Earth perspectives, 8/9: The Earth view above Ecuador

9/9: The Earth view above the South Pole



At the centre of the Earth view above is the South Pole. The pole is at the heart of the virtually uninhabited continent of Antarctica, a vital ice-covered wildlife haven that is under threat from rapid warming and ice loss. This point on the map is, on one hand, a completely human construct that grants geographical importance to an otherwise featureless location on the globe. On the other hand, it was the presence of this pole in the mind’s eye that enabled early explorers to imagine Antarctica as a real place and travel there, and then for later generations to learn enough about it to know it urgently needs protecting. The pole is like a symbolic pin steadying a precarious landscape that is literally floating away as massive icebergs the size of small countries break off and drift into the ocean. Like the dot in the afterimage, the South Pole’s abstract point is a meeting place between the human mind and a profoundly real landscape that is so far away from us and yet so immediate to climate change. It is the human capacity to imagine the abstract, and to imagine the future, that will determine how the story will continue.