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Thank you Nick not only for your introduction but for the opportunity you gave me to spend several months, as a paid private detective, digging deeply into the subject of climate change in our own backyards. I’m personally inspired by your passion and commitment to this issue.

Thanks also to the Arctic Energy Alliance for organizing this gala event and shining the spotlight on some of the wisest users of energy in the North.

And lastly, I thank all of you distinguished guests. When I walked in here tonight, above the [xxx, food offered] I smelled...a revolution. Now, as I look out over this diverse crowd of enlightened politicians, business leaders, captains of industry, entrepreneurs from both the private and public sectors, environmental leaders, and educators, I’m convinced, by your very presence here tonight, that you are the architects, the forerunners, the advance guard of an energy revolution that will soon sweep across the Northwest Territories...I’m not kidding. If we don’t lead this charge, who will?

Or...maybe you were just hoping for a free meal?! Either way, one of the prices of that meal is listening to me. I’m going to share with you some up-to-date dispatches from the frontlines of global climate change...That’s us. Again, I’m talking about our own beloved backyards.

I’ll serve up some facts – some of them, alarming – about what’s really happening in the nwt. But more than information, I want to leave you with some inspiration. Inspiration to think creatively, to build new working relationships, to motivate you to act in ways that cut our greenhouse gas emissions, energy costs, and vulnerability to the whims of external market forces and fuel supplies. I want to inspire all of you to help sow the seeds of a new energy awareness and practical wisdom across the NWT and beyond.

To begin with, what better inspiration is there than understanding the impacts of unchecked climate change on our northen environment and economy. From the following stories and images, I hope you’ll agree that this home-grown energy revolution of which I speak is not only necessary but quite do-able. So buckle up for what I’m calling a motivational talk.

While I was preparing this paper for Nick, the one you have on your table, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore received the world’s most prestigious award for his efforts in raising awareness on climate change: the Nobel Peace Prize. CBC declared that Gore’s award clearly shows that climate change is a “planetary emergency” and hailed his work as a catalyst for changing global consciousness on the issue. On the other hand, the National Post cynically greeted Gore’s accomplishment as “a coup for junk science” and branded his Oscar winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth, as a “Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.”

Are such conflicting headlines about climate change just part of a media circus designed to sell newspapers? If climate change is indeed a planetary emergency, what can we possibly do about it? How real is this issue anyway? For answers to these kinds of questions, there really is no better place to look...than Canada’s North.

Our northern land is huge and climate change is happening here faster than anywhere else on earth. For all you number crunchers: the average global temperature has climbed by 0.6 degrees C in the past century. Meanwhile, in northwestern Canada, winter temperatures have risen 4 to 7 degrees in just half that time. Our temperatures are rising almost 3 times faster than the global average.

Now this winter you may not believe these figures and I’d love to talk more about this during our question period if you like!

The trouble is, northern climate change impacts are widely scattered across diverse ecosystems, communities, and cultures. Most of us, wherever we live, can’t grasp the enormity of climate change because we only see our little piece of the bigger picture.

The 18 stories we’ve told in this paper are like a cluster of disconnected puzzle pieces, each showing a unique, local face of climate change. Like the image of this gull, made up of tiny scenes of birds and flowers, you can only see the big picture by putting the pieces together. Only by putting these stories together, by blending the voices of both scientists and local residents, can we begin to see the grand scale at which climate change is already affecting the North and what it means for our future.

1. SEA ICE DECLINE

à Satelite view 1: ice decline series Let’s start with one of the biggies: sea ice. It’s no news: the Arctic sea ice is shrinking. It may even disappear this century. From 1979 through 2001, the rate of sea ice loss was over 6.5% per decade. Beginning in 2002, this rate rose to 7.3 percent. Since then it has jumped to almost 9 percent per decade. Year after year, records are broken for the rate and area of ice loss. You can see on this image the observed extent of September sea ice: 1979 (yellow), & 2005 (white area). Predicted extent for 2015 (red line) & 2040 (green line). By 2040, when, God willing, I’ll be 85 years old, when my daughters will enter their 50s, summer sea ice will only occur in narrow bands along the high arctic coast – if at all.

à Reveal quote: “Now you never see any ice during the summer,” says John Keogak of Sachs Harbour. “It used to come close to the settlement. That was a good time. Lots of seals.”

The loss of Arctic sea ice is one of the strongest proofs that our planet’s climate is changing – and fast. But more than a symbol of global warming, shrinking sea ice feeds directly into rising temperatures worldwide. As the bright sea ice melts, less energy is reflected into space, more is absorbed by the darker ocean waters. This creates a classic feedback loop in which melting sea ice causes yet more ice to melt by further raising temperatures across the planet.

2. POLAR BEARS

So what’s really happening with our polar bears? We’ve all seen the pictures: the forlorn “poster child” of global climate change standing on a pan of melting ice. As sea ice shrinks at a faster pace each year, predictions of the polar bear’s extinction are grabbing headlines around the world. Yet, the popular press is still divided on this threat.

For example, in December 2006, several Canadian newspapers declared that, “of the 13 [polar bear populations] in Canada, 11 are either stable or increasing in size.” You want the truth? In 2005 polar bear specialists from all Arctic nations unanimously endorsed a status report stating that, of those 13 populations, two were severely depleted, five were declining, only five were stable, and one might be increasing. Of these, the Southern Beaufort Sea population – whose habitat includes the NWT coast – is among the worse off, having declined by 17 per cent over the past two decades.

In a paper called “Melting Under Pressure”, leading polar bear biologists, Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher stress that, though the timing of climate change impacts on polar bears will vary in different regions, all populations will eventually suffer with a continued decline in sea ice. Over the long term, they see only one way to avert the loss of this species and the local culture and economy it supports: à Reveal quote: “If the population of this planet is truly concerned about [polar bears], we need to collectively reduce greenhouse gas production significantly and quickly.”

Another dramatic way to check the pulse of northern climate change: our ice roads. What’s up with them? Two winters ago, the operating season for the Tibbit-Contwoyto ice road was almost cut in half – down to 42 days from 76 days the year before. When high temperatures shut the road, several huge, energy-intensive mines had received only a fraction of their site machinery, building materials, and fuel. Almost 200 truckloads had to be flown by Hercules to the Ekati mine alone. The number of cargo flights per week almost tripled from 7 to 20. This schedule continued for weeks, adding millions of dollars to the mine’s transportation costs.

Even before this early closure, many trucks operated at half-capacity due to unstable ice conditions. Ice roads connecting communities were also impacted by the unusually high temperatures.

Was this just an isolated bout of warm winter weather? Long-term trends for the Mackenzie River ice crossing suggest not. Over the last 40 years, operation time for this crossing has shortened by 30 days. During that same time, the region’s temperatures rose by about 6 degrees. Averaged across the NWT, the season for safe operation of winter roads is now 40 per cent shorter than it was in 1985.

It appears certain that a warming climate will continue to nibble away at our ice roads, those temporary transportation corridors so vital to northern commerce and communities.

So what’s up, really, with our permafrost? A good place to answer this is right in our communities. To help understand the impacts of melting ground on the stability of building foundations, Natural Resources Canada did a case study of five communities across the NWT.

The results of this first-of-its-kind study shed a glaring light on the real costs of potential climate change impacts in northern Canada. Of the communities studied, Inuvik, long considered “a hot spot” in terms of permafrost hazards, stands to lose the most, with foundation damages likely in up to 75% of its existing buildings. In a fast warming climate scenario, the cost of doing nothing to prepare for permafrost decay in Inuvik alone could reach $120 million[1] – and that’s just for foundations, not to mention cracked windows, damaged drywall, stuck doors, broken plumbing, cold air leaks, or bent chimneys causing smoke or fire hazards. The estimates don’t include such chronic irritants caused by melting ground.

In all communities assessed, this study concluded that proactive adaptation strategies – such as reinforcing foundations before major thawing begins – could reduce costs by about two-thirds. The take-home message: in adapting to the impacts of thawing permafrost, whether on building foundations, roads, or industrial infrastructure, we can pay less now to do it right, or pay more later – much more – by taking a “wait and see” approach and doing nothing to get ready for a warmer climate.

“The world is a mine,” former Premier Joe Handley once said, “and the North is a canary. Our land is literally melting beneath our feet.”

5. FOREST FIRES

What about forest fires? Many climate models for northern Canada predict an upward spiral in wildfires due to warmer temperatures, drier forests, parched soils and a longer burning season. For example, during the summer of 1994 fires burned a record-breaking 3 million hectares of forest, an area over five times the size of Prince Edward Island. That fire season, 627 fires were fought – over 3 times above average – costing taxpayers 30 million dollars. The next summer was almost as bad, with 2.8 million hectares burned. That year, all of the 900 residents of Fort Norman, now Tulita, and Norman Wells were evacuated because of a massive fire that burned out of control for almost 2 months and which, alone, cost us 3 million dollars.

2004 was another blockbuster year for forest fires from northern Alberta to Alaska. In the NWT, the number of fires doubled, covering nearly seven times more forest than the previous summer. That same year Alaska suffered the largest total forest loss in its 56-year record.

The blazing summers of ‘94 and ‘95 were only 1.5^oC hotter than normal. In contrast, climate predictions for the Mackenzie valley call for a 4 to 5 degree increase in summer temperatures and a forest fire season that could soon be 30 to 50 days longer than today.

It was like the hand of God went up and stopped the fire smack at the edge of town! - Jim LeFleur, Tulita

6. CULTURAL IMPACTS

Like melting sea ice, it’s no news that climate change is clawing at the heart of our land-based cultures. How? Hunters in Lutsel K’e cut short their spring hunting season due to rapid thawing on the East Arm of Great Slave Lake. Long-time fishermen in Hay River can’t read the weather like they used to and depend entirely on radio or TV forecasts. In the traditional community of Trout River, elders complain they can’t finish scraping and drying their moose hides because of too much rain. Trappers from Fort Simpson can’t harvest fur-bearers during their peak fall condition due to slower, unpredictable freeze-ups. They also worry that warmer weather may ultimately decrease the global demand for furs. Families spending part of their summers at fish camps in the Mackenzie Delta discover that higher temperatures are causing fish meat to peel off the skin before it can be properly dried and preserved. Beluga hunters along the Beaufort Sea coast abandon traditional meat caches carved into the permafrost because, as the ground thaws, these caches can’t be trusted. Shrinking ice in the Beaufort Sea threatens the viability of traditional polar bear hunts. Snow conditions in the high Arctic have become so inconsistent that hunters can no longer count on building igloos for shelter during trips on the land. The list goes on and on.

From one end of the NWT to the other, climate change is making traditional land-based activities more difficult. The impacts vary from community to community, depending on what activities people want to pursue and to what extent they rely on a wage-based economy.

Climate change joins a long list of factors which already impact traditional lifestyle options. In a survey of climate change impacts across the Mackenzie basin, UBC researcher Stewart Cohen suggests that the pace of climate change could outstrip some communities’ ability to adapt. “There is a real concern that if future changes were fast, dramatic, and surprising,” he says, “traditional lifestyles would be at risk of disappearing.”

We can't read the weather like we used to. It's changing our way of life. We've always had extreme weather conditions. What is more extreme now is that there's no predictability. - Rosemarie Kuptana, Sachs Harbour

I’ve shared just half a dozen stories from the frontlines of climate change. There’s another dozen in the report on your table. Take one home. Find out what’s up with climate change and…caribou, water levels on Great Slave, river flow patterns on the Mackenzie, drill wastes in the Delta, new species coming north. Use the inspiration from these stories to think about what’s next. What can we do?

Shaking a fist at the sky is always a handy option.

One climate change survival guide suggests that we seriously consider buying a camel. Talk about resilience and adaptability! The camel is a low maintenance creature adapted to the heat, it eats anything from rose bushes to running shoes, provides nice camel-hair coats, offers milk with added aphrodisiac side effects, provides reliable transportation with relatively low carbon emissions, needs little water, and offers lots of nutritious meat when it finally breaks down after 50 years. Apparently the choicest cuts come from the hump.

Beating the heat might boil down to some simple, no cost, behavioural adaptations. For instance burrowing. A million wolves can’t be wrong and besides, we’ve lived in caves before. Pluck a hollow reed, jump in a lake and chuckle at all those Chicken Littles who thought that climate change meant the end of life as we know it. Here’s a quick easy fix: restructure your schedule to work at night when it’s cooler. Heavy panting is another option for cooling down. Even though humans aren’t fully equipped for panting like dogs, we may evolve that way by the time things really heat up.

Speaking of evolution, in this day of accelerated change we may be able to engineer our development to physically adapt to a new climate. Bigger ears to radiate heat. Green photosynthetically active skin to feed on all that carbon in the air, just like plants. Scales to avoid moisture loss, a pointy, shrewlike mouth to pick up insects, one of the few abundant life forms left on earth if things really hit the fan.

Now these are all of course last ditch survival strategies in the event of a total climate meltdown. In the meantime, there are many other things we can do to cut our emissions and adapt to inevitable impacts of climate change. As Nick said, “everything’s on the table”: how we light our homes and offices, how we heat them, how we move ourselves and our goods around, the very food we eat – all require energy which can be generated more sustainably and used more wisely.

I’m speaking to the converted here. We know we have the tools and technology to do this. What we need most is the wisdom and the guts to act. We need a larger energy context that only leaders like you can develop, market, and implement on a territory-wide scale. This is the energy revolution I talked about earlier.

As Nick mentioned, there’s already a revolution happening not far from us. In British Columbia. On February 19th Premier Gordon Campbell’s government became the first in North America to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. He boldly introduced a carbon tax. à Governer Arnold & hydrogen Hummer They haven’t even done this in California, where Campbell’s closest ally on climate change, Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger, is watching with keen interest!

“It is very useful for us to see different jurisdications experimenting,” said Schwarzenegger’s top energy advisor, David Crane, in a recent Globe & Mail interview. “From a California standpoint, BC is an incredibly interesting and progressive province. We are paying close attention to the the way they are building their [programs &] infrastructure.”

This inspires me. The whole world is watching BC right now. à Stephen Harper and Campbell Even Prime Minister Harper! So there I was last week, in Nick’s home town of Ft. Simpson. I’m surfing through the hotel’s 940 stations and my thumb freezes at channel 324 – BCLTV – BC legislative TV. Boring! But wait. What are they talking about? Campbell’s carbon tax! They’re putting it to work, planning to use these new tax revenues to switch BC’s remote northern communities from “noisy, smelly, expensive diesel generators” – sound familiar? – to clean, carbon free renewable sources.” I’m quoting their environment Minister, Barry Penner. There was virtually no debate in the house. I watched these politicians, on live tv, approve a quarter million carbon bucks to help green their remote communities.

What’s stopping us from doing something like that? The whole world could be watching us, learning from us. As Yellowknife’s Energy Coordinator, Mark Henry told me, we have, right now, a “perfect storm” of opportunity to move on innovative energy projects and programs. All the key players are talking about it – the public, the media, our politicians. For instance, two weeks ago today The Honorable Michael Miltenberger, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, tabled a major public document on the impacts of climate change on GNWT activities and what they’re doing – or plan to do – about it. There’s a ripeness and a readiness to act.

Imagine, heating this town with geothermal heat from the old Miramar gold mine. Mark Henry’s on it. Imagine, heating our sports multiplex, fire hall and city garage with waste heat from human sewage. He’s on that too. What Mark calls “fringe technology.” Imagine, spearheading a series of regional climate change action plans starting in the Deh Cho. Ecology North is on it. Imagine, launching a workable strategy for a carbon-free Northwest Territories. Andrew Robinson is on it. Just wait and see!

à Reveal these words: Imagination. Innovation. Ideas. Guts. We need more of that. These are valuable currencies the north should invest in. People like Mark Henry, all of tonight’s award winners, the Arctic Energy Alliance itself, and many others in this room too numerous to mention, you people embody the kind of practical wisdom I’m betting on. You are the leaders of our coming energy revolution. And I believe it’s already begun – can’t you feel it in this room?

When it comes to climate change, we hear a lot these days about tipping points, critical thresholds, and runaway warming of the planet. I want to conclude with an upbeat story about what I call, runaway wisdom.

Off the east coast of Japan, jutting far into the Pacific Ocean, is a loose chain of volcanic islands where lives the legendary “snow monkey”, Macaca fuscata. à Reveal Japan map This highly social animal has been studied in its wild, mountain habitat for many years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists started offering monkeys raw sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys developed quite a taste for sweet potatoes, but found the gritty sand unpleasant.

One day, an 18-month-old female named Imo solved this problem by washing her potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates started doing this and they, in turn, taught their mothers too.

Before the eyes of scientists, this “cultural innovation” spread slowly but surely among the monkey troupe. By 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this new skill. Other adults kept eating dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were down at the creek, washing their potatoes – the exact number isn’t known. Let’s say that, when the sun rose that morning, there were 99 monkeys on Koshima who’d learned this trick. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

Then it happened! By that evening almost all monkeys in the troupe were washing their potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological[2] breakthrough!

But notice: a most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then…jumped over the sea. Colonies of monkeys on other islands, even the mainland troupe at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Now if you dig a little deeper into this so-called Hundredth Monkey Effect, you’ll find that the behavioral science behind it has been called into question. Well-meaning skeptics call this story, at best, an “inspirational parable”. And I say: What’s wrong with that?

True or not, the Hundredth Monkey Effect suggests that when only a limited number of us know of a new way of understanding our world, a new way of acting, or, in more human terms, a new way of doing business, it remains the conscious property of a few. But, can we believe in a tipping point, a breakthrough, where a critical mass of minds ignites a kind of firestorm of runaway wisdom, and suddenly, like those monkeys, everybody’s doing it? Everybody’s using energy wisely?

I say, yes. We can believe this. We have to. As Nick said, no more excuses. time is running out.[3]

This ball is already rolling. And you can get behind it. The revolution has begun. And you can help lead it. Maybe in big showy ways, for instance, introducing a carbon tax or launching a “carbon-free NWT campaign”. Or maybe in more subtle ways. Call them guerilla tactics. Like when the man who invited me to this podium, Marino Casebeer, asked me out to lunch the other day. I don’t know what he said or did, maybe it was just sitting in his presence. But the instant I left the Vietnamese noodle house, I made a beeline for Arctic Appliance and bought a new fridge that’s 20 times more efficient than the old beater in my kitchen. I tell you, Marino Casebeer, Andrew Robinson, and their foot soldiers – they’re definitely monkeys to be reckoned with!

It’s a fast changing world out there. But if we think globally and act locally, there’s a lot we can do to prepare for those changes with a little help from fellow revolutionaries, like tonight’s award winners…à Reveal AEA logo and the arctic energy alliance itself.

[1] the same price realm as the deh cho bridge $160M but not nearly so sexy

[2] Ideology: A set of beliefs, values, or opinions that shape the way an individual or a group thinks, acts and understands the world

[3] “Most impacted, least to blame?” We must set a worthy example of GHG reductions. Canadians emit an average of 22 tonnes of carbon a year. In the NWT, the carbon released from all activities is almost twice that, at over 40 tonnes per person. This represents 40 times the level that the United Nations says we need to slow down climate change.