For months, I've been putting together the pieces of a book on what the world will be like in 2040. I've been weighing the effects of climate change, contemplating Appalachians stripped of their forests and exposed as layers of limestone and shale, marble and schist, interrupted by scars of mining and the weedy beds of dry rivers. Crumbling mountains that rise above a dusty southeast, where the drought-baked topsoil blows past the wave washed ruins of coastal vacation homes to fall far out at sea.
And I've been thinking of ice. Ice on land and ice on water. Ice that slips, slides, fractures and melts. Ice that vanishes, carrying away ecosystems and changing the map of the world.
It turns out, that in trying to base my writing off the best predictions, I've been badly off base. Because when it comes to the top of the world, 2040 isn't waiting. It's here now.
It's not news that the once-fabled Northwest Passage is now open. It's been open for weeks, and even recreational sailors in fiberglass boats have now made the passage that was once reserved to either those with the thick steel hulls of ice breakers, or the stocks of food that would allow them to wait out the winter in some isolated cove.
What is news is that the melting of the Arctic ice is running far, far ahead of any of the climate models. Thirty to forty years ahead.
Most researchers had anticipated that the complete disappearance of the Arctic ice pack during summer months would happen after the year 2070, he said, but now, "losing summer sea ice cover by 2030 is not unreasonable."
Even now, with the evidence for global warming more clear each day, there's still something comforting in the way most predictions are framed as "by the end of the century." It seems so far away. Even 2040 seems far away. In fact it's a year that I, personally, am unlikely to see.
But the ice isn't listening to our predictions. And the problems of "the end of the century" may not conveniently wait for the enlightened attention of our children and grandchildren.