When we are aware that the actions of man can transform the environment, we must realise that not only the landscape, with all its internal relationships, conditions and resources are changing; but also the interrelations of different ecologies that lie adjacent to each other. When the carbon footprint of a car speeding through the European countryside has the power to impact the entire ecosystem of a different continent, and our society is fully aware and scientifically informed of its causality links and repercussions, then action must not be separated from responsibility. In the words of José Saramago, perhaps ‘’without responsibility we don’t even deserve to exist’’, especially if the responsibility we should endorse is of this calibre.
In our planet, only 3% of the entire water mass is non-salty, and 70% of this small percentage is frozen, in the form of glaciers or ice sheets such as Greenland and Antartica which are on land (95%) and of floating sea ice in the ocean (5%). As the global temperatures rise however, sea ice will be the first to melt as it is in direct contact with warming waters, causing the dispersion of entire natural habitats for a great amount of sea creatures and polar mammals, as well as ocean dwelling animals such as narwhal, beluga and bowhead. As the Arctic regions are shrinking, many energy and oil companies are also reaching further north to undergo practices known as ‘seismic blasting’, where high air pressure blasts are made to explode every 10 seconds underwater (every single day during the ice free season), to search for oil deposits beneath the sea floor. This is extremely harmful to the ecosystem’s creatures that use sound to communicate and to the overall equilibrium that is affected by their disorientation and shift in habits. Although the sea ice might not cause any emergent rise in sea levels, the danger comes when land-based ice begins to melt, which could possibly rise the level to 70 meters higher. As well as this, the presence of great white ice continents helps reflect the sunlight into space. If these melt, the warmth will be absorbed by the dark masses of land and ocean water. The oceans are currently mitigated by a set of currents that help carry nutrients and chemicals because of the differences in saltiness of areas. These currents are crucial to all sorts of sea creatures, but also contribute to climatise the lands; for this reason crops and mass agriculture will have to be relocated to appropriate climates. However, not only the wildlife and the flora are affected, but also indigenous humans are seeing their landscape transmuted by recent changes. The Inuit, for instance, have settled and practiced a hunter-gatherer life in Canada for millennia. In 1939, these peoples were affected by the government’s decision to impose Canadian laws (and the respective punishments) on the native population, further impacting the original lifestyle with occupation during WWII due to the strategic position of their land. In the 1950s, the adoption of Western manners was bartered with the presence on the land, and the Inuit population was stripped of its nomadic traditions and forced to adapt to imported infrastructures. This led to the Inuit becoming the indigenous people most endangered by food insecurity in the developed world. The local stores in fact, exploit their sporadic presence to increase normal prices ridiculously. As well as this, oil and gas explorations remain a constant possibility and threat in the area. Furthermore, the anti-seismic legal battle against a 5 year project that was approved in 2014, without appropriate consultation of locals, was delayed by the residents of Clyde River in 2017, yet the practice still remains a common danger all over the world. Once more, not just climate indifference, but also deliberate environmental harm in the name of the economy, steps over the fundamental rights and legitimacy of indigenous peoples, who have built a way of life deeply embedded in the natural surrounding world. Yet should we respect their rights to the land only because these people seem to be the most endangered by the consequences of environmental change? In fact, along with this tight dependence on the land, comes the necessary and often implicit development of a land ethic, which determines limitations on the freedom of action in the name of survival and symbiosis with nature, which is profoundly lacking from our landscape of stone and concrete. This ethic and connection with the land creates a deep relation with place and a further great ability to easily adapt to the changes in the environment because of the deeply embedded habit of listening to its voice. For this reason rapid climate change may not necessarily create insurmountable difficulties for indigenous people in general, who are part of the environment and therefore are spontaneously prepared to change with it. On the other hand, our modern world which is nurtured with an overwhelming amount of information, we are still lacking the natural wisdom that comes with recognising and caring for one’s environment, and that has been annihilated by the sheer greed of wealth. Our measure of success should transcend profit and rather look to become the most compatible with our nature, finding a land ethic of our own that also enables us to recognise and respect the autonomy of others.
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