Looking down on the snow of Kilimanjaro

In May, 2012, when the International Space Station was passing over Africa at 8 kilometers per second, astronaut André Kuipers took this stunning picture of Mount Kilimanjaro:

[Click to hephaestenate.]

The stratovolcano is nearly 5900 meters (19,000 feet) high. The iconic "Snows of Kilimanjaro" are transcendently beautiful, but may not be around much longer. The ice is receding, and it's expected the volcano will be ice-free in as little as ten years. While the recession has been going on for a century now, the past couple of decades have seen phenomenal acceleration in ice loss, just as we've seen in glaciers across the planet and in the arctic sea ice as well.

Global warming is doing more than heating the planet and potentially threatening our lives. It's robbing Earth of its beauty. I wonder for which we'll be judged more harshly by future generations?

Credits: ESA/NASA

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