Santa Lucia Mountains, California
“Every individual matters, every individual has a role to play, and every individual makes a difference.” — Jane Goodall
I grew up at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in the Denver suburb of Englewood, Colorado. Whenever anyone spoke of the mountains, they did it with a sense of respect and a touch of awe for their beauty and majesty.
One of our favorite summer destinations was Saint Mary’s Glacier, only an hour-and-a-half drive up I-70 into the mountains. We would hike around the side of the lake to the glacier. At over 10,000 feet, several of my friends—not me, the hardcore skiers—would hike up the glacier and ski back down. Yes, it was icy and rutted, but it didn’t stop those true wannabe-at-heart, sky bums. I have fond memories of hiking alongside the glacier and a meadow of spring flowers, new green growth sprouting from the bushes, and a bright, warm sun taking the chill out of the air. The experience enhanced by the mescaline I took a few hours earlier. What can I say, it was Colorado in the early ‘70s.
This summer Saint Mary’s Glacier disappeared, completely melted; only the dry rocks and ground remain, a victim of the climate crisis, another sacrifice of the fossil fuel industry. Matthew Siegfried, a geophysics professor at the Colorado School of Mines, attributed the loss to a combination of last winter’s skimpy snowfall and the high summer heat. Snow will gather again this winter, but he expects the picturesque summer snowpack, lying in the mountains above Saint Mary’s Lake, to diminish.
We know glaciers are melting and winter snowpack is diminishing worldwide. The photographs of these sites are stunning proof, but when the effect is local, the destruction of a place you’ve seen and touched, a place dear to your heart, the loss becomes personal and painful, like the passing of an old friend.
Many of us, me included, have become hesitant to discuss climate change. It’s a political hot potato, and it’s depressing. We’ve had to distance ourselves from the crisis to be able to carry on with our lives. I get that as much as anyone, but we also have to speak our minds and tell the truth.
In Al Gore’s Climate Reality Conference, we learned that the way to talk about climate change without alienating a climate skeptic is to connect with them on a personal level by telling a personal story. No one can argue with your personal experience. We can talk about Saint Mary’s Glacier and the heartbreak. We can also talk about charging our electric car from rooftop solar, and driving down the highway powered by sunshine that graced our roof just a few minutes earlier. These things are undeniable.
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” — Jane Goodall