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| Smoke from a recent fire in Durango near Animas Air Park. Photo Durango Herald |
When I left Durango in June, the world was on fire- literally. About 350 homes had burned in Colorado Spring's Waldo Canyon fire, and nearly as many in the High Park fire near Fort Collins. More areas were in flames close to home, forcing evacuations. As I boarded my flight to Denver, I watched the spiraling eddy of smoke rising from a new blaze near Lightner Creek.
Here in northwest Greenland, I’m bearing witness to a different kind of
extreme. The unprecedented warming of
the Arctic is connected to the increase of the “disaster weather” we’re
experiencing all over the country- and indeed the world. According to a recent NASA press release, about half of Greenland's
surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But data from July 8-12th from
three independent satellites, analyzed by NASA and university scientists,
showed that in less than a week the amount of thawed ice sheet surface
skyrocketed from 40 percent to 97 percent.
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| Things exist in Greenland on a massive scale. Here, inland glacier ice makes its way to the sea. |
I
happened to be kayaking in northwest
Greenland near Melville Bay on those days - and it was, according to my guide
and my own internal thermostat, unnaturally warm. This was during the same time that a large
chunk of the Petermann Glacier calved and launched itself into the sea. “Twice the size of Manhattan,” I hear.
There’s a lot at stake right now as we burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels and the planet heats up exponentially. A few days ago, I received a link to a recent article in Rolling Stone magazine by the 350.org founder Bill McKibben- "Global Warming's Terrrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe- and make clear who the real enemy is." I devoured it in one sitting, hungry for news that matters and a perspective that pulls no punches. But don’t read it unless you’re prepared for an ultimate reality check.
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| Small icebergs drift on the north side of Upernavik island |
Here in the sublime beauty of Upernavik, all the trash from town gets
burned. When I buy a plastic container
of peanut butter at the Pilersuisok market, it’s destined – once empty - for the
garbage pile behind my house where it will be incinerated along with everyone
else's household waste- soda bottles, batteries, old appliances, everything. I understand that the heavy metals, benzene and dioxins from burning plastic will drift
back to me in the air I breathe and that as I fill my lungs, the toxins will settle
into the tissues of my body, accumulating.
Instant cause and effect. A tidy transformation
of matter into poison.
There is a similar destination for human waste here. Whatever I leave in the heavy duty plastic
bag that fits beneath the toilet fixture will end up in the sea. The plastic will be burned. Hundreds of
yellow bags are incinerated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, just yards from where I now sit writing.
I mention this not to single out Greenland (we all know the US is one
of the heavyweights on the planetary pollution hit list) but to share how
directly responsible I am for my own contaminated environment. So, do I buy peanut butter or not? Choices.
Cause and effect. It may seem
like the tiniest thing, but millions of seemingly inconsequential decisions
made daily by the planet’s growing population of consumers is something to be
reckoned with.
Is it my job to not buy the peanut butter? Is it industry’s job to find
alternatives to plastic, or is it the municipality’s job to find a different way
of dealing with trash?
I think about the fracking and gas wells that number in the thousands at home in La Plata
county, Colorado, where the earth is injected with a proprietary blend of over
200 chemicals. The industry bears, as
yet, no responsibility to clean up their act.
They are exempt from standard clean water regulations, so they can keep
polluting. Much of the natural gas produced from
hydraulic fracturing is used to make disposable plastics such as my peanut
butter container from Pilersuisok.
When I was sea kayaking earlier this month, I was thrilled to be in
such a breathtakingly remote place (what I might, in my own personal parlance,
call a last place). Most days I saw
garbage, particularly plastic, either floating in the sea or washed up on shore
where I camped. It’s everywhere. We are awash in the detritus of our
contemporary throw-away society.
More sobering are the numbers about PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)
and mercury contamination right here in Greenland, and all over the
Arctic. These industrial pollutants are
carried to the Arctic from all over the world by prevailing winds and ocean
currents, and they bioaccumulate,
magnifying exponentially as they move up the food chain in animals and
humans. Levels of these contaminants are
so high in some Arctic populations that people’s bodies, by some
classifications, would be considered hazardous waste.
These are some of the most pervasive and potent toxins on the planet
right now, along with the PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) used in flame
retardants for electronics like my laptop and the Teflon you just cooked your
eggs in. Like PCBs and certain heavy
metals, brominated flame retardants
accumulate in the fat cells of animals and people. These are man-made chemicals which scramble
our hormones, disarm our immune systems, and confuse the inner workings of our
brains- and the Artic has become the planet’s dumping ground for them.
I’ve begun to understand that nowhere on Earth has been left untouched
by our trash in one form or another, and I’m not sure I believe any longer in
my own personal salvation of a Last Place.
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| It's beautiful here in Greenland by any standards. |
Why am I talking about all this?
Why not stick to pretty pictures and easy topics? What if I alienate all my followers from the
Tea Party who think the hard facts of climate science are a fanatical hoax
designed by leftist liberals (like me) to undermine the GNP and status quo? I continually hear that the Earth has
undergone cycles of heating and cooling for millennia (true), and that what we
are now experiencing is no different (false).
Ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland indicate that carbon
dioxide levels haven’t been this high for eight
hundred thousand years. *
Beauty and ease are absolutely worthy, and I like sharing that part of
my journey. But there’s more to me and
more to the story.
I mention all this because I’m concerned that we’re ignoring the signs
of a crippled planetary life support system.
We can’t continue to destroy the planet by leaving the refuse and wreckage
of our lifestyle in our wake. Whether it’s contamination from heavy metals and
chemical toxins from industry, coal-burning, and incineration, or the
discarding of plastic packaging on land and at sea, or the dumping of millions
of tons of carbon in the air every year, we’re in trouble. We’ve reached a major tipping point.
My project here in Greenland is small and personal. I want to investigate what I believe are the
earth’s last strongholds where ecosystems are still intact- though now I
realize I should say IF, if they are
intact. I came to the Arctic because
I want to see for myself what’s going on, and to document this place with the
skills I have been granted in this life as an artist. It may amount to nothing on the grand scale
of things, but a good dose of intimate engagement and fierce passion is what
will make the difference in whether we humans continue to inhabit this
planet. Or not. The choice belongs to
all of us.
* D. Luthi et al, “High-Resolution Carbon Dioxide Concentration Record
650,000-800,000 Years before Present,” Nature
453 (2008): 379-382
