I’ve been back from Iceland a few weeks now, and I miss it. I miss the people, with their awesome accents and frank sense of humor, the colorful houses, the surreal landscape with thousand year old volcanic rocks, the steam coming out of the ground everywhere you turn…all of it. I even miss the convenience stores, with those delectable Icelandic hot dogs, made with crunchy onions and sweet Icelandic mustard… my mouth is watering just remembering it.

I learned so much on this trip, about climate change, rocks, glaciers, photography, filmmaking, puffins, ice, and myself.

One of the most fascinating things about Iceland (aside from the fact
that it NEVER gets dark in the summer) is their energy. I knew before
that they had a lot of geothermal power, but I didn’t realize just how
much. Early in the trip, we took a tour of a modern geothermal power
plant, and I learned that 99.9% of Iceland’s energy is geothermal power.
The other .1% is hydroelectric. That means that when it comes to
electricity, there are no fossil fuels on the entire island. None,
except for the small amounts of petroleum they use to drive their cars.
That fact took me a while to get over.

I was a little stumped.  That means most of the simple waste-reducing,
energy-saving actions I encourage people to take in America to reduce
their carbon footprints are  irrelevant in Iceland. If  an Icelander
uses huge amounts of energy to heat their homes or take long hot
showers, it doesn’t matter.  It’s all geothermal energy, and they
basically have an unlimited supply. That is just mind blowing to me!  

Another interesting thing was Icelander’s view on climate change.
Everywhere I went, I asked people for their thoughts on global warming. I
had been deeply affected by what I saw, and assumed that the residents
of this Kentucky-sized island thought the same. But, I was surprised to
discover that, at least in the major cities like Reykjavik or Akureyri,
the locals didn’t really care about climate change much at all.  They
didn’t see how it really affected them. Their renewable energy is just
part of their lifestyle, unrelated to concerns about CO

₂ emissions or
climatic changes.

But when we hiked on one of the glaciers, the tour guides had a
different opinion. One of our guides, Laurent, was originally from
France, and the other, Drew, was from Washington state. They both
experienced first hand the reality of climate change and its affect on 
the land and people of Iceland. Their jobs are even affected  by it.
Because the glaciers are melting so fast, they need to head to the
glacier a few times  every week, sometimes every day, to make new entry
points for the hikes they lead.

One thing Laurent said really stood out to me.  He saw the connection so
clearly between climate change and the way people think, the way we
act, and the decisions we make now.  He watches the glaciers disappear
every day and all he could say is, “It’s just wrong.”

This is a very good point. And I want to incorporate it more into my
presentations. What we are doing IS wrong.  And we don’t get it.  It’s
about more than just climate change. We are not living in a way that
ensures a future for generations to come. I think once people really
realize that and begin to act on it, we can create real change.

This journey has made me different person. I’ve discovered some awesome
new music, made some amazing friends from all over the United States,
and my perspective on climate change has deepened.  Now, for me, it’s
more now than a series of slides.  The urgency and reality of our
rapidly changing world weighs even heavy on my heart and I will be back
again some day.  I know I will.

Thank you to National Geographic for providing these opportunities to
youth to explore with our planet in ways that connect us deeper to what
we have to lose.

And thank you for reading. Now who’s ready to go out and change the world?

Day 13 in Iceland. Only 2 more full days before we go back home. I’m sad to leave what has become my life for the past 2 weeks, but at the same time, I’m ready to return to my normal life. At least it will be nice to get a full night of sleep.

My life has changed on this trip. Up until now, I’ve talked to people about climate change, and people have been inspired, but there has been something missing.  I realized that what that was:  I couldn’t personally relate to it.

Global warming has been something I learned about from books, websites, and movies.  It can be unusual weather or something, but it is hard to really see the direct impact of climate change in my normal American life.  But here in Iceland, being able to see the glaciers that are melting firsthand, that missing piece has clicked in place inside me.

It started when I walked on that first glacier last week. And
then a few days later, something else happened. We heard a presentation
from Thorvardur Árnason, the Director of the Hornafjördur
Rural Research Center in the small fishing village of Höfn (pronounced
Huhp). In his presentations he showed images of a certain glacier that
he’s taken every month since February 2008. He showed the same picture,
taken from the same spot, at the same time each year…and you can
clearly see how much of the glacier has melted just in three years. I’m
going to be using some of these images in my presentation from now on,
with his permission of course.

And then he said something that
blew me away. He spent time talking about Vatnajökull. He spoke passionately
about how beautiful it is and how powerful and majestic it is, and how
he was drawn to it a few years earlier. He said that if we
continue burning fossil fuels at the current rate, and stick to our
unsustainable lifestyle, all of Vatnaökull will be completely gone
within 200 years.

Every last piece of ice.

When I heard that, I started crying–the first
time I’ve ever cried when hearing about climate change.

My commitment to continue my advocacy work
on behalf of the planet has deepened.  I feel compelled to change the
way I live…and to urge others to make the changes we need to
make…not just to spare some ice somewhere on the planet, but to save
the great Vatnajökull, a friend I have met and whose story I now know in
my heart.

I don’t think I can really communicate the depth of
sadness that I feel.  But as I finish this blog, I feel physically
nauseous knowing that not only this great piece of our planet’s natural
beauty will be gone, but so will all of the animals who depend on this
ice…and entire bio-systems…and even people who depend on these ice
sheets and other glaciers around the world their drinking water.  

“We
simply must stop global warming within my lifetime.”  I’ve said this
hundreds of times, but this is the first time I’ve said it with a sense
of nearly desperate urgency.  We have too much to lose.  I want my
children, someday, to see the places I have seen this month and will
hopefully continue to see over the next couple years.

Let’s make
it so. 

Wow, that was an amazing week. Just the fact that it’s taken me till day seven to sit down and write something should tell you something about how much we’re doing here in Iceland. It’s about 11 p.m. here, it’s still completely light out, (the sun goes down for about three hours per day, but it’s never really dark,) and I am exhausted. This has honestly been the best week of my entire life, hands down. I’ve achieved at least five of my life goals, and I’m expecting a few more over the next part of this journey. Let me list a few here:

For one, I saw my first glacier a few days ago (they all blur together,) and I walked on my first glacier yesterday. It was unbelievable. Seriously, I felt like I was in a dream, it was so surreal and incredibly beautiful, it was hard to actually believe I was there. The glacier we hiked on was called Fellsjökull (fells-yo-cull,) which is part of the great Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe, and the third largest in the world, right behind Greenland and Antarctica. I honestly cannot think of the words to describe what it felt like to be there, with the glacier, being able to touch and feel what’s happening to massive body of ice. I think the closest I can get is with a few pictures:

Here
you can see the bus we drove in on, in front of Fellsjökull. You can’t
tell from the picture, but that was actually a 15-minute walk from the
bus to the entry point of the glacier.

In 1940, the glacier went
all the way to the bus. That’s where the entry point was. Seventy years
ago, the glacier would have covered that entire picture. That’s how
much has melted. And I could physically see it, walking across. On top
of the glacier, there were these streams of very tasty water flowing
into holes in the ice called moulins (pronounced moo-lahn, like the
Disney movie.) From there, the water travels in a series of tunnels
underneath the glacier, finally coming out in a huge stream and flowing
into the ocean, a few miles away. I know it’s normal for a glacier to
melt, but the fact that it’s melted so fast in the past century and the
speed that it’s melting now is just appalling. I was in awe looking at
this massive, powerful river of ice, and seeing how fragile and
vulnerable it is.

You can see the glacier waaaay in the back, past all the icebergs, which, as you can see, there are a lot of. Here’s a better picture of the glacier and surrounding bay:

We had to take a boat to get near enough to the glacier so that we could see it, and it took a good 20 minutes from the time we left shore. At first, I was just awe-struck by the beauty of it, taking pictures of every iceberg and not really thinking much of it. Then, the guide started talking about the story of the glacier.

The most surprising thing was this: in the 1930s, that entire bay didn’t exist. It was all the glacier. All the way from where it is to the shore, and beyond. All of these icebergs were connected to the glacier, and were formed hundreds, even thousands of years ago, way up on the top of Vatnajökull. Then, they started to break apart. And now it’s speeding up. The most surprising thing is the fact that this glacier has been retreating over 100 meters (that’s 300 feet) per year. And this last year, it retreated 900 meters. 900 meters! That’s over a half a mile! Just in one year.  I couldn’t believe it when she said it. It was heartbreaking, hearing about that and seeing the melt from Fellsjökull. And today, I’ll leave you with that.

I wish I had time to go into detail about all the other awesome things we’ve done, which include an intense rescue mission in a huge sandstorm right next Eyafjallajökull, the big volcano that paused Europe, snorkeling with dry suits in the 30 degree water inside the rift between the N. American and Eurasian plates, exploring caves, watching geysers, swimming in geothermal hot springs, and much more, even shopping in Reykjavik, the capital. That’s about as much detail as I can go into today, because it will be midnight in 5 minutes, but maybe next time. For now, I’m going to go to sleep after a long and productive day in the field. Oh, and yes, happy 4th of July!

Here’s another example, a glacier we saw today:

This
is an iceberg bay at the base of Breidamerkurjökull, also connected to
Vatnajökull. 

What We Need to Save the Planet for Future Generations

For many reasons, the climate change movement has not been able to bring about the changes we need to actually solve the climate crisis. Even though there are many people putting hundreds of millions of dollars and years of time into the effort, I am not sure we are any better off now than we were ten years ago.

If anything, we can say we’ve made climate change a mainstream topic. So, that’s something.  Most people I talk to today have at least heard about climate change, and most have an opinion.

But we’re still not anywhere close to a sustainable society, which is what we need to survive.

I think I have an idea why. In comparing this movement to other social movements in the past (civil rights movement, women’s rights movement, independence movement in India led by Gandhi,) there’s one main difference that sets us apart: we are not suffering. Our lives are not personally affected by climate change.

In other movements, a specific group of people whose lives were personally affected by an injustice stood up to make their voices heard. Their suffering held them together as a movement.

For most people, at least in the United States, it’s still abstract and distant, and too ‘scientific’ to fully understand and be passionate about.  It’s a political issue without passion, without suffering.

By the time the majority of people begin to feel the worst effects of climate change and begin to suffer…it will be too late.  We can’t wait for that to happen.

We need, instead, to awaken empathy. People need to see that climate change is already personally affecting millions of people and animals all over the world. Empathy is our only hope.  Only when we are able to suffer WITH others, can we lead the revolutionary changes we need to make.

I talk to thousands of
people every year about the urgency of climate change and inspire people
to make changes.  But it’s not enough.  It’s not even real enough to
me.  So, I’m making it a personal quest to go to places affected by
climate change, finding people and creatures and land and water that is
already personally affected, and bring these stories back to those of us
who have the power to help.

I’m beginning this quest this month,
with a trip to Iceland with National Geographic student expedition
program. I’ll be joining a dozen other high school students to study
climate change, filmmaking, and photography in Iceland. We’ll be
trekking on glaciers and lava flows, taking a tour of a modern
geothermal power plant, and talking to local residents about the effects
of climate change in their communities. 

I will be blogging and
making a film about the effects of climate change on the people and
land of Iceland, and bring the message that people are already affected
by this crisis. But, more than anything else, this will be a personal
journey for me, so that I can begin to personally see the effects of
climate change and suffer myself.  I need to move beyond reading about
climate change to be able to relate to those most affected now in order
to advocate for those of us who will be most affected in the future.  

I
have a feeling that this is not just any cool experience, but the
beginning of a new life for me.  I am going to open up my heart to be
broken by reality.  I hope I can communicate the urgency, along with the
empathy needed to bring about true and healing revolution we
desperately need…even if we don’t feel it personally it yet.

Learn more about NG Student Expeditions National Geographic Student Expedition Blog.

And read more posts from the students on the NGSE Iceland Blog.