Greg's trip to Antarctica
WWF-Australia's CEO Greg Bourne travelled to Antarctica to see for himself how one of the Earth's most beautiful environments is adapting to the changing climate.
Post five - Heading home
We left at midnight. My last glimpse of Antarctica was of the pink light from the setting sun peaking over ice-covered sails.
Whales blew waterspouts beside the boat as we turned and headed for Cape Horn.
As we crossed the Antarctic Convergence, we watched the temperature rise steadily from one degree to 6. Everything changed, the birds were different, the water looked different.
It reminded me that the polar regions are integral parts of global ocean circulation. The world's ocean currents are driven by differences in temperature and salinity that originate in the Arctic and Antarctic.
This has a global impact on patterns of temperature, rainfall and the healthy functioning of many ecosystems.
If only our leaders could understand our fragile the balance is and exactly how much is at stake.
Just as we reached shore, north of the Cape, I realised how busy it was, how oblivious people were to the extraordinary places we had seen.
They don't know how beautiful it is and, especially, they don't know what we are all doing to it - what accomplices we are in its destruction.
I wondered if a trip to Antarctica on a sailing boat would make a difference for the leaders at the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen? Would it shake them out of the focussing only on the near term?
Would anything?
Earth Hour, we believe, is the nearest thing to a global protest vote.
There is no referendum available to us to demonstrate that we want our leaders to make the urgent changes that need to be made.
Yet tens of millions of people in thousands of cities joining together for Earth Hour is a very strong signal of our intent. Will they listen to us?
Instead of 'luxuriating in our collective impotence', those leaders have to realise how damaging procrastination is and what a serious penalty we will pay for it.
I'll return to Antarctic, the place is too beautiful to stay away from once you have experienced it.
I hope the next time I go will be different. There won't be so many questions.
I hope we will have answered the question of our times - "can we avoid this disaster" - and we will have set in train all that we need to do to make that happen.
