Elizabeth Rush on her epic journey to Earth's 'doomsday glacier'

In her latest book, The Quickening, the Pulitzer Prize finalist embarked on an epic odyssey to one of the most important – and least-explored – places in the world.

In 2019, 57 scientists and crew embarked on a 54-day journey to the farthest reaches of Antarctica. Their mission: Thwaites Glacier, a rapidly crumbling block of ice the size of Britain melting so fast it's known as the world's "doomsday glacier". 

Thwaites is currently disappearing eight times as fast as it was in the 1990s, dumping 80 billion tonnes of ice into the ocean every year and accounting for 4% of the planet's annual sea level rise. Because of its colossal size and alarming collapse, this remote ice cap is not only considered one of the scariest places on Earth, but also one of the most important: the frozen ground zero in the global fight against climate change. Were Thwaites to completely melt, it could raise sea levels by 10ft or more, triggering "spine-chilling" global implications.

But a new study published this week suggests that the the so-called doomsday glacier may not be disappearing as quickly as had once been feared – though it is still rapidly vanishing. Instead of the glacier's ice cliffs soon collapsing into the ocean like a row of dominoes, the new study offers a somewhat more hopeful – if still dire – timeline of its disappearance. "What we are seeing with Thwaites Glacier right now is a disaster in slow motion," polar scientist Mathieu Morlighem, who led the study, told The Conversation. 

One of the people who participated in the once-in-a-lifetime journey to Thwaites in 2019 was Elizabeth Rush, whose vivid, poetic book about climate change, Rising, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Rush's latest book, The Quickening, chronicles this historic voyage to Thwaites' calving edge – a frigid, far-flung place never-before visited by humans.

Rush sat down with BBC Travel to discuss her Antarctic odyssey, how it changed her perception of the world and the ethics around travelling to some of the Earth's most fragile ecosystems.

Where is Thwaites glacier and how did you first hear about this expedition? 

Thwaites Glacier is this really enigmatic place in Antarctica. It's in the far reaches of the Amundsen Sea. It was a four-day journey to the nearest research base. When I signed up to be part of this mission, my programme officer said to me, "You know, it's easier for us to get help to folks working on the space station than it is just to get help to you guys if you have trouble." There's concern that Thwaites is entering a rapid period of collapse, but the reality is that no one had ever been to [its calving edge]. 

I applied to be part of the mission through the Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. They send usually two writers or artists per year to Antarctica, and I put together a 60-page application. There was a paragraph-long footnote to my application that was like: "I write about sea level rise. I want to go to these different places in Antarctica and see the sort of sea level rise firsthand." I was very lucky I was given the last berth on this ice-breaking vessel. 

What kind of global effects would it have if sea levels were to rise 10ft or more? 

Well, the speed with which it happens makes a tremendous difference. So, 10ft over two centuries is really different than 10ft over 40 years. The concern is really what do human beings do about it? 

I'm a huge proponent of managed retreat, which is having a government entity intervene in low-lying areas and essentially purchase flood-prone homes for pre-flooding value, giving the folks who live there the opportunity to take that money and move up and in with it. 

New York City has already done some managed retreat on Staten Island. The state intervened and they purchased and demolished over 500 homes on Staten Island. Eighty percent of those residents were able to take the money that they were given for their home and move elsewhere on Staten Island. We sometimes think that managed retreat is like fracturing communities, and that's not necessarily how it plays out. 

So, sea level rise is not catastrophic if we prepare for it – and that's a big if.

Why do you think that you were one of the people chosen to be part of this expedition? 

In the application, I wrote about how I would write a book that would have my narration as the main thrust but would include the voices of scientists and crew working in these places. The goal was to build a kind of polyphonic chorus to subtly shift who we think of as the narrator of Antarctic stories. 

The first person to see Antarctica saw it, like, 200 years ago, and in this very short window of time, we've told a very narrow story about Antarctica – one that has a lot to do with human conquest and human beings overcoming incredible odds to do the unthinkable. Often those human beings are white men from the global north. All the stories about Antarctica sort of sound the same. I wanted to create a story about Antarctica that was much more democratic. From the get-go, I knew I was going to interview the cooks, the engineers, the Antarctic support staff on board. I think that that played a significant role in getting the application selected because, it was like, I'm going to talk about the science, but I'm going to do it in a way that challenges some of the dominant narratives we tell about Antarctica. 

Are there any stories that stuck with you about how this epic voyage changed the way travellers not normally included in the Antarctica narrative see the world? 

I remember talking to a guy named Jack who was a cook on the vessel. He's from New Orleans, and he signed up to be a cook on this expedition to help better take care of his grandfather financially. His grandfather died a couple weeks before we were to set sail and Jack still came. He had never been on a plane. He went on three different flights to get from New Orleans to Punta Arenas, [Chile], where we set sail. He'd never been on a ship. He'd never seen penguins. And even coming from New Orleans, he had never thought super-seriously about sea level rise. This whole experience was full of firsts for him. 

Having the time to ponder the future of climate change can be a thing that folks do who are not trying to put food on the table every single day. But when he saw Thwaites, I remember him being like, 'Oh, I get it.' The glacier itself, when we arrived, it looked like arriving at The Wall in Game of Thrones. It was so big. It took us three weeks to get there. You feel like you're as far away from human beings as you possibly can be. And to imagine that our actions so far away are literally causing this epic wall to fall apart, it gives you goosebumps.

There's an ongoing debate about the kinds of places we should and shouldn't visit on Earth. One thought is to leave these hard-to-reach, fragile ecosystems alone. Another view is that witnessing their fragility up close leads people to care more deeply about them. What places, if any, do you think we shouldn't visit? 

It's a great question, and I can only answer it from a really personal level. When we crossed back over the Southern Ocean, I knew I would never go back [to Antarctica]. I knew that my going was a one-time thing and that it made sense in the context of me coming back and working for five years to write a book about the expedition. Without that deeper meaning or impulse behind the trip, I wouldn't feel right making it. 

I can say strongly that in the context of casual tourism, I don't think we should go to Antarctica. I don't think that cruise ships should go there. I don't think that casual tourism to these places that feel "untouched" or remote should be a thing that accelerates. But there's some part of me that wrestles a little bit at the distinction between remote and closed, or untouched and touched. At this point, Antarctica is touched by us, the Amazon is touched by us, even if we like to think of them as these mythical, untouched places. 

I think in general, yes, we see something and we care more about it. The older I get, the more I'm trying to turn that curiosity closer to home. I can walk around my neighbourhood with my three-year-old and see all these amazing butterfly bushes and mini ecosystems in my neighbour's yards. And I think that we can also treat those places with the same kind of wonder and enchantment that we might treat Antarctica or the Amazon.

What are some things anyone taking a trip to Antarctica should know? 

The first person to see Antarctica saw it just over 200 years ago. This is a place so powerful it literally held humans at arm's length for the overwhelming majority of human history. There is no other place on the planet like that. Every other place you go has indigenous stories rising up out of it for thousands of years. This is the only place on the planet where there is none of that. And so, I think it demands a certain amount of respect and awareness that it is like an agent in its own right. 

To be able to get close to it is so rare and so new in the history of the planet. So, if you're going to go there, I want you to go there with that awareness of just how extraordinary what you're doing is and just how powerful a place Antarctica is that you're visiting. 

How did seeing this massive glacier slowly melt away affect you? 

The day we arrived at Thwaites glacier, it was really calm and our captain sailed us all along the calving front of the glacier. That was a spectacular day. Then the switch flipped, and we started working our butts off for six days: throwing sediment cores [samples from beneath the seafloor that reveal the Earth's past geology and climate] over the sides, tagging elephant seals, sending submarines under the glacier. Every day, the ice looked different. 

On the seventh day, I woke up, went to the bridge and there were way more icebergs than before, but I didn't register it as strange and went about my work. Then, just after lunch, the chief scientist on board was looking at these two satellite images: one was Thwaites in which it was a solid ice sheet, and in the next image, it looked like an angry God had taken a hammer to the glacier and broken it into 300 icebergs. We're talking about an area of the glacier that's like maybe 15 miles wide by 10 miles deep. The first image was taken on the day we arrived, and the second image was taken on that seventh morning. [The chief scientist] looked at it and said, "Oh my God, Thwaites has entered a period of rapid collapse. This is happening right in front of us." He sent that information up to the captain and the decision was made to leave the study area immediately.

The thing that was so shocking to me was that this collapse event could literally be happening in front of my eyes and I wouldn't know it. It was so big I missed it, which is humbling. If you can't see a glacier fall to pieces in front of you, then that means that the phenomenon is way bigger than you initially imagined and that your perspective is the wrong perspective to see it. I think that's an excellent metaphor for climate change. It's really hard for humans to see it. 

How does going to the farthest reaches of the Earth change your view of humanity? 

It was so otherworldly. It does make me feel how precious and miraculous it is that we exist. I felt like it was close to touching down on another planet, and to see how difficult it would be to eke out a human existence on another planet makes me really grateful for ours; and also, just really aware of what happens in Antarctica doesn't stay in Antarctica. The Antarctic circumpolar current that swirls around Antarctica is the piston in the pump that drives worldwide ocean circulation patterns. We're starting to change that current. As we're changing that current, we're changing global ocean patterns all over the world. This sense that we live in a big, interconnected web of ecosystems definitely grew with seeing Antarctica and spending so much time there. 

After this latest project how do you feel about the future? 

Having a child for me was an act of wilful optimism about the future. And now that my child is here, I do think that things will probably be worse in his lifetime than I've probably fully dealt with as I thought about bringing him onto this planet. That doesn't change my decision, but it does make me feel and get more serious about having a meaningful impact in my lifetime. 

It also makes me feel much more committed to teaching him things like how to live through uncomfortable situations and moments of big change, because I think those are coming. I think it's even more important to teach him how to work with other people and create partnerships and allegiances with other people. So, as much as I think he has to be resilient and adaptable, he also has to be part of a human community that will take care of him, and hopefully, that he will take care of.

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