Cold, cold heart

E: The Environmental Magazine, March-April, 2005 by Francesca Rheannon

Recent headlines tell us that the Inuit, indigenous peoples of the Arctic, are bringing legal claim against the United States for violating their human rights. The reason: by being a major contributor to global warming, the U.S. is threatening the basis of their survival. Writer Gretel Ehrlich, whose book This Cold Heaven chronicles her travels with the Inuit of Greenland, understands well the impact of climate change on those who depend on the Arctic ecosystem.

In her new book, The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold (Pantheon Books, $21.95), she widens her lens to take in the implications--physical, psychological and spiritual--for all of us if the ice disappears. She goes in search of winter and what's happening to it, traveling to the Antarctic tip of South America, back up to Wyoming's high country and finally to a research vessel testing the sea ice of the Arctic Circle. Ehrlich explores "silla" the Inuit idea that weather and human consciousness are bound up together. Her writing itself reflects this concept: objective fact and subjective experience are woven together with lyrical descriptions of place, scientific information and spiritual reflection. In The Future of Ice, Ehrlich gives us a reason to celebrate the beauty of winter and to act to save it.