The Elephant in the Living Room: What Ever Have We Done (Part I)

Life is only a flicker of melted ice.

                                             ― Dejan Stojanovic 

                              from The Sun Watches the Sun

I think the worse thing you can do about a situation

is nothing.

                             ― Ice Cube

Two years ago, climate change became a reality for me. After spending time in Vladivostok, Siberia in late April, we headed north by ship to the Amchitka Peninsula. I was eager to see its fabled wild beauty.

It was not long before we began to encounter floating sheets of ice.

The ice began nudging the ship’s sides. The ship slowed, finally crawling along at approximately one knot. Passengers ran to their rooms for cameras, iPads, and cell phones. They lined the outside decks, eager to see this unexpected sight. Until as far as the eye could see, we became surrounded by floating ice.

We were out of range of GPS in this remote area, which meant the captain had to sail as sailors have for centuries. Lacking satellite images, he navigated from his experience, his eyes, and compass readings – and had no way to gauge how far the ice stretched ahead of us.

The ice floes began piling up on top of each other. I will never forget the sight of incredible beauty of the masses of ice - and the sounds of ice scraping and pressing against the ship. After hours of trying to find a way through the ice floes, the captain, out of fear for the ship’s safety, made the difficult decision to return to Japan - and seek an alternative route across the northern Pacific Ocean.

Later, we learned this ice pack had been pushed southward by fifty-mile-an-hour winds after the melting pieces broke off from the frozen sea of the high Arctic. Despite its beauty and the thrill of an unexpected adventure, it was also a dire warning. Some of the ice floes carried doomed seals, who lived only in the very far north. Their likely demise was a metaphor of the possible plight of humans cast into a bewildering and altered world.

Creative thinking has taken us to places beyond our imagination. We would still be writing letters in longhand (or scratching out messages on rock walls) and be tethered to the wall by land-line phones. No airplanes to take us from North American to Japan and beyond. Ships would not be guided by a host of technological devices and we still would be sailing the seas by the seat of our pants.

We need a massive transformation in thinking about climate change – which begins with elephants in the living room. Creative thinking can re-imagine how we produce energy, grow food, and travel from place to place in ways that counter the warming of the seas.

After all, as Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in its 2014 Fifth Assessment Report: Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.

Not even the heads of current energy-producing companies.