As the Pagodas Fall
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Tibet’s Kyetrak Glacier in 1921 and 2009 Photo: E.O. Wheeler and David Breashears
On exhibit now at New York’s Asia Society are a collection of then-and-now photographs documenting shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas. The pictures, backed up by laser rangefinders, reveal a startling contrast between conditions 90 years ago and today, with the ice coverage having retreated by hundreds of feet, the equivalent of a 40-story building in some cases.
Yesterday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported on Orville Schell, who runs the Asia Society’s China programs. Approaching the Mingyong Glacier on the Tibetan plateau recently, Schell passed a series of ancient pagodas. As the glaciers shift, the pagodas-as-viewing-platforms have to be rebuilt. Kristof writes of the glacier that “this monumental, almost eternal force of nature seemed mortally wounded.”
Human nature doesn’t readily understand and adapt to global warming because it happens too gradually to become a visceral, visible part of our daily lives, which would explain why 71 percent of ARCHITECT’s readers, according to a survey last fall, say they know design professionals who think global warming is a myth and 13 percent say they themselves believe so. (A recent comment on one of my blogs: “If you believe in man-made global warming, you do not have functioning brain.”)
Maybe the image of toppling pagodas is sufficiently powerful to cause some architects to reassess.