Thoughts on Helena Christensen's Blog

Helena Christensen's recent thoughts about the impact of the warming global climate on her mother country of Peru published in Huffington Post on Friday November 20 touched a nerve. I have climbed in years past in the Sierra Blanca range north of Lima, where each massif of lordly peaks must be acquired by traveling down a long half-pipe of a valley rimmed on the east by the glistening reflective white of the Sierra Blanca and on the west by the barren light-absorbent summits of the Sierra Negro. To climb the high peaks, it was necessary to ascend the abrupt 1000 ft wall on steep, switch backed roads to the floor of the 'quebrada', the narrow canyons within the cluster of high peaks formed like toboggan chutes aimed at the valley below. Even when I was climbing there 15 years ago, each quebrada held a reservoir of water contained only by an earthen dam formed from the glacial moraine. The size of the reservoir, and the consequent pressure upon the natural dam, corresponded to the rate of melt of the glacier that fed it. Even then, disastrous floods and mudslides into the valley below were not uncommon, including the burial of an entire town. Helena's words about the particular vulnerability of Peru's high altitude regions and the economic hardships the people must face ring true, and any climber can assure you of the rapid rate of snow and glacier melt on the high peaks of the Sierra Blanca by its impact on the 'classic' and long standing climbing routes which are no longer climbable or forever changed because of it. Helena waits with bated breath for an outcome from the global environmental climate conference in Copenhagen that few even remember is about to happen. And after the meeting we will probably go comfortably back to forgetting again, after a smaller than usual spate of dire predictions and concerns expressed in the media, increasingly hamstrung by the dying of newspapers. It is only human for us to do this, because the nature of the impending global disaster is such that suffering occurs not universally but regionally, such as in high altitude Peru or the desert regions of Africa or the tundras of Alaska. To the inhabitants of these regions, it is global disaster. To those of us inhabiting areas not yet impacted, it is a news bite. And unless gasoline disappears, or potable water can't be acquired, or our home is flooded, it is easy to assume the mantle of business as usual.