Glaciers are disappearing, biodiversity loss is accelerating, and governments continue to spend far more destroying nature than protecting it.

Is tourism harming glaciers?

Glaciers are disappearing worldwide, as demonstrated in the figure below (the amount of glacier ice in 170 monitored glaciers in 1970 is the reference point).

At average global warming of 1.5oC (where we are now effectively) 2,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050; at 4oC, it will be 4,000. Mind you, I think it’s crazy to be even thinking about warming reaching 4oC, we have no idea what the consequences of this level of warming will be for humans or the environment, except to say that it will in multiple ways be disastrous. Anyway, back to glaciers.

Glaciers have long been tourist attractions but with global warming turning them into endangered species, their popularity has increased greatly for a variety of reasons: appreciation of their beauty and power, last-chance tourism, learn about glacier retreat, understand global warming, and simply bear witness, for example.

But the loss of a glacier is no different to any other aspect of the natural environment that disappears. It isn’t just the loss of the particular animal, plant, micro-organism, free-flowing river or glacier that matters, it’s also the predictable and unpredictable consequences of that loss. As glaciers recede and then disappear, landscapes are changed, ecologies are destabilised, water sources for the environment and humans are disrupted and lost, natural (or rather unnatural) hazards are increased, and Indigenous lifestyles, traditions and cultures are destroyed, to name just a few of the more obvious flow-on effects.

Unfortunately, efforts by the glacier tourism industry to protect their business model (e.g., geotextile covers on melting glaciers, snow farming, cable cars and helicopter trips) may have unexpected undesirable local effects while failing to do anything to tackle the underlying global warming, possibly making it worse.

For many humans, the melting of glaciers creates a sense of personal loss and mourning (sometimes referred to as climate anxiety, ecological grief or solastalgia) and this has been expressed in public ritualised displays of concern and mourning such as the “glacier funeral” for Iceland’s Okjökull glacier in 2019. These events are shared acts of support, celebration, sorrow, commemoration, reflection, awareness raising and protest and can function as “letters to the future” about what has been lost.........

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