokull, a 700-year-old glacier that was declared dead five years ago and has shriveled to a small patch of ice atop a volcano.
Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir and Environment Minister Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson were joined Sunday by about 100 people who made a two-hour trek up the volcano, where kids installed a plaque at the site of the former frozen behemoth.
The glacier — Iceland’s first glacier to disappear — used to stretch some 6 square miles.
“We see the consequences of the climate crisis,” said Jakobsdóttir, who warned that the loss of Okjokull is just the tip of the iceberg. “We have no time to lose.”
All of the country’s ice masses will melt away in 200 years if nothing is done, according to Jakobsdóttir, who said she will make climate change a priority when Nordic leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Reykjavik on Tuesday.
Former Irish President Mary Robinson, who also attended the event, said: “The symbolic death of a glacier is a warning to us, and we need action.”
Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson, who pronounced Okjokull dead in 2014, brought a death certificate to the memorial. The tiny remnant is now called just “Ok” — minus the Icelandic word for glacier.
The plaque — which notes the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide — also carries a message to the future: “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 plaque is “the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” said Cymene Howe, associate professor of anthropology at Rice University in Texas, according to Agence France-Presse.
“By memorializing a fallen glacier, we want to emphasize what is being lost — or dying — the world over, and also draw attention to the fact that this is something that humans have ‘accomplished,’ although it is not something we should be proud of,” Howe said.
Iceland loses about 11 billion tons of ice a year, and scientists fear that all of the island’s 400-plus glaciers will have disappeared by 2200, according to Howe.
One of the mourners was 17-year-old Gunnhildur Hallgrimsdottir.
“I know my grandchildren will ask me how this day was and why I didn’t do enough,” the teen said.
With Post wires