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From The Toronto Star  http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1156974611781
 
Taming the unfrozen North
When global warming melts the Arctic ice, look to the Inuit to adapt and survive, just as their ancestors did
Aug. 31, 2006 - RACHEL A. QITSUALIK

In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping legions of grass and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic Panama Canal of this new boom era.

The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in it. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled races as readily as bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.

Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:

In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are subsumed beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying out over Frobisher Bay.

"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"

I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term.

I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004, where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost and the military had to call on the Inuit Rangers for help afterlosing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks. It's embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, the Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages.

They still hunt out there, of course. Inuit can hunt just as easily from boats as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it. Global warming, it seems, has caused planktonic populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, although bears are no longer hunted.

Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal/island hunting style of their ancestors. But their numbers are nevertheless small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.

Unfortunately, for many, another variety of prospective boom is starting to resemble bust.

It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage only to have so many ships ripped apart by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a much hoopla over Canada's new U.S. friendly licensing system for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though America had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker was split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.

Inuit made little headway when they complained that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations. But the Canadian public at least roused itself once they saw pictures of afflicted seal pups.

The result was the licensing system introduced two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts to foreign ships. .

The Land (as Inuit call the Arctic), you see, has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to dutifully refrain from solidifying that they forgot one thing: The pole is still far from ice-free and global warming goes on.

As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland and the U.S. tankers shipping oil have, instead, found themselves negotiating a treacherous, boreal labyrinth.

So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight. But that, too, is an old story in the Arctic.

The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds.

They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket; in which shipping costs left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes they were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes now occupied mostly by Inuit families.

And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.

But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered. Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.

The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their ever-burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq, the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do.

Many people believe Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature.

Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of that era that birthed Inuit culture itself. For the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.

The planet Earth, between 800 A.D. and 1200 A.D., was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common.

As occurs at any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this to be one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rise of empire.

Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic Archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats.

They did so well that, by 1,000 A.D. (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200 A.D., they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again.

Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets. To this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq. This is "The Beaver," an animal that once ranged as far as the Arctic, during the Earth's last warming period.

As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic would do well to emulate such elasticity.

Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical publications along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years," or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented.

We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear. Nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.

The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit.

The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it.

But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?

Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic, perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations.

Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to do this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the stew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail.

How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?

Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals, which will also use the Northwest Passage, to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed.

And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.