Up in the Air: The Icarus Foundation Blog

CPAWS Demands That Canada Make our Forests Count!

CPAWs, Canadian Parks and Wildlife Soceity, is working to convince Canada and other developed countries to make forest conservation a major topic at the next international climate change agreement. 

 

Their cause has just been strengthened by the report, The Carbon the World Forgot, released by the Canadian Boreal Initiative.  This report identifies that North America’s boreal forests are one of the most significant carbon sinks in the world, storing 22% of all carbon on the earth’s surface, this is twice as much as tropical rainforests.  The significance of these forests as a carbon sink had been greatly under estimated in the past.

 

CPAWs hopes that this report will persuade Canada to take a leading role in climate change talks at Copenhagen in December.  Canada has yet to speak out on behalf of developed countries for the need to develop new rules to protect from deforestation in mitigating climate change.

 

So far Canada has measured its performance in climate change against a projected business as usual scenario.  It is difficult to demonstrate that this approach has environmental integrity.  CPAWs is still hoping that Canada will step up and adopt measures that will result in real emissions reductions.  This would include protecting the boreal forests.  To see what you can do, check out CPAW's Make Forests Count campaign.

Proposed Polar Bear Habitat - Can it Help?

On Thursday, October 23, the US Department of The Interior proposed the designation of more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea and ice for the purposes of protecting the shrinking polar bear population. The proposed habitat runs along the northern coast of Alaska, and would be the largest single designation of protected habitat for any species, encompassing the entire range of the two polar bear populations that exist on American land and territorial waters.

Officials state that the cause of the bears shrinking range is directly related to the disappearance of sea ice caused by global warming. “Proposing critical habitat for this iconic species is one step in the right direction to help this species stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of sea ice caused by climate change,” said Thomas Strickland, the assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

It appears though, that the bears’ habitat will not be set aside as a refuge and that oil and gas exploration and other activities could in fact continue under the terms of the species act and other laws. Just this week the Shell Oil Company was given permission to drill in the proposed protected area.

Can this be an effective measure then?  Conservation groups are concerned, with what appears to be good reason. 

Were the designation approved, it would require any commercial interest to show that any proposed activity, including oil drilling or shipping, would not destroy or adversely affect the bears’ habitat or accelerate the extinction of the species.  There are already concerns expressed by Alaskan officials that any such habitat protection will threaten the state's oil and gas industry.

Is this no more than recognizing a need for protected habitat?  The Interior Department is required to publish a final critical-habitat rule by June 30, 2010.

Smoke up in the Air

Compelling video demonstrating the relationship between California's forest fires and global warming.

What Are We Waiting For?

Where Did All the Ice Go?

This set of photographs was obtained from the Corporate Knights Forum and shows simply how fast the Arctic Ice Cap is melting. Apparently scientists are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone (Sept 5th, 2007)

So much ice has disaapeared that the northwest passage across the top of Canada is now fully navigable. If this pace of melting continues, the Artic will be free of ice by 2030.

More details can be found in an article published by the ever vigilent Guardian Newspaper here or you could go straight to the National Snow and Ice Data Center and read their Fall Summary that shows the extent to which the NorthWest Passge is opening up and ice levels are receding. 

Why is this not front page news in Canada? The entire geography and economy of this country is changing in front of our eyes with enormous political, economic and ecological consequences. The pace and magnitude of this change is unprecedented. We're looking at the destruction of an entire way of life and economy of the Inuit people,  the potential extinction of the Polar Bear and many other species that comprise the Arctic ecosystem. The competition to stake claim on the Artic's mineral and subterranean fuel resources will undoubtedly stiffen with Russia, Denmark and Canada asserting their rights. Huge changes in shipping patterns will follow as the faster polar route cuts months off the time required to ship goods from one continent to another.

Even if you're in shipping, mining and energy and stand to benefit materially from these changes, you must be wondering how and why an entire population can manage to avoid a vociferous public debate on the pros and cons of this change and whether or not there are benefits to slowing the pace while we examine the consequences?   

More Ice Melting - but to music!

I came across this video reading Patagonia's blog. One of their former reps, Hansi Johnson,  has turned filmaker.Hansi comes from Duluth and was asked to make a film for the new, environmentally-themed album Drums and Guns by Low.

The short movie accompanies the track called Belarus which Hansi compares to his hometown of Duluth. It includes childhood films of ski events and compares them with the quality of skiing in and around the town of Duluth today.....

This what Hansi has to say about it:

It is a short three-minute flick that uses Nordic skiing as a vehicle to make people understand what the warming trends are doing to historical ways of living. The video is getting some really cool comments from a lot of people who are not skiers, never have been and never will be. So in that regard it has been a great way to one, introduce the sport to the general public, and two, make them see blatantly that [skiing] is something that is being directly affected by global warming and the loss of snow.

Posted by Anna Pollock

The Ski Industry Has Most to Lose

Author: Joe Kelly
The ski industry is arguably one of the most vulnerable sectors to the impacts of global warming. Consider, for example, Kitzbuhel, the Austrian ski resort that hosts the famous Hahenkamm downhill race, one of the most famous and most treacherous ski races on the world cup circuit and is now dying a slow death. Within two decades, there simply won’t be enough snow to support skiing on the legendary slopes. That’s the finding of a recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the first study to assess the economic impact of global warming on European leisure.

Kitzbuhel is by no means alone. In the Alps, for instance, ski resorts below 1,050 metres – such as the famous Kitzbuhel – will no longer be viable within 20 years. Glaciers will all but disappear within 45 years and all but the highest ski resorts will close. Global warming will impact ski areas on this side of the Atlantic as well, with lower altitude resorts experiencing a fate similar to their Alpine counterparts.

Both the Swiss government and the Swiss tourist industry are acutely aware of the problem - the Swiss Info site is a rich resource of information about the problem and the solutions that the ingenious Swiss are developing to tackle such a huge change in their operations, way of life and incomes.

According to Swiss Info, nine destinations in the Bernese Alps commissioned a study by Bern University., "Climate change and tourism – an analysis of scenarios for the Bernese Oberland up to the year 2030" that points out that the effects are manifold and complex.

They cannot, it says, be reduced to a simple formula equating rising temperatures with the disappearance of snow and therefore the death of skiing.However, winter revenues will drop by around 30 per cent, and more than one-third of the region's ski areas could cease to exist. Summer tourism, on the other hand, could increase.   

But ironically, as the number of viable ski destinations diminishes, skiers and snowboarders will be forced to travel further to seek out slopes with adequate snow coverage. Like a snake eating its own tail, the emissions generated by the increased travel will contribute further to global climate change, sending the ski industry into a deeper downward spiral.   

Another report, prepared in the UK by Halifax Insurance has suggested that ski holidays will soon become expenseive luxuries. The report's author, Bill McGuire, the professor of geohazards and director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, said Alpine temperatures had increased by 2C since the 1970s. Further warming could cause the area's resorts to experience a 30% reduction in snow cover by 2020, rising to a 50% decline by the 2050s,

Realizing this predicament, some ski resorts including Whister in Canada,  have begun to take significant steps to reduce their so-called "carbon footprint." Site of alpine events for the 2010 Olympics, this mountain resort has made a strong commitment to reducing its footprint with a range of environmentally friendly strategies. These include:     

• compact and mixed development patterns to minimize travel distances and encourage walking and cycling;
• transportation initiatives to reduce private automobile use, such as improved public transit services and networks for bicycles and pedestrians;
• design practices to increase energy efficiencies of new and retrofit building developments;
• low-emission and renewable energy supply systems, such as local micro-hydro and geo-thermal energy generation projects; and
• carbon offsetting programs and other strategies that address the greenhouse gas emissions associated with visitor travel to and from the resort.

While these initiatives are ambitious, they are only a drop in the bucket in terms of minimizing the effects of global warming. For the most part, the viability of ski areas will depend on the actions of others – households, firms and governments – to combat global warming. Without concerted efforts at all levels, the ski industry is doomed to go the way of the Dodo or, to use a more fitting metaphor, the way of Kitzbuhel.