James Balog
James Balog
James Balogis an American photographer whose work explores the relationship between humans and nature. Since the early 1980s Balog has photographed such subjects as endangered animals, North America’s old-growth forests, and polar ice. His work aims to combine insights from art and science to produce innovative, dynamic and sometimes shocking interpretations of our changing world...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth15 July 1952
CountryUnited States of America
I've been to the Himalayas a half a dozen times and I love it. I'm just kind of tired of going literally twelve time zones around the world. I would rather go six time zones and get to Iceland or whatever it is.
There is a glacier in Iceland, Solheimar, which has retreated a great deal, and every time I go back there and see what's not there any more, it does something to the heart. It makes you realise it's possible for a gigantic natural element to just disappear.
The 'New Yorker' asked me to shoot a story on climate change in 2005, and I wound up going to Iceland to shoot a glacier. The real story wasn't the beautiful white top. It ended up being at the terminus of the glacier where it's dying.
I'm quite fond of Switzerland. I love Switzerland.
Once upon a time, I was a climate-change skeptic.
It's important to recognise that humans are not the measure of all things... The Earth is the measure of all things.
At the age of 60, you see how short the runway is in front of you and how long the runway is behind you, and that you don't have much time left.
The scientist-community guy may get a $500,000 grant, and if his equipment works or doesn't work, he still gets a gold star for doing the science experiment. For me, there is no merit in anything for doing an experiment; I have to go home with pictures.
This air we breathe is precious, and the glaciers helped me understand that and stay focused on that.
Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.
I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a transitional area that was surrounded by farmland that wasn't being cultivated.
Climate change should not fundamentally be seen as a political or partisan issue, but it has been turned into a political football primarily by the climate deniers who have a vested interested in maintaining the status quo. That includes certain industrial interests, financial interests and political interests.
Climate change is real. Climate change is being substantially increased by humans and the carbon we put into the atmosphere. And it appears to be speeding up. If science has made any mistakes, science has been underestimating it.
Climate change is a really abstract thing in most of the world.