The End of Ice

Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

With a new epilogue by the author

Acclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us “of how magical the planet we’re about to lose really is” (Bill McKibben)

“Assiduously researched, profoundly affecting, and filled with vivid evocations of the natural world. Jamail’s deep love of nature blazes through his crisp, elegant prose.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Finalist, 2020 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Coral Sea only to find bleached coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its collapsing food web.

Accompanied along the way by climate scientists and people whose families for centuries have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet’s wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before.

The End of Ice offers an essential firsthand chronicle of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.

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Praise

“In a sane world The End of Ice would be the end of lame excuses that climate change is too abstract to get worked up about. From the Arctic to the Amazon, from doomed Miami to the Great Barrier Reef, Dahr Jamail brings every frontier in our ongoing calamity into close focus. The losses are tangible. And so is the grief. This is more than a good book. It is a wise one.”
—William deBuys, author of A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest and The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth’s Rarest Creatures 
“The End of Ice is about developing a stronger connection to nature, which Jamail says many people living in urban areas have lost or left behind.”
—Smithsonian.com
“A reader seeking a single book about the current state of our warming world should find The End of Ice an ideal summary.”
—Anchorage Daily News
“This book will help readers understand how ecosystems have been affected by climate change and how inaction has potentially doomed further generations.”
—Library Journal
“[Jamail] suggests that we must sit with our grief for the ever-diminishing planet; to understand how to proceed, we must acknowledge what we have lost and what we will continue to lose.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“What a strange and compelling paradox this book offers: to fall in love with the Earth and all that we are losing, to let our hearts open to the deepest grief, and then trust that our grieving opens us to profound love. When what we love is lost, our grief honors the loss and cracks open our hearts to live fully in the present moment, which is joyous. Thank you, Dahr Jamail, for this gift.”
—Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Who Do We Choose to Be?
“Jamail commits to educating others on the plight of the planet, in hopes a younger generation can delay the inevitable.”
—Men’s Journal
“Enlightening, heartbreaking, and necessary.”
—Booklist
“Assiduously researched, profoundly affecting, and filled with vivid evocations of the natural world. Jamail’s deep love of nature blazes through his crisp, elegant prose, and he ably illuminates less-discussed aspects of climate disruption. . . . A passionate, emotional ode to the wonders of our dying planet and to those who, hopelessly or not, dedicate their lives to trying to save it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[Jamail] ably renders moments of grief and outrage through moving testimony from indigenous inhabitants of the far north and brutally candid assessments from the dozens of scientists he interviews.”
—The New York Review of Books

News and Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

“A passionate, emotional ode to the wonders of our dying planet and to those who, hopelessly or not, dedicate their lives to trying to save it.”

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NPR’s Weekend Edition

Dahr Jamail speaks with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on climate disruption

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Pages

Books by Dahr Jamail

We Are the Middle of Forever

We Are the Middle of Forever

Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth

Dahr Jamail, Stan Rushworth

Goodreads Reviews