It's July at a fly-in only diamond mine in the land of the midnight sun. An RCMP murder investigation locks down the facility. No one is allowed to leave. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
And they're coming for her...
My years in the Arctic changed me, and now the Arctic is changing more rapidly than I could ever have imagined.
The far north was the first part of the world to experience the effects of climate change. Many might think rising temperatures are a good thing. However, as permafrost melts, building foundations and roads collapse. Lakes drain and disappear into thawed ground that had been frozen for thousands of years. Severe weather events are more frequent and extreme (and they were pretty bad before). It's more difficult and expensive for ice road truckers to resupply the communities and mines without year-round road access.
The Sea Ice Is Melting
Diminishing Arctic sea ice means, yes, the Northwest passage is opening to shipping and cruise ships. However seals are drowning (no ice floes on which to perch to rest with their young) and polar bears are starving.
"You Don't Know What You've Got Till it's Gone"
Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell made that line famous. It's from her song Big Yellow Taxi.
Catherine McKenna, Canada’s federal minister of environment and climate change, says in the article How Climate Change is Affecting Canada:
“On a visit last summer to Tallurutiup Imanga – also known as Lancaster Sound – I met a 14-year-old Inuk boy. He sat down beside me and showed me a list of things he observed in his community related to climate change. He told of polar bears that were skinnier. Of his foot getting stuck while hunting in melting permafrost like quicksand, where the ground was once frozen. Of caribou – country food for the Inuit – disappearing. He spoke of his friends’ fathers disappearing, falling through the ice while hunting. These are hunters who for millennia have been able to use traditional knowledge to tell the thickness of the ice.”
Bridge Over Troubled Water
When I returned to Yellowknife on business in the early 2000s, 20 years after living up north, I was shocked that the temperature in mid February was only 5 F (-15 C) instead of the usual -22 F (-30 C). I was doubly shocked to learn that there was no ice road across the Mackenzie River. For more than 50 years, trucks drove over the frozen river from December to April to resupply Yellowknife and its gold mines, and to connect to ice roads to other communities. Going by the weather forecasts on television, the daily temperatures have continued to rise since my last visit in person 15 years ago.
Given that climate warming is irreversible, and subarctic winters will never again be cold enough to create ice of sufficient thickness for an ice road across the mighty Mackenzie River, 2012 marked the completion of a 0.7 mile (1 km) long $200 million bridge.
It's called adapting to climate change. Expensive, eh?
Land of the Midnight Sun – That Won't Change
On the high Arctic coast in the dead of winter the sun barely rises above the horizon. To compensate, the northern lights dazzle. During the short summer the sun never sets: it just moves clockwise around the sky. At midnight it's broad daylight.
Diamond Hunter is set in July, and the sun is a special feature in this novel. Seth, a cop with the RCMP Diamond Protection Unit undercover as a pilot, always has his eye on the weather.
Seth scanned the filmy clouds threaded across the sky. Ten o’clock on an early July evening in Yellowknife and it was as bright as late afternoon in his hometown on the US-Canada border between Washington State and British Columbia. This time of year, the sun merely dipped to paint the horizon a glorious mess of reds and oranges for an hour or two before rising again.
Can't fly up north to see for yourself? Diamond Hunter lets you experience it vicariously!
Madelle
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9 comments:
Madelle, Thank You so much for sharing your knowledge about the effects of climate change. A Conference I'm attending in September (Glasser Institute for Choice Theory - wglasser.com) has Dr. Nathan Hagens as the Friday Keynote Speaker. He is talking about "Living Futures Past" because we will need to find new ways to interact with the world around us as the changes you talk about spread.
I loved Diamnond Hunter, Madelle! It's been long enough since I read that book I think I'll read it again.
Thank you for using this platform to educate our readers about climate change. It breaks my heart that the far north is suffering so badly. We lived in Alaska for five years in the late seventies/early eighties. So sad to thimk of the havoc being wreaked by climate change.
Great post, Madelle! The trickle down effect of natural habitats is the most devastating of all. We have a home in Montana, and our recent visit to Glacier National Park showed us the retreat of the glacial flow on the mountains. At some point I wonder if that national park will need to be renamed.
The mention of Yellowknife brings back so many memories of trips to the Yukon and Alaska. It's been years but I got a vivid memory. Some say there is no climate change. Sad!
Great post, Madelle! The far north has always intrigued me. We have friends who spent several years in Kugluktuk, formerly Coppermine, she as a teacher and he as a pilot, and they have thrilling tales to tell. I need to avoid the climate change discussion because I get so angry at some people's refusal to believe science that I could spit!
Luanna, I've been to Coppermine. I'm sure your friends have thrilling tales! It is not an easy life in the Arctic and subarctic - it is often dangerous due to terrible storms, forest fires (in the western Arctic and Yukon) and frigid temperatures that turn oil in vehicles and planes to sludge, polar bears, scary flights in bad weather, and on and on.
Living up there is truly a period of your life that enables you to learn what you are capable of. It tests your limits in a way that our cushy lives in cities and towns with all the amenities never could. It makes you or breaks you!
Regarding deniers, they are not the problem. The problem in my view is politicians who KNOW we collectively (meaning the world) need to take action now, but are unwilling to raise taxes and make the tough decisions to protect future generations; i.e., our kids and grandkids. They'd never get elected on a platform of raising taxes to deal with climate change! Only leadership from all political parties - all states - all countries working together to deal with the looming threat would enable significant and effective CO2 mitigation. Why should people who will not live long enough to have their lives disrupted by climate change care what happens in the future? It is not a real threat to them, as it is to those who live by the ocean (hurricanes) or rivers (flooding) or in the states affected by wildfires, or in farm country affected by drought, or those affected by water shortages. So CO2 mitigation will not happen and/or is already too late. Our taxes will instead go to disaster relief and adaptation.
What's ahead in terms of hurricane frequency and intensities. No one can say we were not warned.
https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/conversation-hurricanes-deliver-bigger-punch-coasts?utm_source=whatcounts&utm_medium=email
A great post and a sad testament to climate change. Unfortunately, so many people don't live in areas where it is highly impacted like the arctic. Yes, they hear the statistics and see the pictures but their first thought is: "It doesn't effect me. I'll die before it catches up to me." And there is the problem. People are willing to trade away long term benefit for short term profit.
I truly hope leaders get it together and recognize the problem. I truly hope enough people start making change and it becomes a pressure to others who don't believe or don't try.
Your story sounds amazing.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier served as the President of the international Inuit Circumpolar Council three times. Here's a quote from an article in the Ottawa Citizen August 13, 2019:
"What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. It's affecting the rest of the planet. The Arctic is the air-conditioner for the world, and it is breaking down."
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