It may not be to marvel at the glaciers, but to grieve their passing.
Glaciers across the globe from the US state Oregon to the Swiss Alps have been sites for funerals as people eulogize once mighty ice caps that have been pronounced dead.
This is what 2019 will look like CeremonyThe ceremony was held at Iceland’s Okjkull (Ok ice sheet), which is believed to have been the first to be destroyed by climate change. Mourners unveiled plaques announcing that all of Iceland’s major glaciers would follow in the next 200-years.
Panu Pihkala (a postdoctoral researcher University of Helsinki Finland specialising in eco anxiety) has described the psychological strain caused by the loss of iconic winter landscapes.
Pihkala explained that while communities have been experiencing “uneasiness” and discomfort over the changes in seasons for decades, this anxiety has changed to a grief as the snow and ice recede.
Global warming will increase global warming, and so will the grief over the loss of winter. The mythical Arctic winter wonderland, the North Pole, is now closed. Three times faster warmingThe global average is higher than the global average. In the not too distant future, cultural representations European and North American Christmases with people bundled in hats or scarves skating on frozen lakes and sledging down snowy hills could be a thing past.
Climate anxiety and eco-anxiety
Climate grief is difficult because it anticipates loss that often hasn’t occurred. He points out that there was more snow this year than there was last year. This increases anxiety about snow, but not knowing when it will come. Pihkala also noted that this feeling is called “lumiahdistus” in Finnish.
Climate grief is related to “solastalgia”Algos is a combination of the Greek word for pain and the word solace, a term Glenn Albrecht coined to describe the psychic pain that results from the loss of environments where we can find solace.
Albrecht and his coworkers wrote in a 2007 paper that “as opposed to nostalgia, the melancholia of homesickness experienced individuals when separated from their loved home solastalgia” Australasian Psychiatry.
Solastalgia is the grief at the loss of the world you once knew due to climate change.
This solastalgia is now being called “snowscape solastalgia” by some researchers. “ecological grief.”
These eco emotions can also be triggered by deeper material and cultural losses. Alaskan indigenous people are facing real fear due to melting sea ices. Victoria Herrmann was called“A way of living that has been handed down from time immemorial.”
Climate change and cultural loss
The Saami community, which lives near the Arctic circle, considers snow their lifeblood, especially in the traditional reindeer herding tradition.
“If reindeer do not get snowfall or frost hard, the foundation of the entire livelihood crumbles.” said Klemetti NkkljrviIn a lecture on climate change, and the Saami people, he is a cultural anthropologist for the University of Oulu in Finland.
He said that climate change is the same as cultural change for many Indigenous peoples ahead of the UN climate conference, which will be held in 2021. Nkkljrvi, a Saami man who lived the Saami way for many years, said he sees “changes every morning,” including the loss or displacement of language.
The psychological impact of the disappearances of mountain glaciers from Kilimanjaro up to the European Alps is also unique.
Saami and other indigenous communities in the Arctic circle are experiencing the cultural, economic, and social loss caused by a warming world.
There is a cultural attachment that mountains and their “multitude of diverse ecosystems” have, but glaciers make these landscapes “uniquely in people’s imagination,” said Giovanni Baccolo, a postdoctoral researcher on glaciology at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy.
“Glaciers, they are literally another world,” Baccolo said. “Icons of mountains.” Baccolo said that the retreating ice caps have “impoverished” our connection with mountain landscapes. Future generations won’t be able to draw alpine mountains with a white hat once these ice caps melt.
Baccolo posts photos on social media that compare glaciers today and a century ago.
He stated that the retreat of glaciers was an incredibly powerful symbol for the environmental consequences of climate changes. “It is undisputed that we are overwhelmed when we look at the dramatic retreat of glaciers in comparisons.”
Can activism help to deal with climate grief
Losing Winter landmarks such glaciershas raised awareness about the imminent danger of climate change.
The memorial plaque at Iceland’s Ok Glacier says: “We know what’s happening and what we need to do.” Only you will know if it was done.
Sren Ronge is the coordinator of Protect Our Winters Europe. This advocacy group, based in Innsbruck (Austria), acknowledges “climate anxious” but wants to “engage people in speaking out for the climate, and pushing governments for solutions.”
Glaciers across the globe are receding
Climate grief can lead to resistance for Pihkala but it depends on the psychological resilience and willpower of activists.
“If they feel sadness and anxiety, it often leads to guilt,” he stated, referring to the process of acknowledging the fact that we all contribute to the climate emergency.
Baccolo believes that seeing the glacier melt at such a rapid pace has, at the very least, raised our awareness of the climate crisis.
“We are sorry,” he said, referring specifically to funerals for disappearing glaciers. “We are sad to see this incredible part of nature disappear and we know we can play a role in it.”
Edited by Jennifer Collins
