Inuits Blame U.S. for Global Warming

Here’s an interesting news item you may have missed. The Inuit, who live in the arctic circle, are blaming the U.S. for destroying their homeland. On Thursday, they will make their case at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Representing them is Sheila Watt-Cloutier, recently nominated with Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.

So why do the Inuit think the U.S. is responsible for the loss of their homeland? Here’s the scoop.

The Inuit have lived in Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Alaska (where they are known as Eskimos) for millennia. Now their unique cultural heritage – indeed their very homeland – is being undermined by… you guessed it, global warming.

Unfortunately for the Inuit, the effects of global warming tend to be most severe in the polar regions:

• The driving force behind the entire climate system is the movement of heat from the equator to the poles. When the atmosphere heats up, more energy is put into this system and more heat is transported to the poles. 
• When the surface of the earth heats up in the mid-latitudes and tropics, the ground just gets warmer. But when it happens in the poles, ice melts. Ice reflects sunlight back off the earth and into space. When it melts, the darker land underneath is exposed. Since darker land absorbs more heat than bright ice, this causes even more heat and melting. And as the ice melts, so goes the Inuit’s way of life.

Arctic sea ice has decreased in surface area by 20% since the 1979. In late summer to early autumn, sea ice has thinned by 40% in many places. Whereas global temperatures have increased 1.3°F in the last 100 years, in Alaska they have increased 4°F in the last 50 years. In the interior in winter, Alaskan temperatures have risen as much as 7°F. Unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced, the Arctic ice will be gone by the end of the century.

All this, while frightening, sounds remote and impersonal until you hear the story of Simon Nattaq. His snowmobile plunged through unusually thin ice while he was hunting, an all-too-common accident. Stranded for two days, he lost both his feet to frostbite. Nattaq believes that God kept him alive to warn the world about global warming. And that is just what he is doing.

Nattaq is one of 63 Inuit from Canada and Alaska who are represented by Watt-Cloutier. The petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was filed on behalf of the world’s 155,000 Inuit people.

Is the U.S. really responsible for the Inuit’s problem? To be sure, this is a global problem and all citizens of the world bear some responsibility. But some have more responsibility than others. The U.S. has contributed almost 30% of the current burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today – more than any other country.

And then there is that other embarrassing statistic – the U.S. and Australia are the only countries in the developed world who have not capped their greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully that fact will change very soon.