Alum Captures Climate Change on Film

David B. Arnold ’71, whose latest photo exhibit is designed to serve as an eye opener to the serious effects of global warming on some of the world’s most remote mountains and glaciers, spoke last night to a small group of students about his observations.

The talk—co-hosted by the Harvard Mountaineering Club and the Environmental Action Committee—centered on the new exhibit, which compares pictures taken by Arnold recently to pictures taken in the mid-20th century by former Mountaineering Club president and renowned photographer H. Bradford Washburn, Jr. ’33.

Kevin F. Jones ’09, the current president of the mountaineering club, said that the idea to host Arnold came from club member Eliza A. Lehner ’11, who wrote a paper on his exhibition for a class. Karen A. McKinnon ’10, the EAC president, said that they immediately agreed to co-host the event.

“Such visuals usually have a great impact on those who are outdoors-y and love the environment,” she said.

Arnold, Harvard’s first Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator, started his career as a newspaper reporter. He said the inspiration for this project came from seeing one of Washburn’s pictures, which led him to wonder if things had changed since Washburn first took those shots.

He discovered that they had.

“I didn’t set out as an environmentalist. Brad [Washburn] didn’t think that I would see any change,” Arnold said. “But, I came out a very different and scared person, scared for what we’re doing. My biggest hurdle now is to not scare people to death.”

Arnold’s pictures are taken at the same time of year as those taken by Washburn, to emphasize the differences between them. One of the first pictures in Arnold’s presentation was of the Nunatak Glacier, 11,000 feet above sea level, a height at which Arnold said most scientists didn’t expect to see the effect of climate change. The glacier has now almost completely melted.

“My expectation from this exhibition is that wherever it goes, fewer and fewer people will doubt the extent to which we are changing the world,” Arnold said.

Lehner said she was very happy with the turnout, adding that “there was a greater focus in his presentation on activism as compared to the exhibit.”

Arnold said he wants his next project to be on corals and how they have diminished due to the increasing acidity of ocean water.

“Americans need the greatest change in lifestyle, so there is an incentive to not believe that global warming is a consequence of human actions,” he said. “But we should realize that we can and must slow this down.”