James Balog, a nature photo-journalist, author and founder of the Extreme Ice Survey and Earth Vision Trust, spoke about global environmental change in Davis Auditorium on Thursday afternoon last week.
His talk was part of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute’s 20th annual conference, hosted by DU and the Sturm College of Law Thursday and Friday last week. The conference was themed “The Next West: Landscapes, Livelihoods and the Future of the Rocky Mountain Region.”
Balog’s main message was about the pressing need for attention to the effects of global warming. He sees human influence as the dominant agent of natural change today.
“One of the biggest stories of our time is the intersection of humans and nature,” he said, calling this the science of “human tectonics.”
Balog pinpointed many recent examples as evidence of the damaging effects of human tectonics, including the eruption of an Iceland volcano in April 2010, the Gulf oil spill and the Four-Mile fire in Boulder this past fall. He used his images as a natural photographer to highlight these desecrated landscapes.
On the Gulf oil spill, Balog said he was impressed by the billions of dollars of technology, prowess and man power used to stop the leak at sea, but disheartened by the lack of technological effort put toward preserving the marshes.
The rudimentary containment booms used to protect the shore from oil, made of net, PVC pipes, old rages and bamboo rods, showed how far we still have to go in our attempts to protect the environment, he said.
Balog used the Icelandic volcano, which affected about 10,000 transatlantic flights a day while it was spouting ash, as an example of the “unnatural” state of nature today.
He referenced graphs showing global temperature rise to be far above the average cyclical level of the past 400 years, indicating that carbon emissions were to blame.
Balog’s company, Extreme Ice Survey, is based out of Boulder. Its goal is to use photography, video or music to communicate a “more intense understanding” of global environmental change to the public.
“One of the great tragedies of our time is that the knowledge from these experts is not getting out into the community,” he said.
Balog’s work focuses on glaciers. His team has 43 time-lapse cameras that take hourly and half-hourly pictures of glaciers in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and Mt. Everest. His footage showed the pace at which climate change is occurring: one glacier retreated 3 miles in 3 years.
With 2010 being the hottest year on record, 95 percent of the world’s glaciers are retreating, releasing billions of tons of ice into the ocean, he said.
Balog said we need to change our way of thinking to propel us forward in combating climate change.
It is time to “stop trying to be nice…and get mad,” he said.
Balog said we have minds that are created to think short-term and act quickly, what he called “expedience instead of vision.” But now is the time to think long term, he said.
“There is no magic bullet,” said Balog. “Nor is there a fairy godmother to come save us. We have to chip away at this ourselves, one little chip at a time.”
