That quote is not the Elder's: it is mine, but it is close to what I remember from seeing that exhibit 22 years ago. It stayed with me because, even then, it struck me how differently Americans (non-native, non-indigenous) tend to respond to disasters that wipe everything out. Our media seizes immediately the estimated damages and how much repair and recovery are projected to cost. People sob into the camera, "We have lost everything. I don't know what we're going to do." I don't think I can even imagine CNN or FOX or MSNBC running a story on someone laughing and saying something like, "Well, this'll give us a chance to rebuild and start over."
To be fair, Americans do pull together and help each other, some of them do anyway. Insurance companies help, and it helps to have money of your own. Poor folks? Good luck. You're on your own.
"On your own" is happening in both subtle and blatant ways all over the globe as climate change seeps into everyday lives. Some of these changes we notice, most we don't because they are happening in the deeps of the oceans and in fringe environments removed from our direct concerns right now.
Inuit villagers in Kivalina, Alaska have been designated as "America's first climate change refugees" (1). The melting of the Arctic ice cap has caused a slow increase of the sea level and considerable coastal erosion; consequently, Kivalina, which has rested for countless generations on a spit of sand, is due to be submerged permanently in approximately ten years.The four hundred or so Kivalina villagers aren't exactly laughing because this time there is no higher ground.
But even where there is, indigenous populations in Alaska, Canada and northern Eurasia--in other words, all around the top of the world--especially those living near aboreal forests are dealing with the effects of melting permafrost.
For millennia, Arctic birch and black spruce have stood in their scraggly dignity through six months of darkness, six months of sun year after year after year after century. The longest lived last more than a century, some with a diameter of hardly 10". In an unprotected location, not buffered by other trees or a mound, some lean permanently in the same direction, succumbing to the force of fierce Arctic winds. It is natural, when the tundra is softened in warm months, the shallow tree roots give, and the trees lean.
Leaning trees against an Arctic windscape, while a stark and solitary image, are common and normal for the Northland we know as Santa's home base. But that home base is warming faster and more steadily than ever in human history, projected to warm 3-4 degrees Celsius (37-39 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. As a result, the permafrost, which is the icy glue of the tundra, is melting at a phenomenal rate. The trees which merely leaned away from the wind are now falling over, and staying there.
The Inuit call them "drunken trees" (2).
What difference do they make? Well, the melting permafrost causes heaves and holes where there haven't been any, so many of the trees that fall cannot sustain life, and new pools are formed where they weren't before. The lives of birds, fish and mammals are confused, so some wildlife face extinction. The Inuit may benefit in the short run because the drunken trees will make their way to waterways and provide housing and fuel material.
Change is not something to be condemned or resisted when it cannot be controlled, as the Inuit Elder in my opening expresses. Forest falls down (due to global warming)? Smile and move on.
Paul Kingsnorth, a longtime environmental activist, just a few years ago would have protested almost violently against the idea of standing back and letting happen what is apparently happening to the Earth's environment, and not doing something, anything to try and stop it. But he feels that way no more (3).
After a youth spent at Oxford, working as a journalist in London, joining environmental protests all over Europe, working for environmental education and change on four continents, publishing a book on the green global movement, Paul Kingsnorth has given up in the eyes of some. He believes fighting for change is pointless, and the best we can do is to step back and do our best to live through an awful predicament.
I don't know if I'm ready yet, or ever, to join Paul and his Dark Mountain compatriots, but while I consider practical options, the least I can do is to bear witness to the changes, to the drunken trees and all the other evidence that the world as we know it is not the world we will know tomorrow. Maybe I'm ready to smile like the Inuit elders, but only when there is higher ground for us to move to.
1. Sackur, Stephen. "The Alaskan Village Set to Disappear under Water in a Decade." BBC News Magazine. 29 July 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23346370
2. Howard, Brian Clark. "Drunken Trees: Dramatic Signs of Climate Change." National Geographic Daily News. 19 April 2014. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140417-drunken-trees-melting-permafrost-global-warming-science/
3. Smith, Daniel. "It's the End of the Earth as We know It...and He Feels Fine." New York Times. 17 April 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/magazine/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-he-feels-fine.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=MG_ITE_20140418&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_&_r=0
