Visitors to Antarctica are often awed and humbled by its size, and its extreme climate. But it also caused the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt to reflect on the human ability to solve problems together – and to feel hope for the future.
We take off from a glacier near McMurdo, the main US research centre in Antarctica, heading for the middle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
After an hour all you can see out of the small circular window is ice stretching to the far horizon.
An hour later, the same.
The following hour, no change…
You get the picture.
We finally land after three-and-a-half hours in the air.
The nearest human habitation – the US scientific base we flew from – is now as far from us as Moscow is from London… and there is only ice in between.
The sheer size of the ice sheet makes it almost impossible for visitors not to reflect on the insignificance of an individual human being.
“It makes you feel so small,” is what everyone says.
But dig a bit deeper and you discover most people don’t mean they feel a sense of threat; Antarctica doesn’t belittle you.
In fact, lots of people find there is something reassuring about being in the presence of something so much bigger and stronger than they are.
Gabrielle Walker, the author of my favourite book about Antarctica, writes about this.
We all like to think we are important, she says. But that feeling brings a certain responsibility: if you are important you’ve got something to prove.
“Here you have nothing to prove because you can only submit,” says Gabrielle.
You can’t feel important in this vast place.
And if you aren’t important then things become a lot simpler.
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Antarctica gives you the freedom to ask yourself the questions that really matter, she says.
What is important to me?
What should I be doing with my life?
Who do I really miss while I am here and why?
And who misses me?
Lots of people are probably asking similar questions as they hunker down at home in the face of the threat of the coronavirus.
But, when I finally get to the front of the enormous glacier that the scientists I’m accompanying are here to study, that sense of insignificance dissolves.
It feels like I’ve reached the front line of climate change: the place where the equilibrium that has held our world in balance for tens of thousands of years is beginning to slip and crash.
It is impossible to mistake the epic forces at work here.
It is like a scream of anguish caught in the single frame of a photograph.
The glacier is being torn and shattered.
In places the ice is almost a mile high and is collapsing into the sea at a rate of three miles a year along a front more than 100 miles long… and the whole process is accelerating.
Needless to say, this acceleration – which is affecting the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet – is the result of the global warming gases our lifestyles produce.
It explodes the impression that the ice here is overwhelming.
In fact, the opposite is true, we are overwhelming the ice.
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A colleague interviews me for a programme we are making and I burst into tears.
It takes me days to process my emotions.
I think about the chain of people who have made this expedition possible: the pilots and aircrew, the people back at the research station who sift the rubbish and cook the meals, the men and women who drive the trucks and groom the ice runways.
We wouldn’t be here without them.
Or the people who agreed the project and signed the cheques.
Or the people who paid their taxes, raising the money in the first place.
Or, for that matter, my wife looking after the kids back home.
Our small team has only been able reach the front of this glacier because of a huge human enterprise.
It is only by coming together as a community that we can reach remote places like this and only by coming to places like this can we can understand what is happening to our world and what it is likely to mean for us all.
And, of course, it is only by coming together as a community that we can cut the emissions causing global warming.
I’m flying back to the research station at McMurdo when I feel a stir of something I haven’t felt for a while – hope.
It is sometimes claimed that greed, violence and conflict are the key features of humanity, but that is wrong.
The defining human characteristic throughout history is actually our ability to co-operate.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
