Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic work with cryosphere scientists who study glacial life, this presentation makes a critical analysis of the model with which the West is educated today about environmental change, particularly the transformations of ice, normally conceive as pure, solid and inert.

Paper long abstract:

Despite its relevance in the constitution of the Anthropocene, the bulk of the world's population contemplates the properties of glacial ice and its transformations in a disaffected way. Such would be the case of the mayority of the inhabitants of the urban world, accustomed to imagine cryogenic processes through the comfort of their screens or in the asepsis of their refrigerators. Curiously, this would coincide with how science defines the new geological epoch as a global reality, therefore indifferent to the transformations of the specific territories in which it unfolds. On a daily basis, this abstraction would coincide, in turn, with the way in which children are normally educated about states of matter, inspired by an idealised conception of ice as pure, solid and inert. This understanding would contrast with contemporary scientific knowledge of the cryosphere marked, among others things, by the presence of life. Based on ethnographic work with cryosphere scientists who study glacial life, this presentation makes a critical analysis of the model with which the West is educated today about environmental change, an aspect identified as critical to advance climate action.