25 October 2006

Betting on Global Warming

This piece came on while I was driving home this evening, and I wasn’t quite sure how to react. Now that’s it’s had some time to sink in, I’m pretty flabbergasted by it.

KAI RYSSDAL: We begin more than a thousand miles straight north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, on the western shore of Canada's Hudson Bay. Marketplace's Stephen Beard set out from the Sustainability Desk for Churchill, Manitoba.
STEPHEN BEARD: Darren Ottaway is in his element — tramping through the snow around Churchill, the tiny, frozen outpost that he used to administer in Northern Canada. In the 10 years he was the town council's chief executive, Darren learned to listen to the snow:

DARREN OTTAWAY: You can tell the temperature by the sound of the snow. So this is sort of a . . . You know, when you're walking and you hear a bass sound, it's because the snow is wet and it's starting to melt, so it has a different sound. When it's minus 40 out, it's a sharp, crisp sound that you can hear under your feet. It makes a completely different noise.

He doesn't hear that sharp, crisp sound as often as he used to. The snow melts earlier in the year. The ice that once covered Hudson Bay until August now melts a full month earlier. The signs and sounds of global warming are everywhere. But Darren Ottaway is not complaining:

OTTAWAY: You know, nature's going to respond to global warming. It'll adapt on its own. What global warming really represents is an economic issue. That's really what it is. How do we adapt to changing weather and climate? And how do we capitalize on that economic opportunity? And this is really, I think, where we're going to come ahead of the game because we're not looking at it as being a negative impact. It has a lot of positive impacts.

This small, rather ramshackle town of 1,100 people has been declining for years. But now it's putting its hopes in the revival of its port.
Vince Pirelli, the port's operations manager, is supervising a shipment of canola grain. At the moment the port is ice-free for only four months of the year, but that's one month more than a decade ago. Ships are making it through the Arctic waters earlier each year. The shipping season could get longer still, says Pirelli:

VINCE PIRELLI: There's global warming, they say, that's going to help Churchill.
BEARD: Do you think it will?
PIRELLI: I could see it one day happening. I could see it happening. If the global warming is really going to happen, I could see Churchill being open eight, nine months out of the year.

At the moment Churchill is still a small operation, shipping every year about half a million tons of Canadian grain, peas and canola to Europe and Africa. That's a small fraction of the cargo handled by the Atlantic ports — like Halifax or New York. But Churchill could have a big future:

ROB HUEBERT: Anyone who looks at a globe, and anyone who flies, knows that the shortest distance between North America and Europe is, of course, over the Pole rather than the long way across the Atlantic.

Dr. Rob Huebert, an expert on the Arctic. He says that the current owners of Churchill — a rather secretive American railway company called OmniTRAX — bought the port specifically in the hope that it would benefit from global warming.

HUEBERT: What OmniTRAX sees — and why OmniTRAX has been so attracted towards Churchill — is that what Churchill provides, if this ice diminishment continues, is a new Arctic shipping link that is going to join Northern Canada to Northern Europe.

Russia might use it to ship oil and minerals into North America. European exporters could be interested too as a way of avoiding the congested Atlantic ports of New York, Baltimore and Boston. Churchill could in time generate revenues of $100 million a year. Not bad, says Dr. Huebert, when you consider that OmniTRAX bought it as a derelict facility from the provincial government of Manitoba for just $10.

HUEBERT: The provinical government, I think, will look back at one point and go: Ooo, we made a dumb decision on that!

But the people of Churchill are not complaining. They are happy that OmniTRAX spotted the port's potential. And they welcome climate change for the higher standard of living it could bring. Even though, says Darren Ottaway, other places further south may suffer:

OTTAWAY: Since the port was built back in the 1920s-30s, we've been the underdog. So, I think that it's our . . . you know, it's our turn to take the opportunities that really are ours. And I don't think we need to apologize about doing that.

Churchill needs a boost. On the local radio station they're playing a well–worn, scratchy old 45. A local favorite: "The Churchill Blues."

"When I came here, I got off the train. It was the coldest day of the year. I picked up my bags, I stepped outside. I almost froze off my ear."

It's not the acute cold here that gets people down. It's the chill winds of economic decline. Global warming will mean floods and storms for much of the planet. But here it's considered benign.
In Churchill, Northern Canada, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.

"I got nothing to lose. I'm in Churchill with the Churchill blues. . . ."

From today’s Marketplace.

I think what strikes me the most about this segment is the “Churchill-centric” attitude of some of the interviewees. It’s one thing to observe that this small, northern-Canadian community may actually see economic benefit as an effect of global warming, but it’s wholly different to say “it’s our turn.” Saying it’s our turn implies that, the rest of the world be damned, we’re going to finally make a living up here. It ignores any semblance of a world community…of humanity, and places the well-being of this one tiny 1,100 person town above the good of the globe as a whole. Nations cavalierly go about business with this type of worldview, but it’s not what I’d expect of a frontier town. I would have expected naturalists, worries about the environment and how the melting snow and ice could negatively impact the land on which they live and the world in which they live. But economics changes all of that…corporations change all of that…capitalism changes all of that. The show-me-the-money attitude of this little town truly frightens me.

The other aspect that I find interesting here is that a shipping company has bet on global warming. Forget Kyoto, this is capitalism gone way awry. There’s no incentive to stop global warming, so we’ll make a bet that it’s going to happen and try to make some money off of it…again…all others be damned. Any thoughts?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is nothing Churchill can do to stop global warming. Single car commuters in New York, Chicago, or Miami are not going to heed the call of the 'Churchill Naturalist'.

Ottoway does not speak for the people of Churchill, although, in terms of press I suppose he should - by title if nothing else. There is a reason why Ottoway is no longer employed by the town.

Honestly, the economics of that town are much more reliant on tourism sparked by polar bear than it is by Port business. If the polar bear goes --- in a sense, so does the town.

In reality, there are two things the town can do:

1. Accept climate change and try to adapt

2. Stick it's head in the sand and hope that it's business as usual - 1930's style

There is nothing Churchill can do to stop single car commuters in New York ... the scope of the problem in those centers is much greater than the scope of the problem in Churchill.

In terms of your comments ... your journalism ... or is simply your lack of anything better to do - I suppose Churchill should just stick it's in the sand, pretend that it's business as usual, and not adapt to the reality that you and your country is causing.

Capitalism gone awry ... nice quote, too bad it's a quote that is not founded in anything other than narcisistic type-writing.