5.625 × 8.75 SPINE: 0.875 FLAPS: 3.5 E A R LY P R A I S E F O R THE END OF ICE SCIENCE/ENVIRONMENT $25.99 U.S. T “Jamail’s stories—of journey, expertise, and compassion—ensure that we H T H E E N D “A passionate, emotional ode to the can look at the world we inhabit with love. For many, this love will be E wonders of our dying planet and to accompanied by shame for our own failings and misguided triumphs over those who, hopelessly or not, dedicate the living beings, lands, waters, and ices we live among. I am grateful for E this gift of wonder and contemplation that Jamail has given us. This earth their lives to trying to save it.” was our first teacher, and though we haven’t listened well, we have time yet N —KIRKUS REVIEWS to hear its song.” D O F —Natalie Diaz A fter nearly a decade overseas as a , Native language activist, MacArthur “genius” war reporter, the acclaimed jour- grant winner, and author of the forthcoming Postcolonial Love Poem O nalist Dahr Jamail returned to F “ In a sane world The End of Ice would be the end of lame excuses that cli- America to renew his passion for mate change is too abstract to get worked up about. From the Arctic to mountaineering, only to find that the slopes I C E the Amazon, from doomed Miami to the Great Barrier Reef, Dahr Jamail I he had once climbed have been irrevocably DAHR JAMAIL, a reporter for brings every frontier in our ongoing calamity into close focus. The losses are changed by climate disruption. In response, Truthout, is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: tangible. And so is the grief. This is more than a good book. It is a wise one.” C Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographi- Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied —William deBuys, author of A Great Aridness cal front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Iraq, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight and The Last Unicorn Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon in Iraq and Afghanistan, and The Mass Destruction of E rain forest—in order to discover the conse- Iraq: Disintegration of a Nation (co-authored with “What a strange and compelling paradox this book offers: to fall in love with quences to nature and to humans. William Rivers Pitt). Jamail spent more than a year the Earth and all that we are losing, to let our hearts open to the deepest In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he reporting from Iraq, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, grief, and then trust that our grieving opens us to profound love. When scales Denali, the highest peak in North Amer- Jordan, and Turkey over the past fifteen years. Also D what we love is lost, our grief honors the loss and cracks open our hearts to BEARING WITNESS AND FINDING MEANING ica, dives in the warm crystal waters of the an accomplished mountaineer who has worked as live fully in the present moment which is joyous. Thank you, Dahr Jamail, A Coral Sea only to find bleached coral reefs, and a volunteer rescue ranger on Denali, he won the for this gift.” H IN THE PATH OF CLIMATE DISRUPTION explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and is a 2018 —Margaret Wheatley , author of Leadership meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the winner of the Izzy Award for excellence in indepen- R dent journalism. Jamail is also the recipient of the and the New Science and Who Do We Choose to Be? Bering Sea and witnesses its collapsing food James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, J D A H R J A M A I L web. Accompanied along the way by climate “Most of us know in our heads about rapid climate destabilization. The End the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and A scientists and people whose families for centu- of Ice asks us to feel the reality in our bodies. Dahr Jamail takes us to the five Project Censored Awards. ries have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas M places where denial of the effects of climate change is impossible—glaciers he visits, Jamail begins to accept the fact that and fishing communities, coastal cities and coral reefs, forests around the A Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. world—and reports not just on what is happening but how it feels to con- I Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion front this reality.” L for the planet’s wild places, cherishing Earth in —Robert Jensen , University of Texas at Austin a way he has never been able to before. School of Journalism, and author of Plain Radical Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a www.thenewpress.com firsthand chronicle of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of Jacket photograph by Camille Seaman relishing and caring for this vulnerable, fragile Jacket design by Christopher Brian King planet while we still can. Author photograph by John Fleming End of Ice_jacketb.indd 1 10/17/18 2:23 PM T H E E N D O F   I C E Also by Dahr Jamail Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan The Mass Destruction of Iraq: The Disintegration of a Nation (with William Rivers Pitt) T H E E N D O F   I C E BEARING WITNESS AND FINDING MEANING IN THE PATH OF CLIMATE DISRUPTION DAHR JAMAIL © 2019 by Dahr Jamail All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher. Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 120 Wall Street, 31st floor, New York, NY 10005. Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2019 Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution ISBN 978-1- 62097-234-2 (hc) ISBN 978-1- 62097-235-9 (ebook) CIP data is available. The New Press publishes books that promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of the issues vital to our democracy and to a more equitable world. These books are made possible by the enthusiasm of our readers; the support of a committed group of donors, large and small; the collaboration of our many partners in the independent media and the not-for- profit sector; booksellers, who often hand- sell New Press books; librarians; and above all by our authors. www .thenewpress .com Book design and composition by Bookbright Media This book was set in Sabon and Avenir Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated to the future generations of all species. Know that there were many of us who did what we could. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. —Wendell Berry Contents Introduction 1 1. Denali ...................................11 2. Time Becomes Unfrozen .....................27 3. The Canary in the Coal Mine .................53 4. Farewell Coral .............................75 5. The Coming Atlantis .......................101 6. The Fate of the Forests ......................133 7. The Fuses Are Lit ..........................157 8. The End at the Top of the World ..............181 Conclusion: Presence .........................209 Acknowledgments 227 Notes 231 Index 249