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From hot to cold. It all seems like a grotesque game we force ourselves to play. This unprecedented lunacy. In Greenland and Antarctica, melting ice caused by warming is making the planet’s sea levels rise, while cooling ocean currents that in turn influence wildlife and ecosystems. An excess of salt water contrasts with the waste of scarce drinking water aquifers: we use four litres of water to make one plastic bottle containing the same liquid, and this is quite a moderate proportion compared to other products.
The poles are melting and that has a huge negative impact on us, yet human beings insist on seeing this differently too. The accessible territory that will emerge from under the ice of the gigantic Greenland or Antarctic land masses will be new areas in which to exploit previously untouched natural resources, especially oil and gas. The same resources that have, paradoxically, caused the ice to melt to make a few people rich and drive the vast majority of people into poverty.
This lunacy that no one understands but everyone accepts with resignation. And above all selfishly: our possible downfall and that of future generations, which we have brought on ourselves.
Anthropogenic climate change is already proven fact. It is the consequence of global warming caused by the human race.
Major international conferences bringing together almost every country in the world discuss how to tackle the situation, how to mitigate its effects, where global responsibility lies and the near future of our planet.
But it matters little whether we meet with good intentions, whether certain measures or agreements are binding. What is truly important is that no one seems to be taking the first step. A first step in a more sustainable direction, one that is more careful with the mass use of the planet’s limited natural resources.
Will we exploit them until it breathes its last breath?
If this is not what we want, we must act now.
“The Melting Age” is a journey through over 30 countries on six continents, showing places and situations that demonstrate the causes and consequences of the climate crisis. What we might gain and, at the same time, what we could lose.
Using photographs taken at the end of the 20th century and throughout the 21st, the aim is to narrate how humanity’s great challenge in the coming decades is being tackled and how the climate crisis has been with us for a long time. We should not be suddenly surprised now.
Alfons Rodríguez
Would you like to show the exhibition THE MELTING AGE? ask here: info@armphoto.com
Memorias del principio del fin
¡Salta, salta, la tierra es blanda al otro lado, pero no se hunde…!
Me gritó –más o menos- el joven con un precario dominio del inglés cuando observó que no me decidía a pasar al otro lado del improvisado muro. Y salté.
La tierra arcillosa acumulada a capazos era un tanto elástica y de textura plástica, parecía frágil, como si no tuviera que durar mucho allí, en su nueva ubicación. Como si, de nuevo, el mar se la fuera a llevar pronto. A fundirla con su agua y su sal en la vastísima inmensidad del Golfo de Bengala. Del Océano Índico.
Me encontraba en la Isla de Gabura, al sur de Bangladesh. Cientos de habitantes de la zona, reunidos en grupos perfectamente organizados, como si fueran legiones de hormigas bien dirigidas por su instinto de supervivencia, movían la arcilla gris de un sitio a otro. Creaban diques, plataformas, muros…luchaban contra el avance inexorable del agua. Se quedaban – se quedan- sin tierra para cultivar, para construir sus hogares, para vivir. Recreaban un escenario efímero para seguir existiendo en la medida de lo posible.
Todavía hoy me pregunto si aquellas gentes eran conscientes de que su lucha estaba perdida de antemano.
Al menos a largo plazo. Corto, inapreciable en términos geológicos.
CONTINUARÁ...