Polar bears and global warming: who’s right?

Are you confused yet?

Two organizations, each of which, in its own way, purports to “represent” the Inuit of Nunavut, are taking diametrically opposed positions on whether global warming threatens to make polar bears extinct.

Talk about mixed messages.

One message, now so well-known it’s accepted as received truth in many quarters, comes from the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents all the Inuit living on the planet. It’s expressed most famously within the human rights petition, signed by 63 Inuit from Alaska and Canada, that ICC submitted this past December to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In it, ICC alleges that the United States violates the human rights of Inuit by refusing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and by refusing to co-operate with international efforts, such as the Kyoto Protocol, that aim to reduce such emissions.

This, the ICC says, violates seven sets of Inuit “rights,” including property rights, rights to a healthy life, and the “Inuit’s right to their own means of subsistence,” which they say is threatened, not only by the disappearance of ice for hunters to travel on, but by a predicted extinction of animals that use the ice, such as seals and polar bears.

The ICC sets out its fact-claims and arguments in exhaustive detail, with numerous citations from respectable scientific sources, such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:

“Polar bears are unlikely to survive as a species.”

And:“Reductions in sea ice will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals, and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.”

This is important. To establish that global warming threatens the Inuit right to hunt, ICC must prove that global warming threatens the species that Inuit hunt.

But the other message, made by the Government of Nunavut recently, does much to weaken this case.

In a 12-page document sent this past March to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the GN’s director of wildlife research, Mitch Taylor, attacks the theory that forms a big part of the ICC’s case. He even mocks it:

“Polar bears have become the poster species for doomsday prophets of global catastrophe from anthropogenic climate change.”

Further along, after a thoughtful review of recent polar bear population studies in Nunavut that draws upon his vast knowledge of the species, Taylor says:

“Clearly polar bears can adapt to climate change. They have evolved and persisted for hundreds of thousands of years in a period characterized by fluctuating climate. No rational person could review this information and conclude that climate change predestined polar bears to extinction.”

Though he admits that global warming is real, and has even reduced the number of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay — the Kivalliq region, mostly — he asserts that everywhere else in Nunavut where conditions are different, polar bears thrive.

This too, is important. Because if you accept that ICC’s predictions are accurate, you must also accept that hunters ought to kill fewer bears. Conversely, if you want hunters to kill more bears, then, if you’re a responsible person it follows that you believe ICC’s predictions are wrong. If you want the species to survive, you can’t have it both ways. You have to choose which set of predictions to believe.

Taylor’s comments are offered in response to a group of U.S. environmental groups, who are asking that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department re-classify polar bears as “endangered.” This would make it much easier for the same U.S. officials to ban the import of Nunavut polar bear skins, a decision that would erase at least $2 million a year worth of income that now goes to small Inuit outfitters and guides.

Those environmental groups, incidentally, describe the threat posed by global warming in a way that is virtually identical to how ICC describes it. But unlike the ICC, they remain true to their logic, and they allege that Nunavut made a big mistake when it raised its various regional polar bear quotas last year.

By the way, we should point out, for the record, that Taylor says his comments do not “necessarily represent the position or view of the Government of Nunavut,” and that they’re offered in his capacity as director of wildlife research for the GN.

Maybe so — but it’s a distinction without a difference. GN officials vetted Taylor’s comments. And in a passive-voice sentence that conceals who made the decision, he says “it was felt that the most appropriate submission from Nunavut on this proposal would come as a neutral and objective scientific review.”

For all intents and purposes, then, Taylor’s position is the GN’s position. And though it claims to be “neutral and objective,” it, like the ICC’s position, is biased by political ends. But to the extent that it is “scientific,” the GN’s position still does serious damage to the position taken by the ICC, an organization that represents about 82 per cent of Nunavut’s people.

Part of the problem, of course, is that this is all about probability, not certainty. Even rational predictions about what might happen in the future are impossible to prove. We never know what will happen until it does happen.

But it would still be helpful if the GN were to develop a coherent position on global warming, the Kyoto Accord, fossil fuel consumption, and even the human rights allegations contained in ICC’s petition. Given the GN’s torpid, aimless state right now, this is probably too much to hope for. It takes leadership and brains to stake out clear positions on important issues, and those qualities are hard to find within the Nunavut government and its laughably inept legislature.
All the same, it’s not a bad thing to see two important Arctic organizations stating irreconcilable views on vital public issues. It shows that a healthy pluralism of opinion thrives in Nunavut, and elsewhere in the Arctic. It may be a source of confusion — but it’s a confusion that makes life interesting. That’s what happens when individuals are free to think for themselves. JB