The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption [B0688]

2019 HCDJ. After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis?from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest?in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before. Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle?including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world?of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Never have I read such a heartbreaking book before and yet this book has no pleas for change; it is merely a journal for the damage we have done to this planet. It is so masterfully written and eye opening and desperately trying to keep a written account of our earth before we lose it completely."; "The book is just 6 years old, but already feels dated in terms of how much worse human terraforming has gotten."; "The ice is melting, the coral are bleaching, the oceans acidifying, the forests are dying, the permafrost is melting, and the methane escaping. All probably happening sooner than we think. The craziest fact to me, 'Tropical rainforests are already so degraded that instead of absorbing emissions as they have in the past, they are now releasing more carbon annually than all of the traffic in the United States.' It was refreshing to read something that basically says, we are well and truly f***ed, enjoy it while you can."