NEW YORK, 19 September 2004 — With a successive series of hurricanes ravaging the Caribbean and the southeast United States, US lawmakers and environmentalists met this week to examine if these climate changes are due, in part, to greenhouse-gas emissions.
Addressing a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on global warming, an Arctic native leader offered a passionate plea to the US government to aggressively combat climate change. Inuit Circumpolar Conference Chairperson Sheila Watt-Cloutier said the native people are already suffering dramatic changes to their Arctic environment.
Watt-Cloutier, who represents the 160,000 Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and the Russian Federation, described the Inuit struggle as “a snapshot of what is happening to the planet.”
“We find ourselves at the very cusp of a defining event in the history of this planet,” Watt-Cloutier told the senators. “The Earth is literally melting.”
Several lawmakers on the committee insisted on immediate action after the Arctic leader told the panel that the Bush administration is trying to bury an international report that contains recommendations of the impact of global warning on the people of the Arctic. She said State Department officials are blocking the release of one of two reports that were to be presented to government ministers from eight Arctic nations at a meeting Nov. 9 in Reykjavik, Iceland.
“We cannot afford to ignore an issue that is not static,” said committee chairman John McCain, R-Arizona. “We need to take action that extends well beyond eloquent speeches and includes meaningful actions such as real reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Four years ago the US and other nations launched the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. More than 300 international scientists participated in the study, the results are a scientific analysis and a report outlining policy recommendations.
The science report will still be presented, but the US has succeeded in blocking the release of the policy report at the meeting.
The other nations participating in the climate assessment - Canada, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden - want the policy recommendations released, but have been overruled by the United States,” she said.
The policy’s current draft form states the Arctic is susceptible to global warming and says there is a limit to how much the people there can adapt to the changing climate, Terry Fenge, a Canadian representative to the conference, told journalists.
Scientific models based on decades of data suggest that global warming will be especially intense in Polar Regions. “The Inuit are the mercury in the barometer,” Watt-Cloutier said. “We are the early warning system. You can take the pulse of the world in the Arctic.”
In her testimony, Watt-Cloutier outlined damages caused by global warming in Arctic regions. In Alaska, where average winter temperatures have risen almost 10 degrees Fahrenheit compared to 30 years ago, melting sea ice and permafrost have contributed to coastal erosion at a rate of up to 100 feet yearly and have damaged houses, roads and airports. She said approximately 20 other villages will need to be relocated to safer ground at a cost likely to exceed $100 million each.
Walrus and polar bears could be pushed to extinction by 2050 as sea ice shrinks, said Watt-Cloutier. “When we can no longer hunt on the sea ice, and eat what we hunt, we will no longer exist as a people. We are not asking the world to take a backward economic step. All we are saying is that governments must develop their economies using appropriate technologies that significantly limit emissions of greenhouse gases. Short-term business interests won’t accede to this unless governments around the world require it.”
McCain, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut, have already sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act, which would limit greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States. It failed to pass in 2003, but McCain and Lieberman are pushing for another vote in 2004. In the House, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Maryland, introduced a companion bill in March 2004.
