What would you do to bring attention to the climate crisis? While many of us may go on marches or change our travel or purchasing habits, Lewis Pugh has a rather unique way of publicising the destruction we are doing to the planet. The South African became the first person to complete a multi-day swim in the Polar Regions when he swam across the mouth of Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord in September, a total of 7.8km in 14 grueling sessions over two days.
The Ilulissat Glacier, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is situated on the west coast of Greenland, 250km above the Arctic Circle and is one of the natural wonders of the world. It’s also one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, moving around 40 metres per day. When the ice reaches the sea, chunks of it ‘calve’ off and form icebergs, which can float hundreds of miles away. Indeed, the iceberg that sank the Titanic came from Ilulissat, and the area has been studied for more than 250 years.
Yet it has never been more under threat. Due to the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, the glacier is melting at an ever accelerating pace. And while the glacier may be deep in the Arctic Circle, the effects of its melting would be catastrophic: if the entire Greenland Ice Sheet were to melt, it would result in a global sea level rise of more than seven metres.
Pugh decided that the best way to bring attention to this was to do something that was never done before: swim the mouth of the Icefjord. While 7.8km long, the route was tricky, dotted with icebergs and floating ice fragments which clog the mouth of the fjord. There was also the small matter of the temperature: the water was near freezing and the wind chill plummeted deep into negative numbers.
“These type of swims take a huge amount of preparation,” Pugh said on stage at the Climate Action Hub. “This swim took a year to prepare for. The first stage of preparation is getting my body physically ready, while the second stage is cold water training. After all that, I take off my clothes and stand at the edge of the water and it takes a lot of focus to remember what I am doing there. Purpose will get you in the water, but it won’t keep you there.”
The water off the coast of Greenland is so cold that it is only possible to swim in it for short periods at a time. “You have to get in and swim as fast as possible for ten minutes, then get out, warm up and do it again,” Pugh says. That takes a level of decisiveness that Pugh does not see in today’s world leaders. “There’s power in making up your mind and doing something. I don’t see that with the world leaders at COP26; I don’t see them doing whatever it takes, whatever the cost.”
Pugh of course, is no stranger to challenges, and has been described as the “Sir Edmund Hillary of swimming,” which is not entirely surprising given he is the first person to swim around the lowest point in Africa, the first person to swim across the North Pole, and the first person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean in the world.
Yet Pugh is not taking on these challenges for kicks; he wants to bring awareness to the natural beauty in these places as well as the devastating impact the climate crisis is having on
them. Indeed, listen to him talk about his experiences in Ross Island, where he swam from a beach filled with Emperor Penguins, and it’s hard not to be transported to the same rocky shore, and be filled with a desire to protect it.
Stories make us feel something in a way that raw data never will, and Pugh hopes his stories will push others into taking action. One of the most visceral stories Pugh tells on stage is of a swim on Deception Island in the Antarctica. “We sailed into the island’s horseshoe-shaped bay and I wanted to swim across it,” Pugh says. “I dived in and started swimming and saw hundreds of whale bones piled up from the seabed almost to the surface and realised I was swimming through a whale graveyard, as the whalers would have trapped the whales and killed them there. First we came for the whales and the seals, and now it’s the krill and we never learn our lesson.”
Whether the global leaders who descended on Glasgow have learned their lesson remains to be seen. Pugh is clear on what needs to be done. “We can’t have a COP filled with long-term commitments and dialogue. Those are all important, but we need this to be a COP where real action was taken and one where politicians cannot keep kicking the can down the road.”