Well, okay, not a personal letter really, but I just received this email and thought I’d post it here to help get the word out:
Dear Simmons,
Last September, millions of you joined us for 24 Hours of Reality, when we connected the dots between the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme weather events happening with greater frequency all over the world. Together, we saw that most of us don’t need to travel far to see the impacts of climate change. We are already feeling those impacts close to home — with bigger downpours of rain (and snow), bigger floods, and simultaneously longer and deeper droughts. Stronger wind storms have also taken a toll.
Yet the climate crisis is also causing momentous changes in remote regions far from major population centers, in places like Antarctica, Greenland, and the North Polar Ice Cap. Consider that Antarctica, the massive continent at the southern tip of our planet that is about the size of the United States and Mexico combined, holds 90% of all the ice in the world. In fact, it is covered in ice that, at some points, is two miles thick. As global warming increases the melting of that ice — and the movement of vast ice sheets from the continent into the ocean — what happens to the rest of the world?
To better understand the changes taking place near the South Pole and the impacts those changes will have around the world, I will be returning to Antarctica this month with The Climate Reality Project. A large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries will join me during this voyage with many of the world’s leading climate scientists and Antarctica experts to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.
Learn more about Antarctica and our other expeditions to discover the reality of the climate crisis. Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters now:
http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/
I first traveled to Antarctica in 1988. At the time, it was already clear that our southernmost continent stood at the frontier of the global climate crisis. Scientists expected that as climate change accelerated, Antarctica would be one of the fastest warming areas of the planet. This prediction has proven true: Today, the West Antarctic Peninsula is warming about four times faster than the global average. In many ways, it is the biggest “canary in the coal mine,” signaling one of the largest impacts of climate change for the entire world.
Even though Antarctica is thousands of miles distant from the rest of the world, the melting ice on this continent should be of paramount concern to all of us. As our planet’s ice melts, sea levels are rising steadily. This increases the risk of storm surges, coastal floods, diminished supplies of drinking water for billions of people, salination of agricultural land near low-lying coastal areas, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees — many of whom will cross borders and may carry with them an increased risk of political instability in the nations to which they move.
To better understand these impacts, we are encouraging our partners and supporters to organize their own “expeditions” close to home. Over the next few weeks, members of The Climate Reality Project will document how the melting of the world’s ice is having an impact on people from Brooklyn to Bangladesh and from the Arctic to Ecuador.
I hope you will join me and The Climate Reality Project as we explore how changes on the most remote continent of the world have become a part of our shared climate reality. And I hope you’ll take the time to explore the impacts climate change is having on your own community.
Learn more about how we are all “living on thin ice.” Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters, and check back again in a few days as we begin to report back about what are learning:
http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/
Thanks for all you do,
Al Gore
Founder and Chairman
The Climate Reality Project
