"It has been declared at risk by conservation groups. Yet rich Westerners are paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of shooting an animal whose very existence is already threatened by environmental disaster. Geoffrey Lean reports from Ilulissat, Greenland, on a fight for survival."In an article in the Independent by Geoffrey Lean on September 9, 2007 Lean says Polar Bears are looming toward disaster by 2050, headed to extinction. Who found this leftist, extremist viewpoint you ask? Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? Nope. The reactionary U.S. government. Lean says:
The development comes at the end of the most momentous week in the human history of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Satellite observations have revealed that its ice has shrunk to much its lowest ever level, raising fears that it had reached a "tipping point" where it would melt irreversibly, disappearing altogether in summer in less than 25 years, with incalculable global consequences...
Meanwhile an investigation has found that polar bears are being shot in alarming numbers by "rich trophy hunters from the US, Europe and Japan," even as their increasingly fragile habitat melts beneath them. Only in an Alice in Wonderland age would we be shooting a near extinct environmental icon for a trophy while we are on the verge of environmental disaster. At the same time the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that the world population of Polar Bears would be cut by two-thirds by the middle of the century as the result of the melting of the ice. Lean says: this is likely to be over-optimistic because, as the survey itself admits, it is based on estimates of the rate of the ice's disappearance that fall far short of what is actually taking place."
The Arctic crisis has become so compelling that leaders of the world's main religions gathered this weekend on the iceberg-studded sea off this small town, deep in the Arctic Circle on the west Greenland coast, to pray for the planet. Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church - who convened the group - told them: "the danger of an avoidable catastrophe is now more acute than ever." On Friday senior representatives of the Roman Catholic and protestant churches, Sunni and Shia Islam, and the Hebrew, Hindu, Shinto and Buddhist Zen religions joined the Patriarch in silent prayer on the prow of a liner under a lowering sky in the shadow of giant icebergs.
Unfortunately, prayer is not what we need. What we need is action. We can pray all we want about this crisis; people of different faiths coming together is a good thing in this fractured age in which we live, however the only measure that will save our dear planet from disaster is radical change now.
Robert Corell, who heads the world's main monitoring project on the region - the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment - said the melting was becoming "catastrophic", and experts increasingly fear that it is approaching the point where the disappearance of the entire icecap becomes inevitable. That would raise sea-levels worldwide by over 20 feet, inundating coastal cities.
Last week the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Denver, Colorado, announced that the sea ice had shrunk to 2.05 million square miles in August 2007; its previous record low was 2.14 million square miles two years ago. It means that a staggering 200,000 sq miles of ice is now open sea for the first time. This year the fabled Northwest Passage through northern Canada opened, while the North-east Passage around Siberia is blocked by just a single tongue of ice. Scientists expect that they will both shortly open simultaneously, making it possible to sail round the North Pole for the first time...
These are facts, not global warming theory. Global warming is not coming. It is here. Congress recently passed Clean Energy Legislation which is certainly a start. Go to the truthout environment page for more information and action.
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