Feb. 28, 2007, 11:38PM
Inuits hope to put a face on global warming at hearing
Arctic people will share their stories of thinning ice, hunting paths in peril
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press
IQALUIT, NUNAVUT TERRITORY — Simon Nattaq lost both feet to frostbite when his snowmobile crashed through the ice, made thin by rising Arctic temperatures.
All his gear plunged into the water too, leaving him stranded for two days. He now walks — and still hunts — with prosthetic feet, and believes God kept him alive to warn the world about global warming.
"Today I am here because the Creator allowed it," says Nattaq, 61, a city counselor for Iqaluit, a one-time U.S. Air Force base that is today Canada's northernmost city with 7,000 residents.
Nattaq and other Inuit, the Arctic people of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greenland — in Alaska they're known as Eskimos — have been warning the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice. Hunting patterns thousands of years old are in jeopardy.
"Our way of life is at stake," says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, just nominated with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Watt-Cloutier will argue before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington today that the United States, as the world's largest emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is violating her people's rights.
While for many global warming is a distant threat, for the Inuit its impact is a reality now. "It's about real people who live on top of the world," she said this week before leaving for the hearing.
The commission, part of the Organization of American States, has no authority over the U.S. government. But Watt-Cloutier says she's looking for a moral and political victory, to help make climate change a bigger issue in future elections.
Nattaq is one of 63 Inuit from Canada and Alaska on the OAS petition she is representing, filed on behalf of the world's 155,000 Inuit.
The Arctic is the region of the globe hardest hit by rising temperatures. In a major report Feb. 2, a U.N.-sponsored network of scientists said some projections show the Arctic's late-summer sea ice will disappear almost entirely in the second half of this century, unless emissions are dramatically reduced by such developed nations as the United States, which is responsible for one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gases.
The shrinking ice cap already is forcing the polar bear, seal and walrus to migrate farther north in search of solid ice.
Scientists last December discovered the 41-square-mile Ayles Ice Shelf had broken free in just a matter of hours from the coast of Ellesmere Island, 500 miles from the North Pole. The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic, some packed with ice more than 3,000 years old.
The Canadian weather service said that last winter was the warmest on record there since they began keeping records in 1948.
Watt-Cloutier hopes to put a human face on the statistics.
"There's no heartbeat to any of these global negotiations," said Watt-Cloutier, 53, past chair of the highly respected Inuit Circumpolar Conference. "We bring that urgency, that immediacy," she said, "because we tell the story of the Inuk hunter who falls through the depleting ice, how it's connected to the industries, connected to the disposable world."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4591919.html
Inuits hope to put a face on global warming at hearing
Arctic people will share their stories of thinning ice, hunting paths in peril
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press
IQALUIT, NUNAVUT TERRITORY — Simon Nattaq lost both feet to frostbite when his snowmobile crashed through the ice, made thin by rising Arctic temperatures.
All his gear plunged into the water too, leaving him stranded for two days. He now walks — and still hunts — with prosthetic feet, and believes God kept him alive to warn the world about global warming.
"Today I am here because the Creator allowed it," says Nattaq, 61, a city counselor for Iqaluit, a one-time U.S. Air Force base that is today Canada's northernmost city with 7,000 residents.
Nattaq and other Inuit, the Arctic people of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greenland — in Alaska they're known as Eskimos — have been warning the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice. Hunting patterns thousands of years old are in jeopardy.
"Our way of life is at stake," says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, just nominated with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Watt-Cloutier will argue before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington today that the United States, as the world's largest emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is violating her people's rights.
While for many global warming is a distant threat, for the Inuit its impact is a reality now. "It's about real people who live on top of the world," she said this week before leaving for the hearing.
The commission, part of the Organization of American States, has no authority over the U.S. government. But Watt-Cloutier says she's looking for a moral and political victory, to help make climate change a bigger issue in future elections.
Nattaq is one of 63 Inuit from Canada and Alaska on the OAS petition she is representing, filed on behalf of the world's 155,000 Inuit.
The Arctic is the region of the globe hardest hit by rising temperatures. In a major report Feb. 2, a U.N.-sponsored network of scientists said some projections show the Arctic's late-summer sea ice will disappear almost entirely in the second half of this century, unless emissions are dramatically reduced by such developed nations as the United States, which is responsible for one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gases.
The shrinking ice cap already is forcing the polar bear, seal and walrus to migrate farther north in search of solid ice.
Scientists last December discovered the 41-square-mile Ayles Ice Shelf had broken free in just a matter of hours from the coast of Ellesmere Island, 500 miles from the North Pole. The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic, some packed with ice more than 3,000 years old.
The Canadian weather service said that last winter was the warmest on record there since they began keeping records in 1948.
Watt-Cloutier hopes to put a human face on the statistics.
"There's no heartbeat to any of these global negotiations," said Watt-Cloutier, 53, past chair of the highly respected Inuit Circumpolar Conference. "We bring that urgency, that immediacy," she said, "because we tell the story of the Inuk hunter who falls through the depleting ice, how it's connected to the industries, connected to the disposable world."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4591919.html