The view from the top isn’t pretty
Abram is blessed “by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth,” we are told in this Sunday’s first reading. This week marks the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Mt. Everest . . .
Abram is blessed “by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth,” we are told in this Sunday’s first reading. This week marks the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Mt. Everest, the world’s highest peak. But in the decades since (later Sir) Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first ascended Everest, the high-altitude landscape has changed dramatically, leaving the trail overcrowded and littered with refuse, critics complain.
We read in the gospel account of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes that “the leftover fragments were picked up,” but in the harsh subzero extremes of 29,000 feet that becomes more difficult. The crowds leave behind signs that they’ve been there: empty oxygen canisters, torn tents, and “pyramids of human excrement,” according to one observer.
Some 3,000 climbers have scaled the peak in the past half century, with several hundred people ascending each season. Deforestation was long an issue in areas where tourists cut down wood for warmth. (“They behave as though they are lords of the area,” complained Hillary 10 years ago.)
On a single day in 2012, more than 230 people reached the summit, where waits of more than two hours in the harsh, sub-zero climate on the last leg of the ascent have become dangerously commonplace. In short, if the first climbers could see Everest now, they would “not have been happy”—or so Norgay’s son said in a recent interview.
The damage from heavy traffic pales in comparison to the changes wrought to the landscape by global warming and the increase in carbon emissions, which researchers believe have shrunk Mt. Everest’s glaciers by 13 percent in the past 50 years and moved the snowline up more than nearly 600 feet.
That’s a serious problem, environmentalists warn, because those are the same glaciers that feed the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, which provide drinking water and irrigation to an estimated 1.5 billion people in some of the world’s most populous regions.
Both the Nepali government and a range of non-rofit groups, however, have signaled that they have plans for Everest’s recovery. Nepali officials are considering a limit on the number of climbers allowed on Everest, while an organization called Glacierworks has mobilized support for preserving the mountain’s glaciers.
Homily hint: The world’s glaciers serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine—they provide the earliest and most visible evidence that the earth is heating up. Encourage families to live as ecologically as possible so that the environmental footprint we leave behind won’t mar the landscape for those who travel this way after us.
Sources: Articles by Adam Rainear and Caitlin Dewey for the Washington Post