Chasing life while the future melts away in front of our eyes

We are so often chasing in life. Chasing the right moment, the best job, that ultimate experience, the voyage so crammed with impressions or the special new partner that will extend the margins of our lives. In this quest for more of everything, we consume material goods, people and the very earth itself in order to fulfil our desires.

Today I have seen emotional and moving (in the words very sense) pictures of how our collective hunt for more, more stuff, more of everything is destroying our planet. I have seen the future and it is melting away in front of our eyes. “Chasing Ice” is a documentary but it is also a movie that struck right into my soul, as I believe it will hit you when you watch it. Six years in making, the work by photographer James Balog shows how man made climate change is ever more rapidly melting away the Earths glaciers. Balog and his team has captured on film events that never before have been seen. Glaciers that have been around for centuries or millennia collapse in just a few years. Blocks of ice the size of skyscrapers on Manhattan tumble into the sea in hours and minutes. And today’s scientific news on glaciers in Canada only validates what he shows in his pictures.

We humans are collectively disrupting the geology of our planet. Most people have no clue on how badly and quickly we are changing our environment. Still we are the ones who must shoulder the responsibility to change this path. Yes you can say that some ought to do more than others. But we have come to a point where there is no way around the fact that a change for the better will necessitate that we all contribute. There is no one in our part of the world that can say “someone else” should do all the work. Yes there will be need of leadership and collective action. Again, that’s no excuse for inaction. And we will need to understand that less is really more, that happiness is not shopping and that success is not counted by the number of weekend trips to interesting cities.

A few days ago I wrote about how to keep hope when evidence is mounting that we are on a very bad track. After seeing this film, I have less hope and more determination. The theme from the movie, “Before my time”, as sung by Scarlett Johanson, captures some of my mixed but stubbornly positive feelings.

Cold Feet, don't fail me now
So much left to do
…
Just a taste of things to come
I still still smile

At the end of the film, James Balog said that in 20 years time his daughters will ask: “Dad, what did you really do about climate change since you knew it was happening?” And he wants to be able to say to them “I was doing everything I knew I had to do”. Don’t you?