https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/end-ice-and-arctic-communities-already-grappling-changing-world-180971188/
[links and images in online article]
‘The End of Ice,’ and the Arctic Communities Already Grappling With a
Warming World
A new book highlights the changes endured by inhabitants of the Arctic,
serving as a harbinger of what’s to come in lower latitudes
By Ramin Skibba
January 8, 2019
The Aleutian people of the tundra-covered Alaskan island of St. Paul,
hundreds of miles from the mainland, used to count on giant rookeries of
northern fur seals every year for pelts and meat. They hunted plenty of
fish and birds, too, but their sources of food, especially the once
iconic fur seals, have drastically dwindled, transforming their way of life.
Many St. Paul residents now attribute the vanishing fur seals to climate
change—or “climate disruption,” as Dahr Jamail, an environmental
journalist and mountaineer, often calls it. Instead of a looming,
abstract threat projected sometime in the future, climate change now
affects people living near the poles in visible ways. These changes in
the Arctic don’t stay in the Arctic, as climate effects inevitably
travel down to lower latitudes, but people in the northern parts of the
world live on the front lines of a warming, melting and morphing planet.
In his new book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in
the Path of Climate Disruption, Jamail travels to meet members of these
communities and chronicle their stories. While reporting the latest
climate science from the field, including melting ice sheets, rising
seas and bleaching coral reefs, Jamail never loses sight of the people
already being directly affected, including fishers, hunters, farmers and
island-dwellers like those of St. Paul.
“It’s hard to talk about climate change when you see how it affects this
community in the human sense. I eat, sleep and breathe this lifestyle,
and I care heavily for this community,” says Simeon Swetzof Jr., mayor
of St. Paul, in The End of Ice. The civil servant describes his town as
the canary in the coal mine of the fishing industry, which is on the
verge of collapsing in the region. St. Paul’s residents are a clear
example of changing ecosystems exacerbating economic inequalities,
Jamail argues, since it’s the world’s poorest who are least equipped to
respond to such changes.
Jamail is perhaps better known for his war reporting from the Middle
East in the 2000s, especially during the Iraq War. He wrote about the
plight of both overseas soldiers and local civilians caught in the
crossfire. While American troops and Iraqi families contended with
violence that frequently afflicted them with post-traumatic stress
disorder, Jamail says the people of St. Paul and other Arctic
communities suffer from a similar stress and anxiety that is no less
palpable.
“Up there it was a low-grade yet very persistent kind of trauma. There
was a layer of fear in everyone I spoke with when I would breach the
topic. There was definitely a simmering anger, too,” Jamail says.
To see climate change in its most turbulent form, Jamail traveled to
visit the Inupiat people living in Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow),
the northernmost town in the United States at the tip of Alaska’s North
Slope. For centuries, communities in this remote outpost depended on
hunting bowhead whales and seabirds, but like in St. Paul, subsistence
living has become increasingly difficult. The few whalers left need
larger boats to navigate rougher seas, thanks to bigger waves produced
by receding ice, and they have to go after smaller, younger whales whose
weight will not break through the thin ice sheets while they are butchered.
While the lower 48 have warmed about two degrees Fahrenheit, Utqiagvik
has warmed one degree every decade since 1950, says Stephanie McAfee, a
climatologist at the University of Nevada, Reno. And those higher
temperatures come with serious consequences. The population of some
4,400 people has to deal with a shorter snow season peppered by
occasional heavy blizzards, melting permafrost and the sinking
infrastructure built upon it, and further reductions of sea ice removing
a buffer that protected the shoreline from erosion as sea levels rise.
As Jamail recounts in his book, Cindy Shults, a staff member of KBRW
radio in Utqiagvik, witnessed the baseball field where she used play as
a child gradually devoured by the ocean.
Some of these changes come with ominous tipping points. As the
permafrost slowly thaws, it releases massive amounts of stored methane,
a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. And as sea ice
declines—scientists predict the Arctic will have ice-free summers by
mid-century—it uncovers more ocean water that absorbs heat faster,
accelerating warming.
But despite the new threats and hardships facing Arctic towns and
villages, McAfee says, “people living in these communities are smart and
resourceful, and they have been living in a very challenging place for a
very long time.”
The latest National Climate Assessment, released on November 23,
specifically drew attention to climate impacts in Alaska. Damage to
Alaskan buildings and coastal infrastructure will be costly to repair or
replace, especially in isolated areas, the report states. Consistent
with Jamail’s reporting, climate scientists write in the report that
impacts on Alaska’s indigenous peoples’ subsistence activities, culture
and health will also increase in the future.
To mitigate those ongoing changes, Alaskan communities will have to
prepare and adapt. Because of the growing perils facing them, Jamail
argues that Utqiagvik and at least 16 other towns and villages
ultimately will have to relocate and retreat from the coast and other
eroding areas. If, or when, that happens, it will be logistically
challenging and likely culturally disastrous as well. Unfortunately,
however, the Trump administration closed the Denali Commission, an
Anchorage-based program designed to help with climate adaptation,
including through the relocation of towns.
At times in his book, Jamail seems to pick from worst-case scenarios,
quoting news reports about climate studies that point to the imminent
end of ice beyond the poles, the rapid loss of permafrost, and the
collapse of coral reefs across the globe. But through the gloom, The End
of Ice is about developing a stronger connection to nature, which Jamail
says many people living in urban areas have lost or left behind.
“Disrespect for nature is leading to our own destruction,” Jamail
writes. Only by regaining an “intimacy with the natural world can we
fully understand how dramatically our actions are impacting it.”