On November 12, 2010, Cinema for Peace will hold a Green Evening in Berlin to promote Sebastian Copeland’s fascinating movie “Into the Cold” and at the same time showcase the power of moving pictures in raising awareness about environmental issues.

Accompanied by Orlando Bloom, Sebastian will be presented with an Honorary Award for the film.

The glacier here advances at rates of 40 meters per day

AM on the bay, basking in twenty four hour sun–no bathing suit though

Ilulissat, Greenland
Arriving in Ilulissat spells a very different Greenland experience than what we have had so far. It has paved roads, hotels, souvenir shops, and tour operators. And were it not for the multitude of sled dogs everywhere to remind us that this is still–at its core–a working Inuit town–Ilulissat would begin to feel like Niagara falls: a tourist destination. As well it would be: a Unesco certified World Heritage site, the icefjord of Ilulissat (which literally translates to “iceberg”) is one of the more arresting ice landscape anywhere in the world. Disko Bay which dominates it, is littered with the largest icebergs I have seen anywhere. The Ilulissat glacier is the most active in the northern hemisphere, advancing at speeds that are confounding, particularly as they have been exponentially growing. The accelerator here, as can be expected, is climate change. In 2001, the glacier moved at the rate of 20 meters a day. By 2004, that number had astoundingly increased to 40 meters per day. The cause is universally accepted to be warmer air and warmer water: the glacier loses in thickness, and the water erodes the base below the surface, precipitating the pour.

Thank you for keeping up with our expedition, it made it

Qaanaaq
First, I learned today that the spill in the gulf is still raging. It is a characteristic of being cut off for extended weeks that you tend to remake the world in your head. One thing I would never had imagined getting so wrong was seeing that oil still pouring out of its gash, at the rate of a million gallons a day; and the criminal consequences on the ecosystems and communities. It is devastating to witness so abhorrently a tragedy that was as predictable. I hope this lesson will be heeded once and for all: it is a dramatic cry for a commitment to a market transformation towards renewable energies. Our survival–quite literally–depends on it…
Tomorrow morning, we leave Qaanaaq–its bay of the sleeping giants, where icebergs feel trapped in time as much as space; its rolling ice fogs; its howling dogs; its colorful stock houses; and the arresting visual panorama which has been my view from the bedroom window for the last four days (a cross between Ice Age and The Day After Tomorrow!). And with that–I am compelled to say–comes the end of the entertainment portion of our program!
Eric and I are headed to Ilulissat, in transit back to our respective lives, which effectively puts an end to the expedition, and its Qaanaaq epilogue. I will spend a couple of days scouting the Disko Bay icefjord for more photos opportunity in view of my next book. The Ilulissat glacier is one of the most active in the northern hemisphere, spitting out enormous icebergs (some measure well over three hundred feet high–above the water line!) like a giant ice cube dispenser…