Loss

The time will come, perhaps in my lifetime, when children will only be able to read about glaciers in books or hear stories about them from great-grandparents. Our loss will be so vast that humankind has neither the breadth of mind to comprehend it nor the depth of heart to mourn it.

But beyond sentimentality, what value does a glacier have? I am not an expert in climatology or ecology, so I can't tell you anything about its role in the cycle of evapotranspiration or the habitat it provides for plants and animals. All I know is that glaciers contain a portion of Earth's memories. If they are lost, then so is part of our identity as the human race.

As glaciers grow, they trap air. The exact composition of the air at any particular time is recorded inside the glacier. In this way, glaciers are vast record books that tell us what the Earth's atmosphere was like in the past. When glaciers melt, however, these records are destroyed forever.

More importantly, glaciers are a part of human heritage and have helped define our sense of beauty. Though they were known only to the peoples nearest them for most of human history, increasing cross-cultural contact has made glaciers part of the consciousness of our species in general, just as it has with deserts, oceans, and forests. Something of their essence will be preserved in books and films, but these cannot do justice to glaciers like someone who has had direct experience with them - who has walked on and seen and touched them.

Unlike plant and animal species, glaciers can be counted directly. We have counted them and we know that they are disappearing much faster than anyone had anticipated. As tragic as their disappearance will be, it would be all the more tragic if we never got to experience them before they were gone.