Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
Even though I first read this poem in middle school, it was only recently that I came to appreciate how profoundly the world has changed since Robert Frost wrote this poem, almost one hundred years ago. Yet, all these years later, ice no longer feels like a viable choice. It is now, almost certainly, death by fire alone.
Our world is warming at an unprecedented rate, fires are roaming free in the west while melting ice caps and rising sea levels are slowly swallowing the east. Is the end of the world by fire and ice unavoidable? The UN reports that the plans made to ensure the reduction of fossil fuel emissions by a quarter by 2030 are now doomed to fail. 2100 is seen as the deadline for humanity’s survival, but within the next 80 years, sea levels are projected to rise enough to sink the Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, displacing millions in low-lying cities from Miami to Mumbai. Earth’s population, now at 7 billion, is predicted to rise to 9 billion by 2050 and 11 billion by 2100, putting additional strain on the planet and its ecosystems. More than 50% of the Great Barrier Reef is gone. We are reaching the point of no return faster than any of us expected. Many, however, have yet to realize that this is even happening.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
In his poem, Robert Frost saw fire as the preferable way for the world to end. One hundred years later, this choice seems the most possible, yet terrifying. Though the Earth is not catching fire per se, extremely hot temperatures are bound to be increasingly more frequent across the world. The world is currently the warmest it has been in the last 200 years, 2016 was the hottest year on record so far, and NASA specified that “seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001”. Even though a single degree increase does not feel like much of a change to us individually, our species as a whole, unadapted to these new environments, will suffer greatly. In fact, UN Environment recently published a warning report, stating that global warming must not exceed a 1.5°C rise.
We are currently sitting at a 1.0°C above pre-industrial levels, and are already seeing the consequences. In the United Kingdom, a +5.4°C increase is projected by 2070 during the summer, and at least a +4.2°C increase during the winter, all due to fossil fuel pollution. This past summer’s deadly heat wave that lasted a week in London will be the norm by 2050 in the UK.
Likewise, the USA has seen a +1.0°C increase on average across the country, while the heatwave season has lengthened by a month since the 1960s. Large forest fires have drastically proliferated over the past few decades, now burning millions of acres more than in the 1980s. California, already infamous for its deadly forest fires, saw this year’s fire, the deadliest yet, rage through an area the size of Chicago for seventeen days, killing 85 people and leaving more than 230 in critical condition. The past few years have been recognized as the hottest on record, and these high temperatures are responsible for causing the gusty winds and dry vegetation which sped up and worsened the fire. Hundreds of people lost their homes and properties, thousands of acres of land were destroyed, and it is only bound to get worse.
A report published by the World Bank in 2013 shows the worsening climate change conditions are also raging across South Asia. The Pacific Islands, the eastern coast of Asia, and the West Coast of the USA are all suffering the consequences of global warming and its effect on the oceans. In the US, fishermen from California and Oregon have resorted to suing oil and gas companies for damages due to their impact on the ecosystem in the Pacific. These fishermen, with the support of marine biologists, built a case against oil giants such as BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC demonstrating how burning fossil fuels, which is proven to be a major cause of global warming, directly and negatively affects marine life and in turn their livelihoods. Even though the lawsuit’s primary goal was to have the oil companies compensate the fishermen for the estimated damages made to the ocean’s ecosystem, the true consequences of global warming go beyond profit. With intricate ecosystems across the globe being damaged, many small Pacific Islands rely on the fishing industry for food and income. If climate change causes such irreparable damage to the billion-dollar US fishing industry, imagine the harm it can and will inflict on small, significantly poorer ocean islands heavily reliant on the industry.
Five years ago, India was already suffering through unprecedented periods of hot weather, which began occurring more frequently in recent years. Despite India’s recent move into the telecommunications and automotive industries, much of its economy remains largely based in agriculture. Such huge shifts in the country’s weather patterns cause great harm to cultivation cycles. In 2015, 15% of India’s population was undernourished, and such drastic changes to India’s agriculture industry will only worsen living conditions for millions of people.
There is a difficult trade-off to be made in developing countries, between creating a strong economy of scale, while trying to protect the environment. With the removal of India’s protectionist policies in 1991, the country’s economy began booming with investments in the automotive industry. Research since the early 2000s shows a clear correlation between a radical CO2 emission rise and the millions of new cars sold. To make matters worse, the 2013 report predicted that a 4°C change would not only seriously damage agriculture in the agricultural parts of India, it would also impact while densely built urban areas, turning them into will become sizzling “heat-islands”, thus indiscriminately worsening conditions across all of India. India, struggling to emerge as a strong world economy, is facing a terrible pay-off with the environment, showing how important sustainable development is, yet raising the question of whether it is effecting for developing countries such as India.
An increase in the average temperature across South Asia has also increased the number of droughts in the area. Evidence indicates that parts of South Asia have become drier since the 1970s. In 2003, droughts affected more than half of India’s farming areas, leading to a fall in crop production. Even though India’s agriculture would greatly benefit from an increase in rain and groundwater, “even without [the impact of] climate change, 15% of India’s groundwater resources are overexploited”, in the past 30 years. According to recent reports, “groundwater in Northern India is being depleted at a rate of 19.2 gigatons per year”, at an increasingly unsustainable rate. More than 80% of India’s population relies on this groundwater for drinking and farming. Even though India’s agriculture makes up only 17% of India’s GDP, it employs more than half of the workforce. Growing industries and urban areas combined with the increasing lack of water and inadequate agriculture will deeply damage the geopolitical situation in already turbulent parts of Asia.
Fire evokes passion, heat, warmth, and desire. An ardent death by fire may seem to many, not just Robert Frost, as a preferable way to die. A warm sunny summer day is always met with joy, and our sweating relieved with an ice-cold glass of beer or lemonade. But our planet cannot use such artificial luxuries. Even the slightest increase in temperature will see our world dry, scathing, burning… dying.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
And so Robert Frost, perhaps even for a second, realized what a heatwave with no end would do to humanity and to our planet, revisits death by ice. However, this manner of death seems less possible as the years go by. Glaciers and ice packs across the globe, from the Arctic to South America are melting at an alarming rate. This mass melting of ice across the Earth, concurrent rising temperatures, have brought about a phenomenon that Robert Frost had not considered when contemplating the way by which the world would end. Drowning.
In 1910, President Taft created the Glacier National Park, home to over 150 glaciers. Little did he know that, in 2018, less than 30 of those glaciers would remain, most of them melted away to less than half their original size. In the Venezuelan Andes, the country’s last glacier has almost completely melted. On Mount Everest, researchers discovered ‘warm ice’, measured at –3.3°C, on the Khumbu Glacier of Nepal. Warm ice is closer to water’s melting temperature than so-called ‘cold ice’. According to these researchers, the expected global temperature rise of +1.5°C has been predicted to result in a +2.1°C warming across High Mountain Asia, and all it takes is a slight increase in temperature to quickly melt away all of this ‘warm ice’. To make the situation even more dire, the glaciers in Nepal are one of the few sources of water for the people of the landlocked country. Even though an initial increase in temperature will provide a sudden surge of water as the glaciers melt away, in the long run, the glaciers will melt away leaving the people of Nepal without direct access to water. Similarly, in China, like the rest of Asia, Greenpeace reported that glaciers have been melting at an alarming rate since the 90s, with the country’s glacier area having decreased by 18% since the 1950s.
Just this past month, we’ve seen the effect of rising sea levels coupled with changing weather patterns hit one of the centers of the Western world. High tides and strong winds in Venice have caused the worst flooding in years. A 156-centimeter rise above the peak average sea level saw most of the already sinking city’s famous squares turn into lakes, while tourists set off to site-see in knee-deep waters. Even though the water did not seem to alarm the tourists, the rapidly rising sea levels caused by the warming of the oceans will see Venice sinking to nothing in the next 100 years. The Mediterranean sea is projected to rise to more than 140 cm by 2100, effectively drowning a city that has weathered the past 1,500 years. In those 1,500 years, the Mediterranean had only previously risen 30 cm. The accelerated rising sea levels, of course, does not only affect the ancient city of Venice. The 1,460 islands of the Mediterranean sea, as well as the coastal regions of the bordering countries, are in jeopardy. Waves of climate refugees movement are bound to aggravate the already turbulent refugee crisis and further affect the geopolitics of these countries, many of which are already in a precarious situation due to internal socio-political and financial issues. In the meantime, hundreds of historical sites, monuments, and landmarks will be underwater… A very real Atlantis in the Mediterranean.
Worst yet is the situation in the Pacific, where rising sea levels are swallowing islands in Micronesia and the Philippines. In 1850, Nahlapenlohd was a fairly large island of Micronesia, home to a memorable battle between the Kitti and Madolenihmw tribes. This is one of the many islands that no longer exists, along with many of the now lost Solomon Islands. These islands are home to half a million people, some of them, uncontacted tribes, and are home to diverse languages, cultures, religions, and historical events. Off the coast of the Eastern Pacific, sea levels have risen by 12 mm each year since 1993 compared to the global average of 3.1 mm per year. Many islands and reef islands, such as the Marshall Islands, in Kiribati, Tokelau and Tuvalu, Tonga, and the Cook Islands, are endangered due to increased erosion and are projected to disappear within the next thirteen years. Water levels in the Philippines are projected to rise between 7.6 and 10.2 cm each decade. These rising sea levels do not only affect coastal regions but cities close to rivers too, as seen when the Pangi River flooded more than ever recorded. A World Bank report stated that “by the end of this century, sea levels in the region are expected to rise by about 125 centimeters, exceeding the global average by 10-15%”. According to the report, more than 17.5% of the Philippines’ population will have to relocate inwards. Many of the people of these sinking islands in the Pacific will be forced to leave their countries, immigrating to mainland Asia, worsening the already unmanageable refugee crisis across the world.
A new climate report published equally alarming facts for the islands in the Caribbean, namely Puerto Rico. In the already impoverished nation, having just recently suffered a destructive hurricane, a projected 48 cm rise in sea levels is set to engulf 3.6% of total coastal land, where more than half of Puerto Rico’s population lives, and damaging 8,000 coastal structures, including drinking water and sanitation pipelines. To the south of Puerto Rico, the island nations of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Kitts and Nevis are amongst the nine most endangered islands worldwide. The islands of the Caribbean support themselves through tourism, and even the slightest increase in sea levels can cause massive damages to their economies, greatly influencing the lives and well-being of the Islanders. In Antigua alone, a 1 m increase in water levels could cost the island more than half a billion dollars, according to a report by The Independent.
Western countries such as the USA and Canada are not exempt from the consequences of climate change. In Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, officials warn that “current plans for dealing with climate change and other human-caused disturbances fall short of what’s needed”. As sea levels are rising faster in North America than expected, the projected rise of about 0.5m rise in B.C.’s coastal regions by 2050 has caught many off-guard. In the USA’s east coast, sea levels are rising faster than the global average, leading many cities to install flood pumps and other forms of adaptive infrastructure, while coastal flooding events are happening ten times more frequently than in the 1960s.
Examples of the terrible consequences of global warming are endless. Sinking islands, polluted waters, dying ecosystems, declining forests, increased greenhouse gases… the Earth, throughout its existence, has gone through ice ages and periods of global warming, but human activity since the Industrial Revolution has worsened the effects of Earth’s natural patterns. Perhaps the Paris Climate Treaty, and the many more treaties to come will help stabilize the environment, but harm has already been done and it is slowly becoming irreversible.
Robert Frost’s poem was inspired by Dante’s Inferno, wherein those deemed traitors in life are sentenced to burn in hell, all while submerged in ice water. If we continue on this path, we might all be seen as traitors to our own home, and the world ending in fire is our doom. Perhaps Frost’s poem will, in the end, be right in its predictions of the demise the world will face in the end. But it is never too late, we could still try to preserve the few choices that that are left. The preservation of our Earth as we know it is for all of us, for individuals, for states, for international companies and corporations. It is therefore up to all of us to work together, to make sacrifices, to put the environment we so desperately need to live, before our short-term comfort, profits, and pleasure. We must take our responsibilities: individual citizens can recycle and reduce their footprints, governments must uphold climate agreements and make a larger scale effort to lead our countries to environmental efficiency, and international actors should trade in profit for the longer-term survival of humanity.
Perhaps we are not fated to face Frost’s end-of-the-world predictions yet. We could collectively try to push back our demise for a later date, not just for us, or our children, but for our home. Earth, as a planet, will almost certainly outlast humanity, so it’s up to us to take charge of our own demise.
