Inaugural World Day for Glaciers - Let the Sewage Flow
After 2024 was confirmed as the hottest year on record, the United Nations (UN) declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation, accompanied by the proclamation that March 21st of each year would be celebrated as the World Day for Glaciers starting in 2025. The first World Day for Glaciers will be celebrated, coinciding with a high-level event in New York, with the theme for World Water Day 2025, which is on March 22nd, focusing on "Glacier Preservation" as well.
As the planet gets hotter, scientists warn that this signifies a potential "frightening new phase" and increased risks of severe climate change impacts, with our glaciers shrinking, making the water cycle and the currents in the oceans slower and more unpredictable, according to studies. Glaciers are crucial for regulating the global climate and providing about 70% of the world's freshwater. However, for billions of people, meltwater flows are changing, causing floods, droughts, landslides, and sea level rise, subjecting countless communities and ecosystems to the risk of devastation.
Adding fuel to climate change-related changes to meltwater flows, which are causing floods that are impacting sewage systems to back up and overflow into the ocean untreated, is the US Supreme Court, who 5/4 decided on March 4. 2025, in the City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to let the city of San Francisco not to comply with EPA permit rules that resulted in billions of gallons of sewage flowing across beaches, into the Pacific Ocean, and sometimes even through streets and into homes.
The Clean Water Act (CWA), which Congress enacted in 1972, makes it unlawful to discharge pollutants into covered bodies of water unless authorized by a permit issued by the EPA, which sets both quantitative and qualitative limitations on when and how cities and corporations can release pollutants so that they don’t threaten human or aquatic life.
The majority of the Supreme Court held that the CWA does not authorize the EPA or states to enforce permit provisions that make permittees responsible for the quality of receiving waters absent specific, quantifiable effluent limitations.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, dissented by acknowledging the importance of regulatory specificity. Barrett, however, defended the EPA’s use of narrative standards as a necessary “backstop” when precise effluent limitations alone fail to protect water quality.
“The Clean Water Act, despite its flaws, has been pivotal in protecting our communities and waterways. Prior to its enactment, waterways like the Delaware River were devoid of oxygen. It stank so badly you could smell the River from a plane, and those who worked the docks frequently got severely (even deathly) ill. That was in large part due to pollution from sewage treatment plants that were failing to put in place even basic measures of protection.
The Supreme Court, either ignorant of history and the importance of clean water protection standards, or devoid of caring for those that will be harmed, is setting the stage to take us back to those devastating times,”
Explained Maya K. van Rossum, the Founder of the Green Amendment For The Generations Movement, the Leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and the Author of two books, The Green Amendment, The People’s Fight For A Clean, Safe & Healthy Environment and The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment. Five art shows by award-winning artists Alfons Rodriguez, Photographer and Filmmaker (Spain), Fatma Kadir (Turkiye), Semine Hazar (Turkiye), Selva Ozelli (USA), Jim Richards, Photographer and Filmmaker (USA) at the UN, museums, art center and gallery draw attention to the need to protect our glaciers and our waters during the high-level inaugural World Day for Glaciers and World Water Day events taking place at the UN.
1. The Melting Age by Alfons Rodriguez & Fatma Kadir at The National Lighthouse Museum (NLHM), Staten Island, NY
The National Lighthouse Museum (NLHM), which educates visitors about the history and technology of the nation’s lighthouses, will host its first Climate Change themed art show titled ”The Melting Age” from March 15 to June 1, 2025, to celebrate the year of glaciers.
The Melting Age art show is made up of a film by Alfons Rodriguez and Jose Bautista (Spain); photographs from 7 continents and 30 countries by Alfons Rodriguez (Spain), as well as oil paintings by Fatma Kadir (Turkiye) that depict the impact of Climate Change on our world.
“From hot to cold. It all seems like a grotesque game we force ourselves to play. This unprecedented lunacy. In Greenland and Antarctica, melting ice caused by warming is making the planet’s sea levels rise while cooling ocean currents that, in turn, influence wildlife and ecosystems. An excess of salt water contrasts with the waste of scarce drinking water aquifers: we use four liters of water to make one plastic bottle containing the same liquid, and this is quite a moderate proportion compared to other products.
I thank The NLHM, Teiduma and Climate Heritage Network, and the UN for their support in bringing the Melting Age art show to the public during the glacier year. The Melting Age will be on exhibit at the tail end of the year during November and December at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, NY,”
Explained photographer and filmmaker Alfons Rodriguez.
2. Where Worlds Meet – Glaciers by Alfons Rodriguez and Fatma Kadir at the HMVC Gallery, NYC
On March 21, 2025, the Inaugural World Day for Glaciers, the HMVC Gallery in NYC will hold a 24-hour digital art show of their “Where Worlds Meet” exhibition, which will include the mixed media Glaciers artwork by photographer Alfons Rodriguez and artist Fatma Kadir at the jumbotron at Times Square, NYC located at 7TH Avenue between 47TH – 46TH Streets.
“I am so excited that our mixed media artwork titled Glaciers with Alfons will be seen by so many New Yorkers in Times Square on the first World Day for Glaciers. I thank HMVC Gallery, the Climate Heritage Network, and the UN for their support in launching the Where Worlds Meet art show on March 21st. It is a truly historic day, a historic event,”
Said artist Fatma Kadir, the painter of Flood Walk.
3. The Lighthouse at the End of the World, by Semine Hazar for CUHK Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong
Semine Hazar, an award-winning oil artist of lighthouses, explained,
“The inspiration behind my painting "The Lighthouse at the End of the World" was my trip to Argentina in 2017, when I witnessed firsthand the melting of the ice and a great sound crash into the sea. This brought tears to my eyes. This lighthouse marks the last inhabitable point in South America. I imagined that soon we would be moving this lighthouse to the Antarctic.
The Lighthouse at the End of the World painting is exhibited at the world’s first climate change museum in Hong Kong, CUHK Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change. Later this year, I will exhibit my "Lighthouses of the Hudson River" series during the year of Glaciers at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., from July to August, followed by the National Lighthouse Museum Staten Island, N.Y. from September to December 2025. I thank all museums, the Climate Heritage Network, and the UN for their unwavering support to bring my work to the public.”
https://www.un-glaciers.org/en/partners-content/lighthouse-end-world-semine-hazar
4. Orcas & Glaciers by Selva Ozelli for CUHK Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change
“I made the Orcas & Glaciers art show for the world’s first climate change museum, the CUHK Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong (MoCC,) which launched at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29). I contacted Cecilia Lam, the Director of MoCC and asked her if she would be interested in an art show about the trapped pods of around a dozen orca whales by drift ice in waters off Japan's northern island, which I read about in the news during February of 2024.
I was so upset painting these trapped orcas in drift ice caused by melting glaciers. I am now even more upset knowing that the drift ice and the oceans the Orcas live in will contain increased sewage discharge from the city of San Francisco, the tech hub of the US. I thank MoCC, Climate Heritage Network, Global Resilience Partnership, Oceanic Global, The Green Amendment for the Generations, and the UN for their unwavering support,”
Explained Selva Ozelli.
https://www.un-glaciers.org/en/partners-content/orcas-glaciers-selva-ozelli
5. Glaciers & Oaks by photographers and filmmakers Alfons Rodriguez and Jim Richards for Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center November – December 2025
Award-winning photographers and filmmakers Alfons Rodriguez (Spain) and Jim Richards (USA) bring their Glaciers & Oaks art show to the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center. Their exhibition combines images from Alfons’ The Melting Age series of photography and film documenting the impact of climate change on 7 continents, 30 countries, and Jim’s The New Orleans Oak Tree series to celebrate the impact of climate change, melting glaciers on forests that lie below the sea level.
Jim Richards, the photographer of the New Orleans Oak series, explained
“The Anseman and McDonogh Oak Trees, currently residing in City Park in New Orleans, are among the oldest and most beautiful trees in the country. I discovered them in 2011 on my way to Jazz Fest and became considerably focused on their majesty and brilliance. I had just converted my camera to see infrared light, a spectrum invisible to the human eye. This modification offered me the opportunity to see things in a unique way.
Considering this, I thought about the fact that parts of New Orleans sit as much as 10’ below sea level, putting these magnificent individuals at considerable risk to rising ocean levels. I made many images of these wonderful trees, considering that I might not see them again. I hope that people will think about this and do what they can to help mitigate climate change and the resulting sea level rise to help preserve these trees so that more than these images survive.”
Please share your content to celebrate the inaugural World Day for Glaciers at the UN
here: https://www.un-glaciers.org/en/share-content
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Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA is a legal and finance executive with diversified experience dealing with highly complex issues in the field of international taxation and related matters within the banking, securities, Fintech, alternative and traditional investment funds. Her first of its kind legal analyses involving tax laws, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), blockchain technology, solar technology and the environment and have been published in journals, books and by the OECD. Her writings have been translated into 15 languages.
