Death of glaciers: a wake-up call
On my first visits to the Alps in the 1970s, I remember being awestruck by the scale and beauty of the glaciated higher echelons of the mountains. The enormous glaciers like those of the Valle Blanche and the Mer de Glace were what put the mountains into a different ‘category’ to the more humble hills of home. Not only did they make climbs technically more challenging, they symbolised a wild world that seemed to exist above and beyond human concerns – a promise of wildness that I assumed would always be there. Over the years, my naivety has been harshly exposed. We are right to worry what melting permafrost could mean for mountaineering (The Great Outdoors, September 2022), but there is more to it than that. During this year of soaring temperatures, the collapse of glaciers has led to historically low water levels in Europe’s rivers. The implications for the future are chilling. Humanity simply can’t carry on along its current course and expect life to continue as we know it.