Guest essay by Eric Worrall

The President of Iceland is concerned that his people don’t seem to be taking global warming seriously.

In Iceland, global warming no longer a joke: president

Sophie Hares

MARCH 11, 2018

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Icelanders have long joked that global warming was something people on the chilly Nordic island could look forward to, but as ice caps and glaciers melt at record speeds, that gag is wearing thin, according to the country’s president.

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“The common joke in Iceland is to say that on this cold and windy, rain-swept island, global warming is something we should cheer for – but it’s no longer funny,” Johannesson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

“Climate change affects us all on this globe, but you can see the effects in particular in the northern regions – the ice cap around the North Pole is melting at record rates, the oceans there are getting warmer,” he said.

On the flip side, climate change could bring some economic benefits to the country of just 340,000 people, which would become a natural trade hub if new routes opened up from Asia to the Atlantic due to melting Arctic ice, he said.

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Johannesson was speaking on the sidelines of the World Ocean Summit in the Mexican resort of Playa del Carmen on Friday, where environmentalists, politicians and business leaders met to discuss how to improve the state of the oceans.

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