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| James Balog in Chasing Ice |
By Bob Sommer
A century ago historian Henry Adams attempted to
synthesize history and physics in a “scientific theory of history.” He
concluded 1) that history would accelerate dramatically toward the end of the
twentieth century, ending in chaos, and 2) that his experiment was a
failure. He might not have thought the latter if he’d been able to compare his
graph of history’s projected curve with a graph of the acceleration of greenhouse gases in the
earth’s atmosphere over the past two decades, with its dire implications for rising global temperatures.
Nature photographer James Balog brings an equally ambitious historical sensibility to his film Chasing Ice, which premiered early this month and received the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In the images of dying glaciers throughout the Arctic regions, from Greenland and Iceland to Alaska, Balog recognized, he said, “a powerful piece of history unfolding.” This would be the last chance in history to record the melting of the planet’s great glaciers. His Extreme Ice Survey undertook a three-year project to place dozens of cameras in some of the harshest locations on earth and record, in tens of thousands of photographs, glaciers thinning, receding, and for some, disappearing forever.
Chasing Ice blends
passion and purpose. Its grand story is the alarming tale of industrial mankind’s
damaging impact on the planet, as the consequences of excessive carbon
emissions play out in the receding and melting ice sheets of the Arctic. The film also
tells the story of Balog’s passion to record and share the images of this
reality. Thus the film also tells the story of the story.
Balog portrays an even more rapid acceleration of
disappearing ice than he’d anticipated. The film records the largest calving of
a glacier ever captured. I’d avoid a cliché like “jaw-dropping” to describe this
scene if my mouth hadn’t literally fallen open as I watched it.
This movie renders climate change deniers irrelevant. The
only debate that matters now is how to take action, not whether to do so. The
first action is to see the movie—and bring some friends. Fortunately,
for a short time the Kendeda Foundation has made that easy by offering complimentary
tickets. See below the trailer for more information. See the movie! This
matters!
Chasing Ice official
website: http://www.chasingice.com/
