The disintegration last Sunday of a 40-kilometre ice bridge connecting the Wilkins Ice Shelf to the Antarctic Peninsula is another stark indicator of the threat posed by climate change. A satellite picture from the European Space Agency (ESA) shows that a 40 km long strip of ice holding the Wilkins in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 meters wide.
The Wilkins shelf, which is the size of Jamaica, has been retreating since the 1990s. It is one of many Antarctic ice shelves that have begun to break up over the past few decades and it is part of the Antarctic Peninsula, which has seen some of the most dramatic temperature increases in the area – up to 3 degrees, according to Elaine Baker of UNEP GRID-Arendal’s Shelf Programme.
Corprorate pressure and Political ignorance.
As the record demonstrates, this potential catastrophe has been known about for some time, but action to avert it has been blocked by governments acting on behalf of powerful corporate interests.
The European powers have no solution to climate change. Their policies centre on using the “free market” that created the crisis. Carbon trading—a scheme which makes industrial pollution a tradeable commodity—has developed as a vast racket, with the European Emissions Trading Scheme enriching various carbon trading speculators, hedge fund operators and investment bankers. Major corporate polluters have also reaped enormous profits through free handouts of carbon credits, while ordinary people have been hit with substantially higher energy and transport costs.
Sources and further reading:
Antarctic ice shelf at risk of collapse
Antarctic ice shelf collapse: climate change and capitalism
VIDEO: Ice shelf brink of collapse
Giant mass of Antarctic ice ‘set for collapse’
UNEP: Collapse of Ice Bridge puts Antarctic ice shelf in peril
Warnings: Global Warming Causes Ice Shelf to Collapse Quicker (2008)
Related articles: