Take a good long look

The next time you step outside, take a good long look around. What you will see is how the Arctic has looked for at least 10,000 years and you may be among the last of the many generations who can say they have seen it that way.

By 2100, trees will grow as far north as Kugluktuk, Rankin Inlet, Coral Harbour and even Cambridge Bay. Most of the polar bears left on the planet will be in zoos: there won’t be enough sea ice for them to travel and hunt on. And in the summer, there will be little sea-ice anywhere, except, perhaps, around the North Pole. Ringed seal and walrus, now plentiful, may become endangered species. Lemmings, snowy owls and arctic foxes may vanish from lands where they now flourish.

At the same time, structures built on steel piles driven into the rock-like hardness of the permafrost will sag and fall apart. Cancers, cataracts and immune system diseases caused by ultraviolet radiation will proliferate among Arctic peoples. Giant tankers and cargo ships will steam through the ice-free waters of the Northwest Passage, while drilling platforms will dot the ice-free waters around the High Arctic islands, sucking natural gas from beneath the floor of the Arctic ocean.

We now know all this because of a gargantuan report on global warming and the Arctic commissioned by the eight-nation Arctic Council. It represents four years of work by nearly 300 scientists, assisted by the knowledge of many hundreds of aboriginal people throughout the circumpolar world.

Their efforts are aimed at reaching as many people as possible: especially political leaders in the eight Arctic nations and the ordinary people who elect them.

Though a 140-page plain-language summary of the report, called Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, was officially unveiled this week in Reykjavik, Iceland, much of its message is not new. Its authors have been leaking information to the media since last January, when Nunatsiaq News began to report on the story.

But even if many parts of the report are not entirely new, its effect is startling. Humans are entering a period of rapid climate change the likes of which have not been seen for at least 10,000 years. So far, we’re not even close to figuring out how to do what it will take to slow it down. And our political leaders are totally unprepared.

Take Nunavut, for example, a territory that spans most of the Canadian Arctic and a territory that climate change will transform with a vengeance. Not one GN official, elected or non-elected, bothered to show up in Reykjavik. It’s no surprise to once again find that the GN is absent-without-cause. On the issues that most affect the people of Nunavut, it usually is absent-without-cause.

But what’s worse is that the Nunavut government has no clear energy policy, and little or no capacity to develop one and carry it out. Global warming, after all, is an energy issue. It’s about the burning of oil, gas and coal to heat buildings, create electricity and power the engines of motor vehicles. That is what is responsible for the greenhouse effect that causes global warming.

The Nunavut energy secretariat that produced the two Ikuma reports has been dissolved. As world oil prices soar, and global warming looms, the Government of Nunavut has decided, apparently, to abandon the issue.

The federal government is also badly unprepared. As officials with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami pointed out this week, Canada has no national climate change assessment office.

Another area where Canada is failing to pull its weight is in support for Arctic science. Canada claims stewardship over one-third of the planet’s Arctic region. But most of the scientific work that you will find in the ACIA report has been done by researchers from the U.S., Scandinavia, and the U.K. Even this week, frustrated Canadian scientists who made it to Reykjavik were complaining about Canada’s lack of support for their vital work.

Not so long ago, global warming was an issue surrounded by legitimate doubt. But now the evidence is in and the jury has declared its verdict. There is no longer any doubt. JB

To download a copy of the ACIA report, go to amap.no/acia.