The Arctic is melting. Everybody knows this, on some level. And everybody has some way of rationalizing that concept to themselves, whether or not it is the scientifically correct rationalization. ‘It is because of global warming’ would be the most basic and perhaps common response. ‘It is melting because of global warming, which is caused by pollution pumped out by human civilization’ would be more accurate, though less common. ‘It is because of natural warm cycles’ or ‘It is because of sunspots’ or something like that would also turn up if you were to do a survey.The point is that we engage this concept with a pile of words and maybe polar bears. We do not know anyone who lives in the Arctic, nor do we know anyone who is immediately impacted by the fact that it is melting. We do not relate to the melting Arctic with our guts, we do not feel it go.Perhaps ‘Chasing Ice’ will punch us in the guts again:These images are stirring enough to command the attention of the layman, the collapsing ice shelfs, the great melt, the pervasive danger. They are stirring enough to be picked up by social media outlets and shared for altogether non-film-promo-related purposes. “If this isn’t visual evidence of climate change, I don’t know what is,” bloggers can write, and share the video.The last time climate change really landed a good gutshot was in 2006, when Al Gore manned an elevated platform and stoked the ire of your conservative uncle.Now the Arctic is melting faster than ever. Its most productive glacier is an entire Manhattan-sized chunk smaller than it was in 2000. The Arctic may see ice-free summers in just 20 years. But those words are mostly useless. Climate change needs more sucker punches. We need it beaten into us; our addictive industrial habits are changing the world more radically than we can wrap our minds around. We’re doing this. We’re melting frozen titans that have no business melting. We need to feel like we need to stop.
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