Winter may be coming, but it's getting milder with time, according to "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington. In an interview with Time Magazine, Harington, who plays Jon Snow on the hit show, says he's increasingly concerned about the impacts of global warming, which affected filming of the hit HBO show this past year.
Climate change has long been a theme of the show, with the threat posed by a long-lasting, cataclysmic winter season sweeping in from Winterfell, blasting through many other parts of the world that stems from author George RR Martin's active imagination.
Except that, according to Harington, the fear of winter seems misplaced given what is actually happening to our very real planet right now.
Last year was the warmest year on record globally, beating the two prior years to take this title.
Global warming-related shifts in weather conditions has made filming wintry scenes for "Game of Thrones" increasingly difficult, Harington said.
"The one irony I found this year, it was a very sad irony: We went to Iceland to find snow, because winter is here," Harington told Time.
"We got there and we were lucky to get the snow we did, because in our world, winter is definitely not here. It’s this weird parallel[,] the opposite parallel. We go out there this year, and the glacier that me and Rose [Leslie] filmed on four years ago, I saw it and it has shrunk," he said.
"I saw climate change and global warming with my own eyes, and it is terrifying," Harington said.
Global warming is causing glaciers to recede around the world, raising sea levels and imperiling coastal cities. During the 2016-17 winter season, several unusual storms swept into the Arctic from the North Atlantic, bringing record or near-record warmth to places including Iceland, Norway, Greenland, and even the North Pole.
Topics Game Of Thrones
