Ukuku, Qolqepunku Glacier; photo by Jorge Vera 2009

Back in December, msnbc.com published a photo story on Qoyllur Rit’i and global warming, with photos by El Fotógrafo and captions by yours truly.

I neglected to provide the link to that slide show, which includes some of EF’s strongest images of the dangerous (and endangered) glacier pilgrimage, so here it is, belatedly: “Peru’s Disappearing Holy Glacier.”

This photo, above, of a veteran ukuku is one of my favorites. The guy must be about 40 years old, but exposure to the harsh Andean elements has made his face a craggy moraine field.

Most of the ukukus at QR are in their late teens and early 20s; you don’t see a lot of old-timers like this guy. He lived through the crises in the 1990s when the glacier started melting and breaking up, and ukukus began falling into crevasses and dying.

Back then, the religious group that organizes the pilgrimage didn’t know about global warming and its effects on glaciers. They didn’t realize that their seemingly sturdy glacier was becoming a major hazard and couldn’t support the weight of hundreds of ukukus at a time. So they would ascend to the glacier at midnight to perform their rituals, as they had always done, and then the accidents started happening.

One veteran ukuku we interviewed in 2008 told us that he saw nine of his fellow ukukus die on the glacier in 1995. He was about the same age as this ukuku. Both were survivors of and witnesses to the hazards of extreme climate change.

BTW: I swiped the title of this blog post from an entry in the Cabinet of Wonders. COW’s entry provides an excellent introduction to the rituals of Qoyllur Rit’i and to the surreal atmosphere that surrounds this ancient event rooted in pre-Hispanic traditions.

 The title reminds me of these lines about glacier worship from “The Threshold,” by Rudyard Kipling. The speaker starts by recalling the days of early cave-dwelling humans, who lived in the shadow of receding glaciers and were starting to make sense of their place in the world:

The close years packed behind them,

As the glaciers bite and grind,

Filling the new-gouged valleys

With Gods of every kind.

Gods of all-reaching power–

Gods of all-searching eyes–

But each to be wooed by worship

And won by sacrifice.

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NBC Nightly News Chief Environmental News Correspondent Anne Thompson interviews glaciologist Marco Zapata at Pastoruri Glacier, Oct. 2009 (photo c. Barbara Drake)

Tune in to see footage of dying Pastoruri Glacier and to hear correspondent Anne Thompson talk with experts on how Peru is struggling to adapt to a world without glaciers, a scenario that may be realized within the next quarter century.

Kudos to the NBC environmental news team for bringing this important story to the attention of U.S. viewers during Copenhagen 15. What happening in Peru is dramatic evidence of the catastrophic effects of global warming and rapid climate change. And although people in North America may not be experiencing such drastic climate effects yet, experts point to dire consequences if no action is taken on climate shifts.

(See “Manhattan floods, Chicago heatwaves and withering Californian vines: how scientists see the US in 75 years.” Guardian, June 16, 2009.)

Click here for my recent blog post on the report and additional video footage to be featured on MSNBC.

I was fortunate to work with the NBC team as a fixer while they did their investigations in Peru. Anne Thompson was fast-thinking and insightful in the field, as well as an excellent listener. She took in the stories of campesinos struggling to water their crops with the same degree of attention that she gave to Antonio Brack when the environmental minister told her that it was “very hard” to regulate environmental abuses in Peru.

“Yes, but that’s your job,” she pointed out to him several times. The reporter’s message was clear: Stop passing the buck.

That message applies equally to the United States, I’d add. It’s time for America to commit to reducing emissions. For those flat-earthers who still deny that global warming is bad for humanity, take a look at tonight’s broadcast and hear what the campesinos in Ancash have to say. Their struggles show that adaptation to climate change is part of our future as well.

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Mt. Caullaraju; photo c, Buy Difenoxin Without Prescription. Jorge Vera 2009

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Some Peruvians are outraged at the country’s indifference to the preventable deaths of children in the Andes, as this widely circulated cartoon shows. Others shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s Peru.”

This year alone, 144 children under age 5 have died of respiratory disease brought on extreme cold in the high sierra, reported El Comercio. Thirty-five of the young victims were from Puno, where temperatures plummeted to -15 degrees C in the last 21 days. (Note that temperature extremes — winter getting colder, summer getting hotter and drier — are an expression of climate change, says Peru glacier expert Cesar Portocarrera.)

 It’s not like these extreme temperatures were unforseeable, however.  Mortally dangerous cold fronts have been sweeping through the puna for years. In fact, the government of Puno was allotted 24 million soles to combat the problem in 2009.

Guess how much of that money was spent on mitigation and distribution of food, blankets, clothing and anti-pneumonia treatments?

A paltry 3.3 percent. Puno is just sitting on the rest of the money.

Special correspondent Vanessa Romo Espinoza exposes the criminal indifference of local bureaucrats, who each year neglect to draw up a plan to bring aid to those suffering in the highest regions. Poor people whose children are dying of pneumonia struggle to pay out of their own pockets for medicine and respiratory masks — items for which the local government has already received funding. Hospitals are open to receive patients but are so under-staffed they cannot provide good care.

And the babies and toddlers keep dying in the sierra, where 40,000 cases of respiratory infection have been registered in Puno in the first three months of 2009.

How do Peruvian readers in the capital respond to the tragedy? Most people I ask shake their heads and sigh, “Corruption. That is Peru’s problem.”

There’s nothing to be done, their attitude suggests. Peru will never change.

Not all Peruvians agree, however. El Fotografo — a native Peruvian who lived 27 years in the United States and was a professional disaster specialist for the Red Cross — can barely swallow his anger at the senseless deaths, many of which could be prevented with advance planning. Long-term mitigation is needed, he insists.

Other Peruvians are raising their voices in outrage, at least online.

Meanwhile, it is winter in the Andes and kids are dying and I’m sure that many people reading this article want to help. So here are a few short-term ways that you can make a difference:

*  Drop off clothing and blankets at the main square in Barranco;

* Donate blanket and clothing to the Union Church of Lima (1155 Angamos Oeste, Miraflores), which is conducting a drive especially for the Puno victims.

* The Catholic charity Caritas has finally jumped into the game and is accepting clothing, food and cash donations. Here’s information (in Spanish) from a June 1 article in El Comercio about the campaing “Bringing Warmth to Puno”:

Para llevar adelante esta iniciativa se pide a apoyo con frazadas y ropa de invierno nuevas o en buen estado, y alimentos no perecibles como cereales, menestras, azúcar, aceite, atún, entre otros productos.

Se solicita, además, ayuda económica para realizar campañas de salud, atención a enfermos en comunidades rurales alejadas, mejorar viviendas contra el frío, recuperar cultivos y medios de vida.

La ayuda humanitaria podrá ser llevada a partir de hoy al almacén de Cáritas del Perú (calle Omicrón 492, Parque de la Industria y Comercio del Callao), a Cáritas Ayaviri (jirón Tacna 147), Cáritas Juli (avenida San Pablo 187, Chucuito) y Cáritas Puno (Edificio San Martin, jirón Ciudad de la Paz 145, Puno, y avenida Rosa Merino s/n, Juliaca).

Mientras que las donaciones económicas pueden efectuarse en el Banco de Crédito (cuenta en soles: 193-1807864-0-51), (cuenta en dólares: 193-1807514-1-26).

En el BBVA Banco Continental la cuenta en soles: 0011-0444444444444444 y la cuenta en dólares: 0011-0444444444444446, y a través de Scotiabank la cuenta en soles: 9999930 y la cuenta en dólares: 6666670.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Link: RPP video (in Spanish) on the Caritas campaign.

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Pilgrims camping at Qoyllur Rit’i, 2008

The annual Andean pilgrimage takes place in a remote valley in southern Peru, at the foot of 16,000-foot-high Qolqepunku Glacier. Pilgrims travel from all over central and southern Peru, as well as northern Boliva, to attend this remarkable event, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

The Catholic Church has its hand in Qoyllur Rit’i, but what really interests me and El Fotografo are the indigenous, ice-worshipping rituals that people perform at Qoyllur Rit’i. That’s why we’re braving the sub-zero temps to camp out with 100,000 pilgrims for three nights. We’ll be interviewing pilgrims and dancers, and El Fotografo will be taking photos with his Hasselblad outfitted with a new digital back, courtesy of Hasselblad America (thanks, kind sponsor!).

Also part of our expedition team is videographer Martin Vera and, for the first time, our son, El Hijo. (This may be the first time that an 11-year-old gringo attends Qoyllur Rit’i.)

The real story we’re after is how the local people are coping with the loss of glacier ice due to climate change. Qolqepunku Glacier, like all tropical glaciers in Peru, is vanishing faster than even the scientists predicted it would. The most important mountain in Andean cosmology is “losing its white poncho,” as the locals say.

We want to understand what that loss means to a people who have lived among these snow-capped mountains for thousands of years.

El Hijo will be taking notes at Qoyllur Rit’i and afterward making a PowerPoint presentation to share with his class in Lima.

I’m proud of him and also concerned about his keeping warm. Fortunately I bought some thick woolen long-johns in the Cusco market last year, and he’s now big enough to wear them, I think. 

Time to tear El Hijo away from his Nintendo DS for a quick fitting.

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Spent a few hours this morning at a group meeting with Mr. Robin Gwynn, the U.K’s newly appointed special envoy on climate change for vulnerable countries. He came to Lima with spokesperson Kirsty Lewis of the Hadley Center to talk about Peru, climate change and the U.K.’s commitment to helping threatened countries adapt to the environmental crisis. (The image above shows children in Puno being treated for respiratory illnesses in 2008 when record colds induced by climate change led to a rash of mortalities.)

FYI: Peru is one of three countries in the world most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Bangladesh and Honduras round out the trio.

Sitting in the conference room filled with officials, activists and journalists, I felt singularly aware of my American-ness and of my home country’s disastrous record on climate change. The United States has no office on climate change, let alone a special envoy to help developing countries cope with the unfolding catastrophe. While Britain and the E.U. were formulating targets to cut greenhouse emissions in the early 2000s, the Bush administration was busy censoring climate scientists whose work shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are largely due to human activity.

Obama may be promising to create green jobs in the U.S., but he’s inherited a country some of whose citizens are still deeply skeptical of the science of climate change.  Many more are apathetic on the issue and believe that it’s largely media hype. In fact, a recent Gallop poll showed that 41 percent of those polled believe the media “greatly exaggerates” the seriousness of global warming, up from 35% in 2008 and 30% in 2007.

The message that climate change is accelerating and growing more serious seems to be lost on many Americans.

Despite these figures, it is imperative that President Obama and his staff move forward with addressing the real threats that climate change poses to the U.S. and the world.

He could start by addressing the nation on the issue, as Jeremy Hance advocated yesterday on Mongabay. Creating an office on climate change would be a logical next step. Most importantly, notes Denmark’s climate change minister, Obama must pass climate change laws ahead of the Copenhagen summit in December. Doing so would set an example to developing nations that would pave the road for success at Cophenhagen — progress that is imperative for humanity’s survival.

If that were to happen, this expat would begin to feel proud to be an American in Lima.

–Barbara R. Drake

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image courtesy L.A. Times blog

Word has been out for a while that dwindling meltwater from Peru’s tropical glaciers will lead to dire water shortages in 40 years unless radical measures are taken to find and conserve new sources. Most of the water used along Peru’s coastal region, including Lima, originates in the glaciers of the Andes, which are receding due to rapid climate change.

Climate patterns in the southern hemisphere, however, don’t worry most U.S. citizens, who mistakenly believe that their own lives will be minimally impacted by climate change. 

Changes are coming sooner than they think.

In his first interview, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu is predicting the end of California agriculture and the onset of catastrophic drought in California by the year 2100 unless measures are taken, reports the action group Stop Global Warming:

As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation’s leading agricultural producer. In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.”

“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” Chu said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” And, he added, “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going either.”

Read the entire interview with Chu.

I’m gratified that Chu is putting climate change at the top of the country’s list of priorities.  Perhaps now the United States will join the rest of the developed world and take action against this national and global threat. It starts with citizens accepting in their “gut,” as Chu says, that really bad events can and will unfold in their own environment.

California is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because much of it is desert irrigated by Sierra meltwater. In the worst case scenario, 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear by the end of the century, which would end farming in California and would imperil life in the cities as well.

While most Americans give little thought to their water supply, writer Joan Didion argues in her 1979 essay “Holy Water” that native Californians obsess over it:

Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive. The water I will draw tomorrow from my tap in Malibu is today crossing the Mojave Desert from the Colorado River, and I like to think about exactly where that water is. …As it happens my own reverence for water has always taken the form of this constant meditation upon where the water is, of an obsessive interest not in the politics of water but in the waterworks themselves, in the movement of water through aqueducts and siphons and pumps and forebays and afterbays and weirs and drains, in plumbing on the grand scale.

What once appeared to be the private obsessions of a brilliant writer are now emerging as the concerns of the entire U.S. nation.

California and coastal Peru. Two desert regions that hug the Pacific, are prone to earthquakes, and depend on the melting drip of mountain glaciers to the east.

Two regions that could die of thirst by the end of the century, unless (to quote the American poet Karl Shapiro) we find new ways to “flood the daylong valleys like the Nile.”

Here is the complete poem by Shapiro, “California Winter,” for those of you like poetry that is both hopeful and dark:

California Winter

It is winter in California, and outside
Is like the interior of a florist shop:
A chilled and moisture-laden crop
Of pink camellias lines the path; and what
Rare roses for a banquet or a bride,
So multitudinous that they seem a glut!

A line of snails crosses the golf-green lawn
From the rosebushes to the ivy bed;
An arsenic compound is distributed
For them. The gardener will rake up the shells
And leave in a corner of the patio
The little mound of empty shells, like skulls.

By noon the fog is burnt off by the sun
And the world’s immensest sky opens a page
For the exercise of a future age;
Now jet planes draw straight lines, parabolas,
And x’s, which the wind, before they’re done,
Erases leisurely or pulls to fuzz.

It is winter in the valley of the vine.
The vineyards crucified on stakes suggest
War cemeteries, but the fruit is pressed,
The redwood vats are brimming in the shed,
And on the sidings stand tank cars of wine,
For which bright juice a billion grapes have bled.

And skiers from the snow line driving home
Descend through almond orchards, olive farms.
Fig tree and palm tree – everything that warms
The imagination of the wintertime.
If the walls were older one would think of Rome:
If the land were stonier one would think of Spain.

But this land grows the oldest living things,
Trees that were young when Pharoahs ruled the world,
Trees whose new leaves are only just unfurled.
Beautiful they are not; they oppress the heart
With gigantism and with immortal wings;
And yet one feels the sumptuousness of this dirt.

It is raining in California, a straight rain
Cleaning the heavy oranges on the bough,
Filling the gardens till the gardens flow,
Shining the olives, tiling the gleaming tile,
Waxing the dark camellia leaves more green,
Flooding the daylong valleys like the Nile.

Karl Shapiro

 Links:

CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ON THE WATER RESOURCES FROM THE MOUNTAINS IN PERU
by Pierre Chevallier, Bernard Pouyaud and Wilson Suarez (Global Forum on Sustainable Development, Paris, Nov. 11-12, 2004)

Holy Water (1979), essay by Joan Didion

Quit Spewing Out Greenhouse Gases, America

Global Warming Claims Another Peruvian Glacier

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A 21-meter-tall high tide in Bristol, England? It’s projected to hit the city if the Greenland Ice Cap melts completely and no mitigation is put in motion, as this installation dramatizes

Following up on a link to yesterday’s post about climate-change denial among U.S. citizens, I discovered an intriguing blog about the arts and the environment.

RSA Arts & Ecology blog reports on an outdoor arts project in England that forces viewers to confront the future impacts of climate change on their own city:

Tomorrow evening at dusk Chris Bodle’s Watermarks Project comes to life in Bristol city centre. The artwork takes the conjectures about the effect of global warming on sea level rise and projects them onto various buildings around the city….

 What’s nice about Bodle’s project is that it has absorbed the uncertainty of the effects of climate change. Though science is broadly in agreement about the fact of man-made global warming…how much and how quickly levels are going to ascend is the subject of much debate. The Watermarks Project turns the varying projections into, well, projections. Pictured above is a visualisation of where sea levels would be in the worst-case-scenario of the total Greenland icecap melt; the speed of that melt and the mechanism by which the ice is projected to disappear is one of the most hotly debated issues in climate change. 

(Read full blog post here.)

As Arts & Ecology mentions, Bodle is among a growing group of artists worldwide who are using their visual talents to help the rest of us imagine what our immediate environment would look like if no efforts are taken to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Such projects are necessary in temperate regions where the effects of climate change aren’t being felt as directly yet as they are in Africa, Asia and the Andes. (You don’t need to dramatize the future impacts of climate change in the Andes, where glaciers are melting in front of everyone’s eyes, GLOFs are washing away farmers’ crops, and rural people are going hungry.)

I wish some artists in Florida would take a cue and start creating installations to show the worst-case-scenerio waterlines for coastal areas there. That effort might make more of an impact than the Florida sea-level-rise maps issued by NRDC, which scare the pants off experts but which seem abstract to most ordinary people.

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The napkin is my witness: Notes from my Dec. 20 conversation about climate change with reporter Jim DeFede

Reporter Jim DeFede and I were office buddies at Miami New Times back in the mid-90s.  He sat in his tiny cubicle, digging up dirt on crooked politicians and fending off threats from the angry subjects of his no-holds-barred exposés. 

I sat a few seats behind DeFede at the copy editing desk, tidying up commas and occasionally contributing a feature story on something offbeat, like full-moon drumming circles on South Beach.

We were two very different writers; he was a hard facts, investigative guy who’d risk anything to expose corruption in high places. I was a cultural critic and short story writer without a muckraking bone in my body. 

Besides being a fierce reporter, DeFede is blunt, funny and opinionated — qualities that enabled him several years ago to reinvent himself as a South Florida television TV news reporter and a talk-radio host.

I hadn’t seen him for years when we bumped into each other in December at a Christmas party for the Miami Herald.

He was still the same old DeFede: big, sarcastic and sharp as a whip. I figured he’d be interested in my recent focus as a writer – investigating melting glaciers and climate change in the Andes. Granted, my getting the scoop on ukukus as Qoyllur Rit’i isn’t as juicy as his catching Miami-Dade politicos red-handed.

Still, I expected my friend to be concerned about climate change. After all, he lives in South Florida where rising temperatures in the Atlantic are predicted to create larger and longer-lasting storms throughout this century.  And then there’s the nasty business of Florida’s already-eroding shoreline, which will be in bigger trouble as Arctic ice melts and feeds more water into the oceans. Talk about a major story.

But the topic made his eyes glaze over.

“Oh, that,” he said.

NRDC map showing predicted impacts of climate change on Florida (click on image to enlarge)

“You don’t believe in climate change?” I asked quickly, my Denier Radar on alert.

“Of course, I do. But, look, it’s not something that’s going to affect me now or in my lifetime. So why should I care?”

“What about rising sea waters?” 

“Hah! Hah!” he barked into my face. “You tell me when the sea level is going to rise? When? Huh?” DeFede was shouting at me — all 300-plus pounds of him — over the raucous bar music in the other room.

Through an archway I caught a glimpse of Dave Barry and other Herald staffers doing a cramped version of the Twist.

“In five years?” he continued. “Fifty? A hundred?”

“They are rising and they will rise more, Jim.” I was trying to fight two contradictory urges — one to laugh, the other to smack him.

“Tell me when.”

“Scientists can’t say exactly when. Definitely by the end of the century.”

“So what? I’ll be dead by then!”

I got out a napkin. “I’m writing this down. I want it on record that today, December 20, 2008, Jim DeFede laughed in my face when I said sea levels in Florida could rise in his lifetime.” (See photo above.)

“You wait,” I said, waving the napkin threateningly. ”The sea level is going to become a problem in Florida faster than you think, and then you’ll realize that I was right and you were wrong and there.”

“Hah” he said one last time.

Then he started talking to El Fotografo about the weird stout beer that EF had ordered that tasted like sewer water.

So much for my attempts to rouse a Miami reporter’s interests in the future effects of climate change on his environment.

That encounter forced me to admit an uncomfortable truth: Most Americans do not care about climate change and do not believe it will affect them. My friend is smart and engaged –  no, make that embroiled in current events. If someone like him thinks global warming is unimportant, what about the millions of uninformed people in the United States? How is the current Administration going to press upon them the importance of the issue, let alone coerce them into changing their lifestyles to reduce emissions? 

Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson told me last year that people only tend to respond to a crisis when it’s in their backyard. He’s got a point. The psychological mechanisms of denial and procrastination are strong in our species. In the case of global climate change, however, the scale of the problem is so huge and catastrophic, we cannot afford to wait until the flood tides are lapping at our front doorstep. Mitigation has to start now.

And it’s up to reporters, bloggers and informed people to stay on message and reiterate the obvious:

The coastline of Florida will be transformed by 2100 due to the effects of climate change. And if we do not start caring about and addressing the problem now, our generation will be remembered as The Jerks Who Stood By and Did Nothing.

Are you still with me? Here’s some useful reading material to bone up on the facts:

1. Less than two months ago, it was announced that climate change was going to impact the United States harder and sooner than previously predicted: 

A recent report released by the U.S. Geological Survey paints abrupt climactic shifts, including a more rapid climate change with global sea level increases of up to four feet by the year 2100 and arid climatic shifts in the North American Southwest by mid-century.

Previous estimates anticipated a global sea level rise of 1.5 feet by the end of the century. The current survey, commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, estimated that the compounding effects of the loss of Arctic Sea ice will more than double previous projections by the end of the century. (See “American Shores Face Threat of Rising Sea Levels,” AP, Dec. 26, 2008)

2. A new report by the EPA concludes that Florida and Louisiana are the U.S. states most vulnerable to sea-level rise.

3.  A 2001 report by the National Resources Defense Council lists some of the threats global warming poses for Florida’s people and resources by 2100, including:

• As glaciers melt and warming waters expand, sea levels will rise anywhere from eight inches to two-and-a-half feet over the next century. In Florida, seawater will advance inland as much as 400 feet in low-lying areas, flooding shoreline homes and hotels, limiting future development, and eroding the state’s beloved beaches.
• As salt water encroaches inland, freshwater supplies feeding Florida’s cities, agriculture, and tourist centers will be at risk of saltwater contamination.
• Saltwater encroachment will also likely inundate coastal wetlands, gravely threatening the lower Everglades and its wildlife.
• Tourism will likely suffer. Sea level rise, climbing temperatures, and alterations in rainfall will combine to damage beaches, the Everglades, coral reefs and other unique ecosystems that make Florida such an appealing tourist destination.
• Global warming will pose specific health threats to Florida’s citizens, likely increasing the incidence of heat-related illness, exacerbating poor air quality, and perhaps even making it easier for infectious diseases to spread. Florida’s seniors will be particularly susceptible to these effects.

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