“THE ARCTIC IS CARRYING THE DEEP WOUNDS OF THE WORLD,”

Her timely, highly recommended book clashes great beauty (“The poet Joseph Brodsky said that the purpose of evolution was beauty,” she notes amid myriad descriptions of awe-inspiring Arctic allure) with dispassionate science (“The paradise called the Holocene is ending, and a new epoch, tentatively named the Anthropocene, is beginning—an era when climate will be forced against its cyclical ‘instinct’ to become cold again”). It’s this clash, really a jarring shift, like ice shelves themselves colliding, then violently crumbling as they part, that infuses Ehrlich’s text with its vigorous and heartrending power.

In her telling observations, she is as unrelenting as the melting ice: “Perhaps the term climate change should be changed to climate care, since it is carelessness that is bringing so many changes to life as we know it and most likely will bring much of the life of humans and megafauna on this planet to what may be the end”; or try: “When we lose an ecosystem we are losing our thumbprint uniqueness, our way of knowing the world and our strategies of survival.”

As tocsinlike and grim as this may sound, and is, Ehrlich also celebrates native ingenuity, creativity—primarily as witnessed through storytelling, myth and art—and toughened spirit—the will to survive, to balance a hierarchy of needs and to bask rather contentedly in the determinate beauty of a (still) ice-locked natural world—a little of the noble savage perhaps, but I’d never for a moment confuse Ehrlich with Rousseau.

I FIRST CAME ACROSS EHRLICH back in the mid-nineties when researching an Elliott Bay Booknotes story entitled “The Natural World & the Written Word.” I wrote, in part, about A Match to the Heart, her reminiscence of time spent recovering from a lightning strike she suffered while hiking near her Wyoming home: “[S]he approaches the natural world from an entirely different perspective, one that evokes awe at the ineffable, the edge of the infinite where lightning is born, delivered into our world then snatched back just as suddenly.”

Her evocation of awe at the ineffable certainly hasn’t been tamped down a decade and a half later in In the Empire of Ice; instead, it has simply been tempered, or annealed, by the observable—both quantifiable and qualifiable—onslaught of climate change, especially as she has first-hand witnessed it in her nearly 20 years traveling the Arctic Circle. (Her Arctic-themed books include Arctic Heart, This Cold Heaven and The Future of Ice.)

A 2007 National Geographic Expeditions Council grant to make a circumpolar journey and report on the environment and lives of indigenous Arctic people and how they were being impacted by climate change was the genesis of this book, which reads part-travel journal, part-scientific inquiry and part-requiem for a rapidly vanishing/never-to-return way of life. Ehrlich’s prose skitters, crackles and walrus-harrumphs its always-fascinating way from discussing diminishing albedos (surface reflectivity of the sun’s radiation, which can keep global warming in check) and the negative impact of more open waterways on native hunting, to the current value of jimajatuqangit (traditional Inuit knowledge) and the ultra-sensitivity of a narwhal’s eight-foot-long spiral tusk (actually a tooth with ten million nerve endings).

Ehrlich’s poetic predilection for anthropomorphizing the ice—it embraces, calms and cools, has legs that bend at the knees, it gets sick and dies; her glaciers have faces, toes and snouts—makes it a living, breathing character throughout the book, one whom we come to love and admire (or at least empathize with) as much as she does, and with increased fervency as we become more aware of how imperiled it is, losing more ground, literally, day by day, month by month, year by year. It’s an effective technique, handled in such a way as to not come across heavy-handed, and provides a solid narrative base as we move, across four chapters, from the Bering Straight to northwestern Russia to Arctic Canada and finally to Greenland.

Along the way we meet scientists and naturalists, but primarily natives, be they Inuits in Alaska and Canada, nomadic Komi in Russia or native Greenlanders; all struggling to adapt to the changes in their world and to continue to survive as best they know how. All the stories Ehrlich shares are compelling. “Arctic people are unique because of their environment,” she writes. “Isolated by ice and fierce weather, theirs represents a continuum of culture that spans tundra and ocean, ice sheets and glaciers, fjords and open-ocean ecosystems, steep coastal mountains, ice-flattened benchlands, and valleys that are verdant for the one-month-long Arctic summer.”

As much as this book is about, as Ehrlich punchily puts it, “genocide: the abuse of indigenous peoples at the top of the world [and] terricide: the abuse of the planet for progress and profit, paying no heed to the biological health of the world,” it is also about hope, about not wanting to see the vibrant people lovingly profiled and their ways of life destroyed or devastatingly compromised—humanity can change its ways, learn from past mistakes and oblivious misadventures—hope, then, even under current conditions, can exist, and persist.

“Surrender is not normally a word used to wage war against extinction,” Ehrlich writes. “But surrender we must—that is, surrender our sovereignty over the planet. The interglacial paradise in which we’ve been living so comfortably is shifting to a world that will not be compatible with human life.” She sums up, in elegant simplicity: “We can no longer hide from the truth.” In the Empire of Ice, then, amounts to full exposure, a heady mixture of terror and beauty, irrationality and reason, a mighty yawning abyss and a greater spirit to enlighten and ennoble in the face of adversity.

Let me close with one final Ehrlich observation, the first word she learned in Greenland:

The first word I learned in Greenland was Sila. It means, simultaneously, weather, the power of nature, and consciousness. For humans and animals that have co-evolved with ice and cold, there is no perceivable boundary between a “knowing” sentient being and the strong forces of weather.

—Allen

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hit the lights, pop the corn and buckle up: it’s time for some first-rate eco-horror, indeed!

IF THIS ISN’T FRIGHTENING ENOUGH, just wait for the thundering herd of ghost caribou to show up (actually a lot more eerie and effective than it sounds), a circling murder of crows (a bird that figures largely in Native American mythology, and an arresting black-on-white visual for the film), a horrifying plane crash (the mechanical world of man breaks down throughout the film, and always at the most inopportune moments) and what might or might not be the appearance of a Wendigo (an ice-hearted, fast-as-the-wind Native American spirit monster that hungers after human flesh; seek out Margaret Atwood’s essay “Eyes of Blood, Heart of Ice,” which compiles all sorts of chilling Wendigo lore, including how a human can “go Wendigo,” if you desire more about this beastie).

Director, editor and cowriter Fessenden is an indie filmmaker with a penchant for taking horror tropes and turning them on themselves. He’s fiddled with Dr. Frankenstein (No Telling), vampire (Habit) and monster (Wendigo—yes, that critter again) themes and gone places you wouldn’t expect—primarily by mixing intelligent social commentary with complex, interesting characters and then plopping them down in settings unremarkable and commonplace (always sharp contrasts with the goings-on about to ensue); The Last Winter in ANWR (actually lensed in Iceland) perhaps not as much, although a good part of the film takes place in the dull utilitarian camp quarters of North Industries. Thankfully, we’ve got Ron Perlman (“God wants us to drill this stuff!”), a long-suffering Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights), a haunted Zach Gilford (also from TV’s Friday Night Lights), heroic greenie (and indie-film stalwart) James LeGros and always-reliable character actor Kevin Corrigan to keep things lively, that is, before things start getting deadly—remember, this is a horror flick.

I don’t want to give any more away, but I will say there’s an ominous sequence rather reminiscent of, to me, one from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice—hey, this global warming/climate change thing needs to be taken seriously; you don’t just shrug your shoulders, walk away and everything’s okay, hunky dory, wheh! it’s only a movie. Can a tiny indie eco-horror flick from a couple years ago help raise a rallying cry, even if only in some small way? I think there’s an audience out there—I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s seen this little gem—and they’re listening, and they’re not entirely passive.

As Gilford’s lost and haunted character, Maxwell McKinder, shares after decrying how fossil fuels are siphoned/ripped from deep beneath the earth, how they’re the ancient remains of plants and animals, that is, ghosts or perhaps vengeful spirits: “WE’RE GRAVE-ROBBERS.” Boy, message received; now there’s a horror-filled thought for you. See The Last Winter, it doesn’t have to be Halloween, and pass it on.

—Allen

WITHOUT TRYING TO SOUND ALL HELLFIRE AND BRIMSTONE OR DEEP-FRIED SOUTHERN GOTHIC

BILL MCKIBBEN, FOUNDER OF 350.ORG AND PRIMARY FORCE BEHIND THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION, shared in an e-mail this morning that more than 4,000 events are planned to take place tomorrow in over 175 nations in “the single most widespread day of political action about any issue that our planet has ever seen.” The 350 in McKibben’s 350.org refers to the parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere that many scientists consider a safe upper limit which, to avoid catastrophic climate change, we shouldn’t exceed—actually, where we need to get back to, as the current number is 387+. (350.org has a detailed FAQ that’s as informative as it is sobering.)

It’s definitely not too late to get involved in the International Day of Climate Action and make your voice heard. Action resources include downloadable posters, fliers, sign-up sheets, stencils and organizing guides. 350.org’s action map can show you events that are going on in your area. Based here in Portland, Oregon, for instance, my options include “350(+) Pints @ 3:50pm” (Portland, aka Beervana, is a capital-B Beer town, for sure), a Metro Council-endorsed climate action rally at Pioneer Courthouse Square (an aerial photo will be taken at 2:00 p.m. and sent to the upcoming UN Copenhagen Climate Conference), a climate walk from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. along the Portland waterfront, a bike ride + photo op from Portland’s east side to the downtown rally point, an Abundant Harvest Celebration benefitting the ACS (American Center for Sustainability) 2010 Plant Project and lots, lots more. Event photos from all over the world will be projected on big screens in New York’s Times Square and distributed to media and world leaders for top-of-mind freshness at Copenhagen.

And speaking of Copenhagen, home of the United Nations Climate Change Conference from December 7 through 18, concern over conference victories, concessions, agreements and breakdowns continues to spark debate; economics, no surprise, plays a big part. A recent “Road to Copenhagen” New York Times piece by Elisabeth Rosenthal puts the price tag of a new climate agreement at $100 billion by 2020, needed primarily for fast-tracking countries (e.g., India and Brazil) to convert to cleaner technologies as they industrialize; also to help poorer countries, many of whom will first bear the brunt of climate change, deal with drought and rising ocean levels. Rosenthal reports: “But to date there is no concrete strategy to raise such huge sums. There is not even agreement about which nations should pay or in what proportion.” Peachy. Hopefully the United States can step up, acknowledge and take responsibility for its ridiculously outsized culpability (U.S. greenhouse gas emissions account for 29 percent of the world’s total), even at a time when DEBT is a blasphemous four-letter word and “further government fiscal action” is tantamount to apostasy.

In November’s Scientific American‘s “Keys to Copenhagen” Perspectives, the magazine’s editors rally around a United States that leads “the world to a historic emissions agreement by committing to its own sweeping energy transformation,” which revolves around subsidizing and expanding development of renewable energy sources. The price of fossil fuels also needs to be raised, the editorial asserts, to account for their environmental damage. The pitched battle certain to follow adoption of such a plan is acknowledged: “[O]n the whole, the coal, natural gas and oil industries will not give up the government largesse meekly, so politicians will have to resist intense lobbying from them [emphasis mine].” Okay, SciAm, that sounds like a nice realistic-optimistic-tempered melange and positive spirit to take to Copenhagen, where with “[c]ommitment in Congress and President Barack Obama’s personal attendance … [it] may be enough to prompt nations to seek a meaningful agreement.”

I love the idea of taking personal responsibility (and having the free will to do so!)—scaled up as required to fit the matter in question—as opposed to applying something akin to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Notice how it starts with DENIAL—and ends with DEATH. It brings me back to the “step by step,” “deed by deed” spiel that opened this piece and how actions can speak louder than words; apply that on a global scale, be it the people-powered International Day of Climate Action or the world-leaders-soon-to-be-attended United Nations Climate Change Conference, and we’ve got an actual opportunity for step, and deed, change—wrought extra-large and emphatic, like taking destruction and replacing it with salvation.

So get involved and make some noise tomorrow. Then keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. Help fight widespread obliviousness and the insidious power of denial. How many more opportunities in our lifetime will we have?

NOTE: Keep in mind that the U.S. Senate still must consider the House-passed (albeit watered-down) American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey Bill). Oslo-based energy-consultants Point Carbon puts the chances of the bill passing the Senate before the Copenhagen talks at 30 percent.

And this just in:
Pushing for Energy Legislation, Obama Takes on Critics (from The New York Times): BOSTON—President Obama, taking aim at business interests that have lobbied against an energy and climate bill moving through Congress, called on legislators Friday to rally around the push toward greater use of renewable energy. Read the complete story.

An impressive photo page has been set up on Flickr.

—Allen

Copenhagen’s coming up—let’s make some noise for real climate change now! (You can also read my take on the recent UN and G-20 talks that dealt with climate change.)

Addendum: Blog Action Day has posted a recap.

1,000

“Those who use the world assuming/their knowledge is sufficient/destroy the world.”
—Wendell Berry

“So stop all your pro-ing and con-ing (that’s the Buddha’s advice) and get on with the job.”
“Which job?”
“Everybody’s job—enlightenment. Which means, here and now, the preliminary job of practicing all the yogas of increased awareness.”
“But I don’t want to be more aware,” said Will. “I want to be less aware.”
—Aldous Huxley, Island

ONETHOUSANDMILEHIGH wall of fire—watch it embrace us,
Island states, all, with LOVE divine, fed by busybody bullying, pushing,
Shoving, producing—producing more and more, faster and faster
Till that wall’s a 1,000 miles high, much far wider, out of sight
But not out of mind—for long, at least, even for those “less aware,”
In denial, in session, in seclusion, indifferent, indecisive, indignant.
We’re all going to feel that sweet embrace, the combustible heat of
Such love as this. Drill, baby, drill? Another verse of burn, baby, burn.

ONETHOUSANDMILEWIDE wave—if you knew it was coming,
A necroscope descrying DOOM, would you steer a different course?
Emerge from auto chrysalis, hitch horse to cart, solarize, democratize,
Say, ”I’m no fossil fool; ice caps are melting fast; famine and drought
Already cross great swaths of land; something now must be done”?
Or would you check your status with the quo, chug along for the ride,
Order lunch, or some penny loafers, in burning sand desert brown,
a perfect match for the world to be—unless you’re under the sea?

ONETHOUSANDVOICESSTRONG—it had to start, take back the heart,
Grow exponentially, wildly shout, “It’s not too late!” Can you imagine
1,000 parts per million? Carbon emissions going up and up and up
and up—our world shattered? From space, a 1,000 miles high, mourn our
Burnt-out husk, resourceless, universal health carelessness achieved,
A place where GDP in truth signifies GREAT DECEIVING PLUTOCRACY.
—Start with self, a seed, grow it to 10, then 100, then 1,000, on from there
Till it’s 1,000 miles high, gaining momentum, in everyone’s mind, for good.

—Allen

COPENHAGEN ALREADY APPEARS GLOOMY

DISAPPOINTMENT, WITH STACCATO BURSTS OF VIOLENCE, REIGNED THIS WEEK. Here’s a quick recap (by no means meant to be a comprehensive analysis of all that transpired):

Let’s start with Neil MacFarquhar, who reported from the United Nations earlier this week in The New York Times:

In speech after speech, presidents and prime ministers of countries large and small spoke with soaring promises about the importance of confronting the problem for future generations. But when it came down to the nuts-and-bolts promises of what they were prepared to do in the next decade, experts and analysts were disappointed that there were no bold new proposals, particularly from the United States.

Hats off to President Obama for at least acknowledging past U.S. failings on the climate conundrum/quandary/ongoing “issue of contention.” The world, he said, “cannot allow the old divisions that have characterized the climate debate for so many years to block our progress.” Other points he made:

• Nations with a strong industrial base would need to accept curbing their emissions in any agreement
• The poorest nations deserve financial and other aid to tackle current climate problems and future green development
• He’s committed to having the United States make large investments in renewable energy
• He wants to set new standards for reducing pollution from vehicles
• He wants to make clean energy profitable

China scored some jade-green points at the conference, with President Hu promising to take four steps toward greener development:

1. Reducing the amount of CO2 China emits to produce each dollar of GDP by a “notable margin” by 2020 (compared to 2005)
2. Increasing forests by 40 million hectares (about 98.8 million acres)
3. Expanding nuclear and nonfossil fuels to 15 percent of power by 2020
4. Developing a true green economy

(Read Barack Obama’s and Hu Jintao’s complete speeches.)

MacFarquhar’s Times piece also quotes Andrew Deutz, director of the Nature Conservancy‘s international government relations program, as saying, “We need President Obama to step up and say, ‘I need an economywide emissions cap. I need money to negotiate. I need Waxman-Markey passed by X date so I can go to Copenhagen and negotiate.’”  Well, as we now know, it didn’t happen—and I won’t even get into the U.N. General Assembly that followed, Qaddafi’s babel-lacious fantastical run-on/off and other assorted craziness. What fun in the Big Apple!

Jump-cutting to Pittsburgh, Penn., where the G-20 meets through today, world leaders agreed on a U.S. proposal to end subsidies to oil, diesel and gas “in the medium term,” whatever that means. ”Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change,” a draft communique obtained by Reuters stated.

But it’s been the protests that have drawn the most attention—thousands, with a myriad of complaints, marched peacefully today. “It’s hard to believe the City of Pittsburgh is deploying this much firepower against a peaceful group,” Witold Walczak, state director of the ACLU, told The Nation. “If ever there is a time to protect demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, it’s this week.” On Wednesday, Greenpeace activists hung an 80-ft. x 30-ft. banner reading, “DANGER, CLIMATE DESTRUCTION AHEAD, REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS NOW” (an image of this currently adorns the organization’s homepage). Fourteen, in all, were arrested related to this activity. In other action, police have used pepper spray, smoke and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

Damon Moglen, Greenpeace’s Global Warming Campaign director, was reported as saying, “Global leaders need to realize that the activist community and general public [my emphasis] are demanding that they take strong positions on climate change.” Moglen added that he felt Obama had missed an opportunity with his U.N. speech. “What was striking about his speech was the complete lack of commitment to ambitious emissions reduction.”

Robert S. Eshelman, writing in The Nation (“Climate Change: Off the G-20 Agenda”), points out how numerous countries, including Japan, have recently put forward bold new reduction goals consistent with the IPCC‘s recommendations for 25 to 40 percent emissions reductions. Obama, he writes, “called for reductions that fell far short of what other nations have proposed, and the science-based IPCC recommends.”

Environmentalist/author/activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, had this to say of Obama’s stance: “The words we heard today from President Obama [referring to the U.N. Summit on Climate Change speech] were new coming from an American President, but his words lacked the details necessary to lead the world in these impending talks—and the United States must lead. We do not have much time to motivate the world to action and we cannot waste even one opportunity.”

I hope observations such as these can be barbs to spur further inquiry and reflection in the administration, to get them saying, NOW JUST WAIT A MINUTE, OKAY! I know we’re embroiled in a no-holds-barred health-care debate, but let’s get some true traction on this climate change/global warming thing, too. A lot of people are making a big ruckus about this, are really concerned and are stepping forward to demand action. Perhaps it’s time to act more boldly and make our governmental actions speak louder than mere words!

Can such a thing be? If we return to our Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer opening fantasy film sequence for just a moment, try to picture that heroic everyman-and-woman army … in the streets, sure, but also in community meeting spaces, at grocery stores (or CSA pickup spots), blogging, tweeting or e-mailing madly away—saying—perhaps not as dramatically as Greenpeace did in Pittsburgh!—that, yeah, the time is short, the clock is ticking, we don’t want that blockbuster-to-end-all-blockbusters GLOBAL GEHENNA!!!, we must break past patterns, our involvement/engagement in Copenhagen is absolutely essential to success (we do not want to repeat the 1997 Kyoto accord, the first major attempt to limit emissions, which we never joined). A lot of grass- and netroots actions can add up. Bottom-up momentum can build. Politicians—oh yes they can—can listen.

Perhaps, soon, we can revise that gloomy forecast.

—Allen