Common Dreams:
A climate change victim in Iceland is set to be memorialized with a monument that underscores the urgent crisis.
The victim is the former Okjökull glacier in Borgarfjörður, which scientists say is the nation's first glacier lost to the climate crisis.
The memorial monument will be installed during a Aug. 18 "un-glacier tour" and is entitled, "A letter to the future." It was authored by Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason.
"Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose it status as a glacier," the text of the plaque reads. "In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path."
"This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done," it says. "Only you know if we did it."
The bottom of the plaque reads "August 2019, 415ppm CO2."
Rice University anthropologist Cymene Howe, who co-produced the 2018 documentary "Not Ok" with Dominic Boyer, hopes the monument will raise awareness about the decline of Iceland’s glaciers and the impact of climate change:
"One of our Icelandic colleagues put it very wisely when he said, 'Memorials are not for the dead; they are for the living,'" Howe said. "With this memorial, we want to underscore that it is up to us, the living, to collectively respond to the rapid loss of glaciers and the ongoing impacts of climate change."
Boyer, in a press statement, amplified Howe’s warning:
“Ok was the first named Icelandic glacier to melt because of how humans have transformed the planet’s atmosphere. Its fate will be shared by all of Iceland’s glaciers unless we act now to radically curtail greenhouse gas emissions.”