The Icelanders have lost their first glacier, Okjökull, to global warming. To mark the occasion, they chose to commemorate the sad event with a plaque intended as a warning to future generations.
Okjökull, the first Icelandic glacier to have almost completely disappeared due to global warming, will be remembered for ever thanks to a commemorative plaque bearing a message and a warning for future generations.
The ceremony to inaugurate the monument dedicated to this new victim of climate change took place on 18 August, attended not only by institutional figures — from Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir to Environment Minister Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson, as well as former Irish President Mary Robinson — but also by many climate activists.
The glacier that once covered the cone of the Icelandic volcano Ok was "only" 700 years old, and today just 7 per cent of its original extent remains. As we too reported last July, its sad and "premature" disappearance was first announced in 2014, when its surface area had shrunk so drastically that it lost its status as a glacier.
To provide a tangible reminder of the dramatic effects global warming can have, the Icelanders chose to engrave on the commemorative plaque an open letter to a future passer-by, which reads: "Ok is the first glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."
The hope is that, in 200 years' time, that passer-by will be able to know with certainty that we, today, aware of the situation, acted to leave future generations a better world.
