MELTDOWN
LIBRETTO: DAVID COTE & HAI-TING CHINN
MUSIC: STEFAN WEISMAN
MELTDOWN is a work of fiction inspired by conversations with Dr. Åsa K. Rennermalm and her lecture “Meltdown in the Arctic: A Perspective from the Greenland Ice Sheet.” The libretto was informed by documentaries such as Picture a Scientist and news stories about scientists whose lives have been endangered (or lost) on the Greenland ice sheet due to climate change. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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SCENE 1. MELTING
GLACIOLOGIST:
Good afternoon, everyone. Hi.
Is everyone comfortable?
Not too cold? Not too hot? Hm.
Sorry. Distracted. Thinking about Dr. Olivia Wells…
She was supposed to be here today.
You know, sometimes when I give a talk
about our work on glaciers,
my throat goes dry.
It will take five minutes for this ice cube to melt
in a glass of tap water.
Five minutes, more or less.
In that time, how many tons of ice
will we lose in Greenland?
Five million tons, more or less.
Five minutes. Five million tons.
Melting.
Glacier melt makes our work more dangerous.
Meltwater turns into rivers,
plunges down raging moulins,
creates a hidden crevasse.
Melting ice.
What if the entire ice sheet on Greenland melted?
In our field work on the Greenland ice sheet,
we drill ice cores.
What are ice cores?
Ice cores are time capsules of climate.
We read them like tree rings.
We read them to see how much snow fell,
how much ice melted,
what was in the air.
Each year, snow falls,
piling up, year on year.
Snow under the weight of newer snow
becomes firn—What is firn?
Firn is dense, but porous,
no longer snowflakes, but not yet solid ice.
And beneath the firn: ice.
Older and older ice.
Fifty years ago, or five thousand years.
The story of the past is preserved in ice.
The farther down we drill,
the further back we go.
And bubbles, bubbles...
Bubbles in the ice
capture the ancient air
that tells a story
of yesterday’s glacier.
How much snow fell,
how much ice melted,
how much time we have left.
By the way, we’re not the first ones here.
We’re building on decades of data.
We’re following in the footsteps
of those who came before.
Like my mentor, Dr. Olivia Wells.
A leader in the field.
As a woman, always outnumbered,
as a woman, often alone.
You wouldn’t believe what she endured.
Nevertheless, she persevered.
Oh. Here’s an ice core Dr. Wells drilled thirty years ago.
And here’s one I extracted from the same site last year.
What do they tell us?
More ice is melting year after year.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Olivia—Dr. Wells.
What can I say?
Dr. Wells is missing. That should be the headline.
Instead, the news is dominated by
our colleague, Martin Pearce.
You may have heard the accusations.
I shouldn’t comment.
SCENE 2. STUCK
I want to tell you about my first expedition
as team leader on the Greenland ice sheet.
We had only thirty days to collect ice cores.
And everything went wrong.
We’re stuck. We are stuck. We’re stuck.
We studied and planned and trained,
we packed our gear and boarded a plane.
After a sleepless night and a bumpy flight,
it appears we’ve run out of luck.
The snowmobiles are dead.
The ice drill is jammed.
A storm has raged for days.
I tell myself:
You’re in charge of a five-person crew,
with nothing to do.
Will the expedition go to waste,
in this logistical mess?
Don’t let them see you sweat.
We are stuck in our tents,
waiting for the storm to pass,
freezing while the world keeps getting hotter.
While the oceans rise,
and the forests burn,
and the glaciers die.
We wait out the storm in our tents.
Our tents are linked by flags and rope.
Follow the rope to the kitchen tent.
Follow the rope to the bathroom tent.
And never let go.
It’s death if you lose the line.
Never lose the line.
The ground will shift, the wind will blind.
The ice will crumble and down you tumble.
We are stuck.
And the world doesn’t give a f—
that we’re stuck.
SCENE 3. IN MY TENT
We’re stuck. We are stuck.
And we’re bored.
We should be drilling ice cores.
Let’s see.
Satellite phone. Pee Bottle!
Nutella! Yum.
Keep wet wipes, batteries, and Nutella
in your pants.
Body heat keeps them warm.
Carry what’s essential close to the core.
Nutella, come to bed with me.
I’ll enjoy you in the morning.
Hi, Uke!
Ukulele, Ukulele,
Tell me everything you know.
Ukulele, Ukulele,
Will it snow…or will it snow?
Ukulele, Ukulele,
Are we going North or South?
Ukulele, Ukulele,
You don't answer
because you don't have a mouth.
That's a work in progress.
Tell me, Ukulele,
are you sore about the chords I missed?
Sorry, Ukulele—
I’m just a glaciologist.
Snow accumulation and
continual compaction
make up the action of
glacial ice formation
with plastic deformation
and recrystallization.
Then evaporation, sublimation,
a torrential inundation
through the zone of ablation!
Let’s do the ice sheet mass-balance equation!
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
When it’s time, oh, it’s my fate.
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
To aim and concentrate.
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
Hold it steady and don’t fidget.
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
Tra la la...
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
Awkward plastic tunnel.
Pee bottle, pee bottle.
Did a man design this funnel?
But when you gotta go, and it’s 40 below,
snowing, blowing arctic wind.
Pee bottle, pee bottle,
you’re my new best friend.
No, joke, right?
Two words: Martin Pearce.
Anyone had to work with him?
He’s been pulling that shit
since Olivia’s post-doc days.
Hmmm…Science can be women’s work,
if your colleague’s not a jerk.
Every time I went to pee,
he giggled and threw stones at me.
If I called it an affront,
he called me a silly —
From Olivia. I’ve carried this for years.
“I’m out here on the ice sheet, putting up with Pearce.
If you think he’s bad at school, imagine him in the wild.
What do we have to take, just to do the work?
But I focus on the beauty of ice, how strong it is,
yet how easily it breaks and melts away.
Protect your research. Protect yourself.”
SCENE 4. ICE CORES
So I wanted to share the terror I felt:
failure staring me in the face:
My first expedition as leader.
But the storm passed.
The snowmobiles started.
The ice drill drilled.
Anyway, that’s field work on an ice sheet for you!
We extracted twenty-meter ice cores.
We measure the layers with simple tools:
rulers and scales.
Where are the layers? How thick are they?
Basic stratigraphy.
Ice cores are time capsules of climate.
We read them like tree rings.
The last Ice Age ended twelve thousand years ago—
you find it twelve hundred feet below.
Evidence of human activity appears:
There’s a sharp line in the late eighteenth century—
Exploitation, extraction, industry.
And bubbles, bubbles, bubbles in the ice,
tell us a story.
Bubbles in the ice
capture the ancient air
that tells the story of yesterday’s climate.
Trapped in the bubbles, traces of greenhouse gasses.
They rise and fall over millennia:
volcanoes, forest fires, natural phenomena…
And then: soot, smoke, and ash, factory gas.
Particles of burning coal and oil flung into the sky.
Today, carbon dioxide is at its highest level
in almost a million years.
This is climate change.
This is why glaciers are melting.
Thirty years ago, my mentor, Dr. Wells,
drilled ice cores in the same location.
She was studying snow accumulation.
Now I study ice melt.
Snow doesn’t accumulate much anymore.
I study ice loss.
We are losing ice. We are losing history.
And the more ice that melts,
the more data that we lose
about yesterday’s climate:
Where we have been,
and where we’re going.
Where are we going?
SCENE 5. WASTE
Ten days ago my mentor, Dr. Olivia Wells
was on the Greenland ice sheet,
a site that was home to her.
A new crevasse, like a monster we created
born of warming, melt, and stress
opened beneath the snow…
She’s gone.
And Martin Pearce...
Pearce had a glacier named after him.
So much beneath the surface.
We have to smile and grit our teeth
and act like it didn’t happen.
The talking down.
Casual gropes.
Constant sexual jokes.
Smaller offices
and smaller pay.
Research credit stolen.
Expertise undermined.
Ideals brushed aside.
The higher you climb, the more alone you are,
until you’re the only woman in the room.
The waste of time!
The endless waste of time!
So much beneath the surface,
Invisibly dragging you down.
Meanwhile, the Great Men of Science
conquer the field!
Leaping across the frozen tundra!
Diving down the deadly crevasse!
Marching up the melting mountain!
Men taming it, and men naming it,
Clipping the story and framing it,
Now Pearce is in the news again,
but this time, it’s news he hopes will go away!
Now we know.
Olivia was not the only one.
There never is just one.
“I’m sharing this story with you now.
I’ve kept my mouth shut all these years.
In my day there was no one to tell….
[The Glaciologist continues to read Olivia’s letter]
….and I stood there in darkness.
Bitter cold.
Groping for the safety line.”
And a glacier was named after Pearce.
We have so much work to do.
I wanna grow up to be an arctic explorer—
Journey to where no woman has ever been.
Oh, the mountains and fjords and glaciers I’ll discover—
Wait, they’re already all named after dead white men?
I’ll get a scientific education.
Study the melting rate of glacial mass.
Warn the world with astute and precise observations—
as soon as the freakin’ professor stops grabbing my ass.
As a glaciologist I’d like to specialize
in the finer points of ice stratigraphy.
But with the rates of ice melt and sea level rise,
guess I’ll study Marine Biology.
We’d all better study Marine Biology.
SCENE 6. OLIVIA
Olivia, you disappeared.
You did nothing wrong.
Did the ice shift beneath you?
In our last conversation, you said,
“People don’t listen.
And by the time they listen,
they’re scared, so they give up.”
Did you give up?
That’s not like you.
You always told me:
“Protect your research.
Protect yourself.”
They followed your footsteps in the snow,
to find which way you meant to go.
Your footsteps stopped.
Her footsteps stopped at a drop.
And she’s down there, I know.
She’s far below.
She’s down there.
Icicles on her eyes.
Frost on her mouth.
A hard bed of snow.
She’s down there,
where nothing changes.
While everything changes.
She’s down there.
Olivia, you’re down there
until the thaw.
You will stay
perfectly preserved.
Until it melts away to the sea.
Then you’ll be free.
Olivia, Olivia.
Where will we be?
SCENE 7. TAKEAWAYS
We have so much work to do.
The most amazing thing about my research is that
I’m drilling in the same place as Dr. Wells
from decades ago.
She studied snow accumulation.
But now, melt exceeds formation.
I study ice loss.
What if the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt?
Seas would rise seven meters, more than twenty feet.
And that’s just Greenland.
We’ve had a good run:
Three hundred thousand years. More or less.
Despite all of the wars.
Exploitation.
Extinction.
Inhumanity.
A paradox:
It could take a global catastrophe
to force us to face this global catastrophe.
To save ourselves,
those in power
would have to cooperate.
Sacrifice.
Change.
Speaking of change,
let me break this news:
Pearce has been fired.
And the glacier will be renamed.
How did that happen?
People stood up and told their stories.
People dared to ask for change.
What else could we change?
Ice doesn’t care if it melts.
Seas don’t care if they rise.
The world will go on without us.
But wouldn’t it be nice to survive?
Wouldn’t it be nice to survive?
What else could we change?
[End]