Two outdoor goods retailers, Blacks and Berghaus, have teamed up to produce a new documentary focusing on the impact Iceland’s melting glaciers have on the environment.
The production tracks eco-journalist Sarah Roberts’ trip to north European nation Iceland in search of solutions to the escalating global climate emergency.
Dubbed ‘Iceland’s Green Machine’, the documentary details Roberts’ visit to the Vatnajökull Glacier, where she learns it is nearing the end of its life. Over the course of the 26-minute film, the team understand that over the equivalent of a 20-foot shipping container full of ice melts every second at this location.
One glacier disappeared completely in 2019, and there are concerns from environmentalists that all of Iceland’s glaciers could disappear in the next 200 years, which they say will have a devastating effect on the oceans’ currents.
Exactly how the ongoing melt will damage the global ocean conveyer belt, which carries nutrients around the planet and allows wildlife to thrive, is unknown. But whale expert, Sabrina Voswinkel, highlights on the film how humpback whales frequenting the nearby waters are not finding food as easily due to the changing conditions.
Marketing director at Blacks, Carly Czuba, commented: “We feel like it’s so important to highlight the real time effects that the climate emergency is having in Iceland right now.
“We wanted to show our customers the hard-hitting truths but also educate them on the solutions being worked on.”
She added: “We hope that viewers can see that together, we do have the power to create the change that’s needed and ensure our beautiful outdoors is safe to enjoy for generations to come.”
The Blacks and Berghaus-backed documentary will claim that human behaviour in removing permanently stored carbon from the earth to burn and create fossil fuels, is having a negative impact on the natural world.
A pilot project run by Carbfix at Hellisheiði Geothermic Power Plant is featured in the film, showing the potential positive impact of carbon capture processes. By capturing and storing carbon from our atmosphere and inserting it into Basalt Rock – something which Iceland has an abundance of – experts see an opportunity to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.
Kari Helgason, a representative from CarbFix, said a widespread change in attitudes and behaviours around the world is required to help reverse the climate crisis.
“If you take any one solution and you work out the numbers, it’s not enough,” he noted.
“We need to do everything in parallel. Educate, change our behaviours, reduce our emissions, transform our economies, transition to renewable energy, do carbon capture and storage, plant trees – everything must work out.”
Helgason added: “The solutions are there. We need to accept that this is a big problem and we need to make it our first priority, if we do that, we can solve climate change.”
[Image and documentary by Dan Abbott]
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