Remembering the Glaciers

This week in Paris is the last chance for any kind of international agreement to do anything at all that to reduce the effects of global warming. There may be other conferences, later: but by then the topic of the conversation could be "it's too late". Today it's probably already too late to stay in that 2C zone, but it's not too late to try.



I do not have any faith in my own country's politicians, given their actions this year:

1. Essentially banning on-shore windmills through tightening planning permissions and allowing central government to block any proposals.
2. Encouraging fracking through tax breaks and changing planning permissions to allow central government to approve any proposals.
3. Extending the tax on carbon-generated electricity to —wait for it— renewable energy sources.
4. Recently: killing Carbon Capture and Sequestration funding, despite it being the historic excuse for not needing to move away from coal and gas power, "CCS will handle it"

 +more. It's not a good thing to say that the Chinese government is now clearly more forward thinking on CO2 and other environmental issues of its populace than a European democracy.

For the week then; a photograph of a glacier a day. If the politicians —including our own— don't act, photographs will be all future inheritors of the planet will have of them.

Today: snow and ice above Zermatt, Switzerland, in winter 1991; skiing nearby. Not sure of the peak, but as Zermatt would be to the right of this frame (we were staying on the eastern side of the valley; this is looking south) —this could be part of the Monte Rosa group.

B&W negatives (Ilford, presumably), on compact 35mm camera, manual D&P with this image being zoomed in on part of the frame, burned in sky manually. Pre photoshop, you used you have to wave bits of cardboard above the print to get the sky dark enough.