Vox Humana: Climate Change, Economic & Social Justice, Human Rights, Health, Peace

From the Fall 2006 Spacing magazine, "What the Trees Give Back", page 40:

What Trees Give Back
The value of our urban forest far exceeds what we afford it

Todd Irvine

By best guess there are around six million trees in our city, half on private property, half on public. Together these trees make a forest, a haphazard patchwork quilt of forest that changes complexion at the crossing of each fence -- a few patches are lush and green; too many others are threadbare.

Urban foresters, however, are new kids on the block. It is only recently that the millions of trees that grace our city have been thought of as a single forest, and it hasn't been a quick idea to catch on. More established city builders such as architects, designers, and engineers have been leery of the time and expense necessary to make room for trees in a city they have so thoroughly planned and constructed.

When asked, the vast majority of people, politicians and otherwise, say they like trees and want them in the city. Unfortunately, our appreciation far exceeds the care and respect we afford them. Few have considered just how many sustainable, immediate and economically advantageous benefits a well-managed urban forest provides.

ENERGY REDUCTION, HEALTHY PEOPLE
On a summer day waves of heat can be seen rising off the surface of the schoolyard at St. Paul's Catholic School near Queen and Parliament. There is not a single tree on the property. As with many urban schools, the yard is covered from edge to edge by black asphalt, which surrounds a red brick building with a black tar roof, all surfaces that attract and hold heat from the sun. Studies have found that temperatures in schoolyards can be five degrees hotter than the surrounding neighbourhoods. We are literally baking our children alive.

Trees can help. They are like giant parasols we can set up wherever we choose to keep us, and our buildings, cool. For instance, three trees strategically placed around a house can reduce its summer colling demands by 40%, an imperative in these times of near brownouts and rising electricity costs.

The shaded ground under a tree can be 25 degrees Celsius cooler than the area directly beyond, which is exposed to the direct heat of the sun. Tearing up the asphalt in schoolyards and planting trees provides a canopy of protection that enables our children to play comfortably below.

BIRD CORRIDORS & GREEN DEVELOPMENT
Each spring, birds fly north across Lake Ontario looking for strips of green they can follow on their way to the further reaches of the province. The millions of trees throughout the city's ravings provide migratory birds safe passage to their nesting sites.

If these connections are broken, the birds will not come. If they are re-created, we can have migratory song-birds in our backyards, and, at the same time, protect these species by providing them with green corridors for a safe journey. With proper planning, we could map out these corridors and incorporate them in development plans. Ravines could be connected to each other, by way of a park or a swath of naturalized backyards.

STORM WATER MANAGEMENT
A heavy rainfall places an immense demand on the infrastructure below our city. Water roars through our hundreds of kilometres of sewers. Pipes often explode under the pressure requiring costly repairs. Many older sewer trunks do not have the capacity to handle the influx of water allowing it to mix with raw sewage, which then empties directly into the lake, lowering water quality and causing beach closures in Toronto.

The trees of the urban forest ease the pressure on our sewer system by slowing rainwater down. Their dense canopies, made up of thousands of individual leaves, act as giant filters through which each raindrop must slowly make its way. When the water that does not evaporate during this filtration process finally reaches the ground, much of it absorbed by a tree's vast network of roots. In the end less water enters the sewer; the water that does flow there does so at a more manageable rate.

Less water means fewer new sewers to build. For instance, it has been calculated that Washing DC's urban forest reduces the need for water retention infrastructure by 949 million cubic (metric), a savings valued at (US) $4.7 billion per 20-year construction cycle.

POLLUTION ABSORPTION
Smog days are a now common occurrence in Toronto. The brown clouds that hang in the air on muggy summer days is a stew of harmful toxins such as nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter most of which is released by the burning of fossil fuels. It's been estimated that 1,700 people die each year as a result of air pollution while another 6,000 experience health related problems.

The leaves of trees act as a filter, drawing pollutants out of the air. An appropriate mix of trees can filter out up of 85% of air pollution in a park and as much as 70% in a street setting.

The urban forest is one of the few assets the City owns that appreicates in value over time. If mature trees are lost so too are the benefits they afford. For a small investment, there can be a huge return -- we should be affording it the respect it deserves. Maintaining an ecologically vibrant urban forest is an easy, affordable way to make Toronto a healthier city.

From the Thursday, August 14, 2008, Toronto Star, Travel section, page T2, an article about Chicago's mayor and the city's rooftop gardens:

The Virtuous Traveller

CHICAGO'S GREEN REVOLUTION STARTS AT THE TOP

Rooftop gardens flourish in Windy City, thanks to Mayor Daly

Leslie Garrett

Special to the Star

Chicago - This city has worn many monikers throughout the years - Chi Town, the Windy City, Second City.

But the one it has worked hardest to earn might be the Emerald City. Turns out that the lakeside city built - at least anecdotally - on mob connections and industry has been busily greening up its act.

While the city has lagged behind other progressive cities in such eco-basics as household recycling (it only created an effective program in 2007), for the eco-minded tourist, Chicago is veritably verdant.

This green revolution is coming form the top down, led by the city's well-loved Mayor Richard Daley, whose love of trees (he was, after all, born on Arbor Day, 1942) spawned a plan to revitalize the city economically by regenerating it environmentally. This greening of the city has clearly worked, rooted in a $9-billion-a-year tourism industry and branching into many other eco-initiatives.

Sure you can fly there, though it's greener to drive.

An eight-hour drive will land you smack in the city's core at the Fairmont Hotel, a noted leader in eco-hospitality (find more eco-lodging at www.istaygreen.org) with views of Lake Michigan and a short walk to the city's Magnificent Mile along Michigan Ave.

From the 19th-floor windows of the Fairmont, the tourist sees not the tar or asphalt roofs we're accustomed to, but gardens of green.

Starting with City Hall, the mayor has transformed Chicago's rooftops into something of sustainable beauty.

Chicago has more than 186,000 square metres of those sky-high gardens, more than all other U.S. cities combined. Along with their aesthetic benefits, green roofs make buildings several degrees cooler in summer and act as insulation in winter. While travellers can't acccess City Hall's roof, they can take a gander from the Department of Energy, a nearby 30 N. Lasalle St.

But the largest green roof, perhaps in the world, belong's to the city's Millenium Park, a controversial project that ultimately resulted in 10 hectares of shrubs, trees, groundcover, perennials and more that blanket an underground garage and the old Illinois Central Track. Today, the park attracts close to 4 million visitors annually. 

Indeed, Chicago offers a network of parks and wetlands that transport the urban traveller into a green oasis. Within Millenium Park is the 1-hectare Lurie Garden, which features more than 200 varieties of plants, most native to North America.

Jackson Park, close to the Museum of Science and Technology, boasts Osaka Garden with its Buddhist-inspired gardens and the Wooded Island, a stopover for many migratory birds.

Even along the city's premier shopping strip - Michigan Ave. - it's impossible to miss the meandering rivers that wind through the city centre.

You're never far from a whiff of nature here. And you can rent a kayak or canoe to travel the inner-city waterways, rent a bike to navigate the streets, or just rely on your feet or mass transportation (subways and buses) to get arond.

Navy Pier, a Chicago landmark that juts out into Lake Michigan, is perhaps, more ego than eco. But it's worth a visit in part because you won't want to miss Shedd Aquarium, noted for its dedication to conservation, preservation and under-valued marine species.

The largest indoor aquarium in the world, Sheed Aquarium was the first cultural institution in Chicago with a soy-based roof.

Made from the equivalent of 14.5 hectares of soybeans, the roof keeps the building's heating/cooling in check. And indoors, the aquarium has some truly innovative programs, including its Right Bite Dinners, which offer up sustainable seafood and guest speakers to let us know why we have to fish carefully for what's on our plates. To find out more, visit www.sheddaquarium.org

Speaking of food, Chicago is on its way to becoming a leader in urban organic farming - led by Daley's Chicago Organic Plan which aims to get local organic food into the hands of Chicagoans.

One place to visit is City Farm, located between Cabrini Green and the Gold Coast. The farm is bursting with local produce, providing plenty for the city's beset chefs, but offering up a stand where visitors can pick up any one of the farm's 30 varieties of tomatoes, among other prize-winning offerings. There are also dozens of farmers' markets throughout the city.

While Chicago may lack the certifiable "greenness" of such cities as San Francisco or Seattle, it's well on its way to getting considerable eco-cred for its progressive steps.

Leslie Garrett is a freelance writer based in Toronto. Contact her at virtuous-@sympatico.ca

Well it was all getting too much, especially thoughts of suicide, for me to handle on my own, so after an appointment with my psychiatrist, she phoned to see whether there was a place in the same hospital she is (and there was).

So I am getting off my last Epival pill and tonight I am starting on lithium. New mood stabilizer and I hope it works better than what I've been on has, as least for the depression.

I was admitted Monday evening and this is Thursday. I see two different doctors - THE psychiatrist who talked to me last night for the first time and the teeny tiny resident doctor who is more like a psychotherapist (or acts in role of), I've seen twice.

Most of the patients seem to stay in their rooms. There is a lounge (TV), a place for eating (largely underused) or doing art or playing the piano, or using the stationary bike or two computers (also with printer). 

There are some other chairs or sofas to read or take it easy.

I'm trying today not to lie down and snooze all day, as I did yesterday.

The patients I have met are friendly and the staff are very, very good.

It is nice to be somewhere where they know a lot about mental illness and how it can make people feel. This in no way feels like anything but a very, very caring hospital setting. I have seen some sad people but no one menacing or "wild". And even the sad or getting better people are caring and helpful.

It is getting close to one year since my doctor made a psychiatric referral for a possible diagnosis of bipolar disorder. After she took me off the anti-depressants I was on, she started me on Epival. Once I saw the psychiatrist and got the diagnosis confirmed, I was taken off Epival and put on Lamotrigine. Then there were various combinations of Epival/Lamotrigine to combat me falling asleep and literally snoring at my desk at work. Unfortunately, that combination did not do enough for the depression so I'm off the Lamotrigine again and will either go up on the Epival to a therapeutic dose on its own or onto another mood stabilizer. I'm not sure whether I have to go off Epival first.

The problem is that although neither Epival nor Lamotrigine alone or in combination has been enough so far, I'm even worse off everything.

I realize I may be under the misguided impression that medication may do more than make me slightly depressed to occasionally very, very depressed the rest of my life. Maybe the best the drugs can do is stop me from feeling suicidal some of the time but not all of the time?

Ugh. I think I have gotten over the worst of the shock of what being bipolar means for me in comparison with my prior life. However, whatever coping skills I have in gear so far are not doing enough.

Has anyone else now or in the past had problems with their medications - or limitations with the medications?

I'm bipolar II and it doesn't seem worthwhile to have the medication squash any happiness at all in order to deal with mania or hypermania but not be able to deal effectively with the depression.

From the Summer 2008 Finding Solutions newsletter of the David Suzuki Foundation, Dr. David Suzuki's "Last Word" article about his concern for bees and their role as pollinators:

THE BUZZ ON BEES

Pollinators need protection

I'm sure you've been reading about the mysterious disappearance of honeybees recently. There is even a fancy name for it, colony collapse disorder, although it is clear we don't have a clue what is causing it.

When I first heard of it, a bolt of fear ran through me. There are a lot of frightening scenarios in the environmental scene these days, from oceans emptied of fish to toxic pollution throughout air, water, and soil to runaway climate change. But the disappearnce of one of the important vectors of pollination with no explanation conjures up a terrifying outcome.

Pollination is the process of exchange of genetic material in flowering plants. Almost 90 per cent occurs by cross pollination where wind, mammals, birds, and insects like butterflies and bees pick up pollen from one flower and transfers it to another. This has the result of shuffling genes to provide new genetic combinations that are the raw material of evolution.

Humans are an ingenious species, but no scientific megaproject would ever be able to do what nature does for us on any given sumer day - pollinate trillions of flowers of tens of thousands of species in hundreds of different ways.

We have only made things worse by creating powerful compounds intended to kill pests, but which also kill other species that are integral parts of our biosphere. In clearing land, cutting down forests, damming rivers, and building highways, cities, and farms, we also tear at the interconnected fabric of all life. Yet we are utterly dependent on the rest of nature for our health and well-being. The disappearance of pollinators ought to be a big warning shot to us about the way we are living.

So what can we do? Plenty. We can design gardens with native plants to provide pollen and act as hosts for pollinators, and give up chemical pesticides. And we can teach young people about the importance  of pollinators. It's the least we can do to return the favour to them.

For more information on pollinators, visit www.davidsuzuki.org/Conservation/Endangers_Species/pollinators/.

From the Friday, January 25, 2008, World & Comment section of the Toronto Star, pages AA, AA3, an article about displaced people from Kenyan in refugee camps  in Nairobi:

HANDSHAKE CAN'T HEAL THE HATRED

Amid high-level attempts to resolve political crisis, displaced Kenyans doubt violence can be contained

Tia Goldenberg

Special to the Star'

Days after Kenyans voted in hotly contested elections, Mary Muthoni was told to leave her job at a paper mill and never return.

"I decided I did not want to see what could have happened later that day. So I left," said Muthoni, 25.

Later that day, machete-wielding men stormed through towns across Kenya's Rift Valley province, leaving in their wake torched houses, dead civilians and a stream of displaced people.

Muthoni is part of what she calls the "incorrect" tribe in the Rift Valley, the epicentre of the conflict.

As a Kikuyu, Muthoni is not wanted back at work. She's the same tribe as President Mwai Kibaki, who was swept back into power in disputed polls last month, and the ethnic group that traditionally holds the levers of power in the East African nation.

Despite the arrival of former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan to seek a solution to the impasse over the polls, some of the 250,000 Kenyans displaced in the conflict say, no matter what is accomplished politically, tribal violence has been unleashed and cannot be contained.

As far as they're concerned, they no longer have a home to return to.

"We friends. We were co-workers. And then they just turned on me," said Muthoni, hunched over a plastic basin washing laundry at Show Grounds displaced persons camp in Eldoret, now home to more than 12,000 people.

The embittered opposition Orange Democratic Movement is pushing for a recount.

Kibaki's government is trying to portray an image of business as usual in a country reeling from the political and tribal crisis that has killed 650 and virtually paralyzed East Africa's largest economy.

To cement that image, the government has begun shutting camps in the capital Nairobi, where 1,300 people camped at a fairground were hurried out, sent back to slums where ethnic violence still rages. Many have refused to leave.

Other camps countrywide are set to be dismantled. But with tangible uneasiness in the Eldoret camp, it's unclear where these displaced Kenyans might return to.

"The place I lived was burnt down so I have nothing to go back to," said farmer Mwangi Wanderi, 65.

"My cattle and livestock were stolen from me. They cut down all my trees. My maize stocks were destroyed." He said his only belongings were the stained blue collared shirt and grey trousers he wore.

Many Kalenjin, the dominant tribe in the Rift Valley, say the Kikuyu have held land throughout history and now deserve to feel landless. Some say even the white tents they now occupy in camps are too much property for them.

In a sign of hope yesterday, defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga shook hands with Kibaki. They emphasized "working together" to solve the stagnating political crisis.

Annan spoke of "fair steps" made in their meeting but offered no specifics. A group listening to Odinga's speech from across the street applauded raucously as he called for peace and calm.

Kibaki, meanwhile, began nearly every sentence with "my government," and was the only speaker to use a podium marked "the Republic of Kenya."

But with the cameras put away, Odinga's camp came out against Kibaki. "True to his fraudulent character, Kibaki abused the occasion by attempting to legitimize his usurpation of the presidentcy," said Anyang Nyong'o, the ODM party secretary.

No solution, it seems, is in sight.

No matter how the political haggling goes, the violence remains.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday the opposition planned the ethnic-violence that has swept the country, with local leaders renting trucks to take armed youths to Kikuyu communities.

"We visited many Kalenjin communities and people there said 'Of course the Kukuyus can come home, if they sing our songs and speak our language. If they don't, then we'll kill them all,'" said Ben Rawlence, a researcher for the New York-based rights group.

People such as Muthoni and Wanderi say their only choice is to travel to Central province, where most Kikuyus live, and where they hope they will be safe.

"All I know is that I can't go back to my old life, to my old job. The position has already been filled," Muthoni said.

Tia Goldenberg is a Canadian journalist based in Nairobi.

From The New York Times, Tuesday, February 5, 2008, as reprinted in the Wednesday, February 6, 2008, Toronto Star, page AA4, an article about health-care benefits for same-sex partners in New York state:

WORTH REPEATING

A victory for same-sex marriage

In a decision at once commonsensical and profound, a New York state appeals court ruled on Friday that same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions are entitled to recognition in New York.

It was common sense because it simply accorded same-sex marriages the same legal status as other marriages. It was profound because of the way it could transform the lives of gay people.

The plaintiff in the case, Patricia Martinez, a word processing supervisor at an upstate college, married her long-time partner, Lisa Ann Golden, in Canada in 2004.

When Martinez applied for health-care benefits for her spouse, the college denied the application on the grounds that New York did not recognize the marriage.

The court, by a 5-0 vote, declared the college was wrong. Employers in the state must accord same-sex couples the same rights as other couples.

To reach that result, it simply applied New York's "marriage recognition rule." Under  this century-old common-law rule, marriages validly contracted out of state must be accorded respect in New York, and parties to such unions treated as spouses, regardless of whether the marriage would be allowed in New York.

The rule applies unless the state legislature explicity prohibits recognition or recognition would be abhorrent to public policy. Unlike many states, New York has not passed a law denying recognition to same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The court right decided that recognizing same-sex marriages would not be "abhorrent."

The new decision still leaves considerable work to be done. New York's ban on performing same sex marriage remains in force. And there is a chance that the marriage-recognition decision will no be appealed.

Still, the ruling marks important progress toward changing laws and attitudes that deprive gay people of equal rights and deny the dignity of New York's many gay families. They should be able to live, marry and raise children with the same respect and the same rights as anyone else.

From the Monday, January 14, 2008, Toronto Star, Canada section, page A13, an article about the plight of the Afghani refugees in Kandahar:

FORGOTTEN REFUGEES OF THE WAR AFGHANISTAN

Tent ghetto residents survive on bread, tea

Tobi Cohen

The Canadian Press

Kandahar, Afghanistan - Bibi Shido can't sleep at night but it has little to do with the fact her bed is nothing more than a pile of blankets on the grounds of a makeshift tent in temperatures that have dropped below 10C this frigid winter.

The grandmother of 11 is in constant pain. In the spot where her nose once was are two upturned nostrils surrounded by a blackened heap of coagulated blood.

"There was some disease on my nose," she explains in her native Pashto through a translator. "I don't have any money to buy some medication. It's always bleeding. Every night there is pain."

Among some 2,000 squatters living in a tent ghetto in the heart of Khandahar city, the elderly woman is part of a growing group of internationally displaced people, as they're known among aid workers.

Housing mostly Kuchi nomads who've lost their herds to drought, the sprawling camp known as Shin Ghazi Bab - due to its proximity to a shrine by the same name - is also home to many Afghans who fled war zones across the country to head south in search of work and warmer temperatures in winter.

Others who had taken refuge in Pakistan and Iran to escape the Taliban have since returned only to find themselves caught in the middle of an ongoing battle between insurgents and Afghan and NATO forces, including Canadian troops who've been based in Kandahar province for the last two years.

"We have tent problems, food problems. We don't have water sanitation, no pure drinking water, no aid for us," tribal leader Abdul Manan said as a group of barefoot elementary school age children, their faces covered in dirt and noses dripping, hovered around him.

Mannan said many of the young men have come to the city to find work to feed their families. The children seldom have shoes to wear let alone classrooms and most residents typically survive on bread and tea.

"Before anything, we need security and peace in our country," Manan said. "Second, we need land to build our homes. This is private land and we can be kicked out at any time."

Mannan said medical care is also crucial.

Every now and then aid groups like World Food Program or UNICEF drop off a few staples, but as a Blackhawk helicopter from nearby Kandahar Airfield passes overhead, Mannan says the community has largely been forgotten. 

From the Saturday, November 17, 2007, front page and pages A16-17, an article about the changes in the Arctic because of global warming:

Arctic in Peril

Within 60 years, climatologists predict most of the Arctic will be free of summer ice, just as it was 1 million years ago when giant beavers and camels roamed the North, Ed Struzik, this year's Atkinson Fellow, travelled the remote region to explore how Canadians can adapt to and even exploit this precarious return to warmer times

THE NEW COLD WAR

Ed Struzik

Atkinson Fellow

Devon Island, Nunavut - In the summer of 1985, helicopter pilot Paul Tudge was flying over Axel Heiberg Island in the High Arctic when he spotted what he thought were tree stumps near the edge of a giant ice cap.

When Tudge reported the sighting to scientists, they were skeptical. The nearest tree was 2,500 kilometres south. Nevertheless, geologist James Basinger flew up the new year to have a closer look. It didn't take him long to realize he had found the Holy Grail of Arctic paleobotany.

Not only were tree trunks sticking out of the permafrost,some buried below were more than 2 1/2 metres wide and five metres long.

What really amazed Basinger was the realization that these trees were 45 million years old. Many of the nuts, seeds and cones were so perfectly preserved they look as if they had just fallen to the ground.

By the time Basinger finished excavating the site 14 years later, he had assembled a picture of a dawn redwood swamp filled with royal ferns and cypress that flourished downstream from pine, spruce and walnut trees. The High Arctic, Basinger concluded, was once as warm and lush as the Carolinian forests of Georgia in the United States are today. Several scientists have since discovered evidence that the Arctic was warm for a very long time after that.

*  On Devon Island, Richard Grieve and a team of scientists unearthed, among other fossils, remains of a primitive rhinoceros in and around a 39-million-year-old meteorite impact site. While not as warm as it was 45 million years ago, Grieve says it was warm enough to sustain a mixed conifer-hardwood forest. The mean annual temperature was between 8 and 12C.

*  On Ellesmere Island, there's a 4.5-million-year-old beaver pond site where Dick Harington and a team of scientists from the Canadian Mueum of Nature spent more than a decade unearthing fossils of miniature beavers that were preyed upon by ancestral black bears, weasel-like carnivores and Eurasian badgers. Some of the fossils were so detailed they were able to determine what tundra bunnies were eating at the time. Temperatures then were at least 10C warmer in the summer and 15C warmer in winter than they are today.

*  Remarkably, Haringon did this after he and Peter Lord, a Gwich'in native from Old Crow in the western Arctic, unearthed fossil remains of six-foot-tall beavers that shared part of the Yukon and Alaska with scimitar cats, American camels, mastodons and woolly mammoths between 70,000 and 90,000 years ago.

These are heady times for climatologists. The more they learn about the Arctic past, the better they are creating models that will predict the future.

In the next 15 to 60 years, they're predicting, most of the Arctic will be free of summer ice just as it was 1 milllion years ago.

When that occurs, the polar world could be beyond the "tipping point" - the term climatologist Mark Sereze uses to describe what happens when sea ice becomes so thin and vulnerable that winter's deep freeze will no longer be able to manufacture enough ice to offset the melting that occurs in summer.

The climate change that killed primitive rhinoceros, scimitar cats and American camels could be equally devastating to current species, even is this time the Arctic is warming once again, not cooling.

"The rest of the world will be in for a few surprises," predicts Serreze, a senior research scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col. "What happens in the Arctic matters to the rest of the world. If we ignore what's going on, it's going to bite us down here, and it's going to bite us hard."

Unless the rest of the world finds a way of mitigating or adapting to the myriad effects of climate change, many scientists agree that history will be kind to former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, who was recently awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on publicizing the issue.

For Canada, one of the world's dominant Arctic nations, the stakes are even higher. Not only are there risks but also opportunities. Climate change could mean an economic bonanza, allowing shipping through the Northweest Passage enabling mining and oil projects not currently feasible.

The question is, how will Canada manage climate change?

NO ONE KNOWS why the Arctic was so warm for so long previously.

Ocean currents, volcanic activity, methane burps and other natural warming mechanisms may have been responsible. But the fossil evidence found in ancient lake beds, ice cores and permafrost suggests a cooling began after large mammals replaced the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This gradual cooling, interspersed as it was by periods of warmth, continued until the time Harington's miniature beavers were avoiding predators on Ellesmere Island.

Then rapid-fire fashion - at least in geologic time - the cold wiped out the forests, the tiny beavers and, on the other side of the Arctic, the woolly mammoths, American mastodons, scimitar cast and giant beavers.

Now that the polar regions are warming rapidly, scientists fear there will be a similar catastrophic impact on the fish and wildlife and the people who inhabit the Arctic today. With sea ice melting, glaciers receding and Arctic storms getting harsher, many coastal communities are becoming vulnerable to flooding and erosion. A warmer and shorter ice season also means less time for polar bears to hunt seals and more time for mosquitoes and blackflies to afflict caribou, musk oxen and nesting birds. Beluga whales and narwhal, which hide under the ice to avoid killer whales, could also be threatened.

A warm Arctic gives diseases normally killed by the cold the opportunity to move north and infect species that have no immunity to them.

Heat threatens Arctic species in other ways, as well. There's evidence that caribou, Arctic fox, char and other Arctic species may not be able to compete if deer, red fox, and Pacific salmon continue to migrate north into their territory. The possibility is no longer science fiction. In recent years, Pacific salmon species that are declining on the West Coast have been showing up in Inuit nets.

Theoretically, a polar meltdown could shut down the ocean "conveyeor belt" that brings warm water into the North Atlantic and moderates the climate of Great Britain and northern Europe. The cold water moving south could compromise important fisheries in the North Atlantic just as it did in the early 1990s.

Rising sea levels brought on by this meltdown could also displace the 104 million people who live in coastal areas that are within a metre of the ocean surface.

Those who live on higher ground won't escape the changes that are coming. Polar ice is the genesis of cold fronts that bring rain and snow to much of the world. If it shrinks, droughts could worsen, as could heavy rains.

The rest of the world will also be vulnerable to forest fires caused by lightning strikes in the hotter north. Few people in Toronto may realize it, but part of the suffocating smog that the city endured in the summer of 2004 was fallout from fires in Alaska and the Yukon. Five per cent of Alaska and the Yukon burned that record hot year.

Serreze cautions skeptics who think there's time to adjust. So far, he notes, the climate models that he and others have put together have seriously underestimated how quickly the changes that have happened already would occur.

Yesterday in Spain, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change backed that view. The IPCC - which share the Nobel with Gore - completed a scientific summary that is to be released today that says the damage from global warming may be "abrupt or irreversible."

Already, the latest data shows that the Arctic ice cap was 20 per cent smaller this year than it was in 2005, a record year.

"It's not so much what we know that's a problem," says Serreze. "It's what we don't know. The paleo-climate record tells us that the system changes very, very quickly, on the order of just 10 years. I suspect that there are surprises ahead that we won't be ready for."

UNTIL THIS SUMMER, John Falkingham, chief of Forecasting for the Canadian Ice Service, was reluctant to push the button so hard. But this summer, the ice retreated so far beyond all expectations that he was left shocked. Not only was the ice cover at record lows inthe Arctic, the so-called "mortuary" of old ice that normally chokes McClintock Channel in the Northwest Passage was almost all gone. What's more, Viscount Melville Sound, "the birthplace" of a lot of Arctic ice, was down to half of its normal summer cover. That's why a Russian ship was able to deliver a load of fertilizer to the Port of Churchill in October - a first.

"The ice is no longer growing or getting old," says Falkingham, who then echoes Serreze's choice of words. "Ten years from now, we may look back on 2007 and say that was the year we passed the tipping point,"

The big challenge is what to do about it.

Reducing greenhouse gases is one solution because it's accepted that carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, are a big driver of the warming. But even if world leaders muster the will to do something meaningful in the coming years, it will take a century or more to stop or even slow the warming that is already melting the polar world.

Many think that adaptation is the key. Not only do governments like Canada's have to control emissions, they need to develop strategies that will mitigate, exploit and help communities and ecosystems adjust to the changes that are coming. A new environmental state requires a new way of managing it.

The View From the North

Edmonton journalist Ed Struzik has been writing about Canada's Arctic for 28 years.

In July, he set off on the first of nine northern journeys to examine the implications of climate change as part of the 2007 Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy.

He travelled by plane, icebreaker, snowmobile, dogsled and skis, making his way from Churchill, Man., to Ellesmere Island, and from the Alaskan border to the coast of Greenland. Struzik saw first-hand evidence that the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the world. The change, he determined, offers economic opportunities for Canada, but also poses special risks. Watch his video at thestar.com/arctic. 

One reason I like to follow green business articles is because of the many innovative ideas. From the Business section of the Saturday, December 29, 2007, Toronto Star, page B4:

HOT PAVEMENT TAPPED FOR HEAT AMONG SOLAR-POWER INNOVATIONS

Dutch engineering firm siphons reuable energy from roads, parking lots

Arthur Max

Associated Press

Scharwoude, Netherlands - If you've ever blistered your bare feet on a hot road you know how asphalt absorbs the sun's rays. Now, a Dutch company  is siphoning the heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes and offices.

As climate change rises on the international agenda, the system built by civil engineering firm Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV doesn't look as wacky as it might have 10 years ago when it was first conceived.

Solar energy collected from a 200-metre stretch of road and a small parking lot helps heat a 70-unit, four-storey apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn. A 160,000-sq.-ft. industrial park in nearby Hoorn is kept warm in winter with the help of heat stored during the summer from 36,000 sq. ft. of pavement. The runways of a Dutch air force base supply heat for its hanger.

And all that under normally cloudy Dutch skies, with only a few days a year of truly sweltering temperatures.

The Road Energy System is one of the more unusual ways scientists and engineers are trying to harness the power of the sun, the single most plentiful, reliable, accessible and inexhaustible source of renewable energy - radiating to Earth more watts in one hour than the world can use in a whole year.

But today, solar power provides just 0.04 per cent of global energy, held back by high production costs and low efficient rates.

Solar advocates say that will change within a few years.

Other renewable sources have drawbacks: Not every place is breezy enough for wind turbines; waves and tides are good are good only for coastal regions; hydroelectricity requires rivers and increasingly objectionable dams; biofuels take up land needed for food crops.

"But solar falls everywhere," says Patrick Mazza of Climate Solutions, a Seattle consultancy group.

Compared with other energy sources, "solar comes out as the one with the real heavy lift. It's the one we really need to get at," he said.

Ooms' thermal energy system is too expensive and inefficient to solve the world's energy problems. It was actually a spin-off of a method to reduce road maintenance.

A latticework of flexible plastic pipes, held in place by a plastic grid, is covered over by asphalt, which magnifies the sun's thermal power. As cool water in the pipes is heated, it is pumped deep under the ground to natural aquifers where it maintains a fairly contant temperature of about 20. The heated water can be retrieved months later to keep the road surface ice-free in winter. The same system pumps cold water from a separate subterranean reservoir to cool buildings on hot days.

Though it doubles the cost of construction, the system's first benefits are a longer life for roads and bridges, fewer ice-induced accidents and less need for repaving.

"We found we were gathering more energy in summer than we needed, so we asked ... what we can do with the extra energy," said commercial manager Lex an Zaane. The answer was to construct buildings near there and pipe hot water under the floor.

The water usually must go through an electric-powered heat pump for an extra boost, Van Zaane said. The installation cost is about double that for normal gas heating, but the energy required is about half of what would otherwise be needed. That translates into lower heating bills and a 50 per cent savings in carbon emissions..