'As the tundra burns, we cannot afford climate silence': a letter from the Arctic
When you stand facing an exposed edge of
permafrost, you can feel it from a distance. It emanates a cold that tugs on
every one of your senses. Permanently bound by ice year after year, the frozen
soil is packed with carcasses of woolly mammoths and ancient ferns. They’re
unable to decompose at such low temperatures, so they stay preserved in
perpetuity – until warmer air thaws their remains and releases the cold that
they’ve kept cradled for centuries.
I first experienced
that distinct cold in the summer of 2016. I was traveling across Arctic Europe
with a team of researchers to study climate change impacts. We were a few hours
past the Finnish border in Russia when we stopped to first set foot on the
tundra. The ground was soft but solid beneath our feet, covered with mosses and
wildflowers that stretched into the distance until abruptly interrupted by a
slick, towering wall of thawing permafrost…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/arctic-tundra-paris-climate-agreement