Climate change puts the world’s traditional way of life at risk

Ilulissat. Jørgen Kristensen grew up in a village in northern Greenland, and his closest friends were his stepfather’s sled dogs. Most of his classmates were dark-haired Inuit; he was different. When he was bullied at school for his light hair – inherited from his Danish father from the continent whom he never met – the dogs came to him.

The first time he went out ice fishing alone with his animals was when he was nine years old. They fueled the beginning of a lifelong love and Kristensen’s career as a five-time Greenlandic dog sled champion.

“I was just a child. But many years later, I started thinking about why I love dogs so much,” Kristensen, 62, told AP.

“The dogs were a great support,” he added. “They lifted my spirits when I was sad.”

For more than a thousand years, dogs have pulled sleds across the Arctic for Inuit seal hunters and fishermen. But this winter, in the city of Ilulissat, about 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, it is not possible to do so.

Instead of sliding on snow and ice, Kristensen’s sled bounces on dirt and rock. Pointing to the hills, he said this is the first time he can remember there being no snow – or ice on the bay – in January.

Rising temperatures in Ilulissat are causing permafrost to melt, buildings to sink and pipes to crack, but they also have consequences that ripple across the rest of the world.

The nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier is one of the most active and fastest-moving glaciers on the planet, sending more icebergs into the sea than any other glacier outside Antarctica, according to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization. As the climate warms, the glacier has retreated and shed ice blocks faster than ever, contributing significantly to sea level rise from Europe to the Pacific islands, according to NASA.

Thawing could reveal untapped deposits of critical minerals. Many Greenlanders believe this is why US President Donald Trump turned their island into a geopolitical flashpoint with his demands to own it and his previous insinuations that the North American country could take it by force.

In the 1980s, winter temperatures in Ilulissat were often around minus 25 degrees Celsius, Kristensen said.

But today, he explained, there are many days when the temperature is above freezing, and can sometimes reach 10 degrees Celsius.

Kristensen noted that he now has to collect snow for the dogs to drink during a trip because there is none along the route.

Although Greenlanders have always adapted – and may make wheeled dog sleds in the future – the loss of ice affects them deeply, said Kristensen, who now runs his own company and shows tourists his Arctic homeland.

“If we lose dog sledding, we are losing large parts of our culture. That scares me,” he told AP, pursing his lips and with tears in his eyes.

In winter, hunters should be able to take their dogs deep into the pack ice, Kristensen explained. The ice sheets act as “great bridges” connecting Greenlanders to hunting grounds, but also to other Inuit communities across the Arctic in Canada, the United States and Russia.

“When the sea ice came before, we felt completely open along the entire coast and we could decide where to go,” Kristensen said.

This January, there was no ice at all. Driving a dog sled on ice is like being “completely without limits, like on the longest and widest highway in the world,” he described. Not having that is “a very big loss.”

Several years ago, the Greenland government had to provide financial support to many families on the island’s northern tip after the sea ice did not freeze enough to allow hunting, said Sara Olsvig, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

The warmer climate also makes life more dangerous for fishermen who have traded in their dog sleds for boats, because there is more rain instead of snow, explained Morgan Angaju Josefsen Røjkjær, Kristensen’s business partner.

When snow falls and is compressed, air is trapped between the flakes, giving the ice its bright white color. But when rain freezes, the ice that forms contains little air and looks more like glass.

A fisherman may see white ice and try to avoid it, but ice formed by rain takes on the color of the sea, and that is dangerous because “it can sink you or make you fall off your boat,” Røjkjær warned.

Climate change, Olsvig said, “affects us deeply,” and is amplified in the Arctic, which “warms three to four times faster than the global average.”

Pollution

Over its lifetime, the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier has retreated about 40 kilometers, said Karl Sandgreen, director of the Ilulissat Ice Fjord Center, dedicated to documenting the glacier and its icebergs.

Looking out the window at hills that would normally be covered in snow, Sandgreen described mountain rock exposed by melting ice and a valley within the formerly ice-covered fjord, where “now there is nothing.”

Pollution also accelerates melting, Sandgreen said, describing how the Sermeq Kujalleq melts from the top down, unlike Antarctica’s glaciers, which largely melt from the bottom up as sea temperatures rise.

This is aggravated by two factors: the black carbon or soot expelled by ship engines, and the residue from volcanic eruptions. They cover snow and ice with dark material and reduce the reflection of sunlight; Instead, they absorb more heat and accelerate melting. Black carbon has increased in recent decades with the growth of shipping traffic in the Arctic, and nearby Iceland has regular volcanic eruptions.

Many Greenlanders told the AP that, in their opinion, the melting ice is the reason why Trump – a leader who has called climate change “the biggest scam in history” – wants to own the island.

“Their agenda is to seize the minerals,” Sandgreen said.

Since Trump returned to office, fewer U.S. climatologists have visited Ilulissat, Sandgreen said. The US president needs to “listen to the scientists” who document the impact of global warming, he added.

Kristensen said he tries to explain the consequences of global warming to tourists he takes on dog sled rides or iceberg tours. He noted that he tells them that Greenland’s glaciers are as important as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

International summits, such as the United Nations climate talks in November in the city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon, play a role, but it is just as important to “teach children around the world” the importance of ice and the oceans, along with subjects like mathematics, Kristensen said.

“If we don’t start with children, we can’t really do anything to help nature. We can only destroy it,” Kristensen said.