The Council of Canadians and the Indigenous Environmental Network are screening the documentary ‘Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change’ this afternoon at the Foro Internacional de la Justicia Climatico-Dialogo de los Pueblos, which is also known as Espacio or Esmex.
The Council’s climate campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue and the IEN’s Clayton Thomas-Muller are introducing the film by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro to an audience of about 30 people now. More will be joining us when a Climate Justice Now! meeting wraps up shortly.
The environment and the peoples of the Arctic are being profoundly affected by climate change. The Arctic will also be affected by the proposed offshore oil and gas drilling starting in 2014 that could cause an environmental disaster of a greater magnitude than what we saw in the Gulf of Mexico this past summer. A cruel irony is that this drilling is now feasible because of the thawing in the North as a result of climate change.
The Arctic Council (which includes Canada) statement to the COP 16 conference highlights that, “The evidence of global warming is in no place more obvious than in the Arctic region. The magnitude of temperature increase is twice as large as the global increase.”
It also notes that, “Sea ice, snow cover, glaciers and permafrost are all diminishing due to Arctic warming. Vulnerable ecosystems in the Arctic are under threat. Climate change causes rapidly changing living conditions for 4 million Arctic inhabitants.”
The Harper government’s shameful and obstructionist role at the COP 16 climate summit talks in Cancun only serves to further hurt the Arctic.
Brent Patterson, Director of Campaigns and Communications, Council of Canadians
www.canadians.org
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