The Long and the Short of It - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 332

peoples who have provided the Arctic Messenger with a voice have taught us that the Arc-
tic is in one way or another especially sensitive to all of them. Therefore, it is the place to
watch closely because of concern for the Arctic and because of concern for ourselves. The
impacts ofeach issue to Arctic ecosystems and Arctic societies have been well documented
and assessed by AMAP. Furthermore, the Arctic Messenger has shown how Arctic impacts
reach out to influence geophysical processes (such as weather patterns and the frequency
of extreme events) in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
The potency of five of the six issues to change our world, our economies and our
lives has been recognized. Governments have been galvanized to take cooperative and leg-
ally binding action to address them. One could argue about the level of effectiveness of
each of these cooperative actions, but the world is much better off with them than without
them. That leaves us with the sixth of our issues: the warming climate. On this one, we
have no living global action plan to reduce GHG emissions that stands a hope of doing the
job. This despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that identifies anthropogenic GHG
emissions as the root cause of global warming. IPCC expectations for the future include
the major geographical redistribution of rainfall leading to food and water shortages, mass
migrations, coastal flooding of large areas and enormous adaptation costs. It is the most
malevolent and intimidating of the six issues. Why are world governments reluctant to deal
with it even when they have publicly recognized that even moderate warming scenarios
carry major risks for significant environmental and socioeconomic consequences? To help
answer this question, we will examine our six issues again, paying particular attention to
eachofthepreceding“TheLongandtheShortofIt”sections.Thistime,wewillviewthem
through the lens of Jared Diamond's analytical methodology, identifying how our modern
society has or has not dealt with them.
Our first step will be to return to the five issues where national and international co-
operation have been set up to deal with environmental hazards and risks. Before we go on,
I probably need to clarify Jared Diamond's use of the words “anticipated” and “perceived”
in the context of how I am using them here. Our present societies can anticipate an envir-