Lorde’s Voyage to the End of the World

In February 2019, the pop star traveled to Antarctica to learn about the climate crisis firsthand

In February 2019, the pop star traveled to Antarctica to learn about the climate crisis firsthand.

I’ve been obsessed with Antarctica since I was a kid. Growing up in New Zealand, the race to the South Pole is mythologized like the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon — two explorers, one British, one Norwegian, locked in a breathless, romantic fight for national honor. I always rooted for Robert Falcon Scott, the British officer, poring over his grim diaries. I inhaled the frostbite, the deaths, and then, upon arrival at the Pole, the discovery of his rival’s flag, planted 34 days before. I lived in a warm city, had never seen snow, couldn’t even imagine how it felt. And there was another thing, galvanized in my late teens — Antarctica was melting. Our whole world was getting warmer, in fact, the mercury rising by minute amounts, inching us toward the unthinkable. I pictured a giant slush pile, scientists

frantically bailing out glaciers with buckets. Antarctica’s high drama compelled me. I had to see it before it was too late. And because I’m a pop star, and the world is extremely unfair, I made a few calls, got several dozen booster shots, and I was off in search of the end of the world.

It’s very, very white, everywhere you look. There are hundreds of thousands of penguins. But there are also beautiful rocky beaches, which on a sunny day make you feel like you could have a cheeky swim, until you remember the salt water is at a temperature below freezing. You have to wear sunglasses, every single day. My pen froze in my bag. I peed into a bottle in the middle of an ice shelf, fully clothed, using a green plastic instrument called, unspeakably, a Pstyle. I ate so many dense, sweet energy bars I thought my teeth might fall out.

I stayed for five days, pitching a tent and camping outside, belaying on a glacier, cruising in a helicopter looking for whales with a terse German scientist named Regina. I made a handful of calls home on an old landline. It’s an incredible place. I used to think the Met Gala was cool, or the VMAs. But there’s literally nothing cooler than Antarctica.

It is in trouble. Not in the way I’d imagined — while parts of the continent seem OK, largely due to its unique climate systems, some areas, particularly the western Antarctic Peninsula, are warming faster than anywhere on Earth. But to the uninitiated, it’s all white, everything frozen, a blinding world I’m permanently changed from getting to experience.

I get it — protecting our most precious natural resources can feel abstract, to say the least. Most of them we’ve never seen, except in a documentary. We’re attempting to pay off our predecessors’ environmental debts in the hazy hope that our descendants will thrive. It’s a lot to ask of a species hungry for faster and brighter gratification, less and less distance. But I understand it now, and I hope you find ways to as well. Great wonders like this are what’s at stake.

“It’s a strange sensation, staring openmouthed at nature in its rawest form and being met with pure hostility in return.”

MELTDOWN One scientist told Lorde the wall of ice in the background melts faster each year.

WHALE WATCH Lorde took this snapshot of a German whale scientist observing orcas: “It looks dreamy and beautiful, but this was the coldest I got.”

OUT COLD One of the many Weddell seals found lounging outside the New Zealand base. “I sat inside the base drinking a scotch, looking out at these hundreds of napping seals at 10 at night under the sun. That’s the trippiest thing.”

ALL THE WAY UP U.S. Air Force planes carried Lorde on the seven-hour trips from New Zealand to Antarctica and back.

ICE PUPS Dog kennels built by Scott, the late British explorer, whose camp near the Pole has been maintained as it was circa 1912. “There’s something so tender about that to me.”

PLANET PENGUIN Part of a vast colony of Adélie penguins. “You’re just completely outnumbered by these tiny beings,” she says, “to the point where you’re like, ‘They’re the dominant species. We are not.’ ”

IN THE DARK “It stays in your system, a trip like that,” Lorde says. “It feels surreal, but it always did. As soon as it happened, it felt like maybe I just dreamt it.”