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We all do it. We return to a spot from our childhood or youth, stand it that same spot and marvel at how the world has changed. Sometimes the changes are subtle, even unnoticeable, other times, we are appalled and even alarmed by how the world has changed around us, seemingly overnight.

What if you could visit one of the most remote areas of the planet and see how it has changed over the course of 100 years? Would the changes be subtle?

Standing where researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute took photos documenting glaciers 100 years ago, we can see that there have been remarkable changes, and not for the better. The glaciers in the Kongsfjorden area began an almost continuous retreat around 1900. Since 1960, the average retreat of the glacier has been about 35 meters per year, quickening in the last decade.

Glaciers in this spectacular Arctic region are showing an overall retreat because of higher temperatures and we risk losing them altogether if we don't address global warming.

Glaciers are more than just magnificent landscapes of ice and snow. Around the world glaciers provide water for millions of people, animals and plants. Increased temperatures brought about by greenhouse polluting fuels like coal, oil and gas, are destroying glaciers. Unless we break our addiction to fossil fuels and curb global warming, we risk the wholesale destruction of glaciers, which would have a huge impact on billions of lives.

World leaders have been slow to tackle global warming, so Greenpeace has come to the ends of the Earth, literally, to remind governments of what is at stake if they do not take action at this month's Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Global warming is hurting the whole world, not just the Arctic, and clean renewable energy is the solution. World leaders must get it right now, or there will be many places we won't be able to stand to ponder the past.