The author who
Jeremy Scahill calls the “quintessential unembedded reporter”
visits “hot spots” around the world in a global quest to discover
how we will cope with our planet’s changing ecosystems
After nearly a
decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr
Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering,
only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been
irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail
embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this
crisis—from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the
Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature
and to humans of the loss of ice.
In The End of Ice,
we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North
America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find
ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where
he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and
witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and
people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he
visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth,
most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him
to renew his passion for the planet’s wild places, cherishing Earth
in a way he has never been able to before.
Like no other book,
The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including
photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of
the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable
necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still
can.