{"id":42845,"date":"2019-01-16T15:43:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T20:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42845"},"modified":"2019-01-16T15:43:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T20:43:29","slug":"climate-disaster-is-upon-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42845","title":{"rendered":"Climate Disaster Is Upon Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"article-header-content\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/climate-disaster-is-upon-us\/\">Climate Disaster Is Upon Us<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><strong>The question is no longer whether or not we are going to fail, but how are we going to comport ourselves in the era of failure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"byline\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"article-body  abody-302056 \">\n<div class=\"article-body-inner\">\n<aside class=\"left full-width-mobile image wide indent\"><a class=\"gallery imgHover\" title=\"Ice falls from Margerie Glacier into Glacier Bay, Alaska. (Kimberly Vardeman, CC BY 2.0)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/margerie-glacier-alaska-cc-img.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/margerie-glacier-alaska-cc-img.jpg?scale=896&amp;compress=80\" alt=\"Margerie Glacier\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Ice falls from Margerie Glacier into Glacier Bay, Alaska. <span class=\"credits\">(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/kimberlykv\/5001065317\/in\/photolist-8BVLu6-8Uceaz-2Lvw3-je9wq-8BYTro-gz8gg-8C3Awe-qQeaqP-336Eba-2NoFr-8CXuSy-PxWxP-dwt9tq-6bXD1m-22RehPb-oWxopr-8BUAaH-bDY5WP-azAjhZ-8BUz36-pEJBKW-cA2Uyo-885A6j-Dfmeke-7QL1xZ-digoXa-cJ4cim-72SNA8-hzNGSM-mxP2fD-NB3jAU-2aG7zV8-885jps-8BULik-21PfpAY-21Pf4ME-8BUBeK-DfmeVn-ELfc3o-2LNw7-8BYYgQ-8BUMqr-22ReuDd-9GGTu-P33toy-2NorP-51DzTm-8wvVSx-2ey58V-5NJf\">Kimberly Vardeman,<\/a> CC BY 2.0)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>\u2019m standing atop Rush Hill on Alaska\u2019s remote St. Paul Island. While only 665 feet high, it provides a 360-degree view of this tundra-covered, 13-mile-long, seven-mile-wide part of the Pribilof Islands. While the hood of my rain jacket flaps in the cold wind, I gaze in wonder at the silvery waters of the Bering Sea. The ever-present wind whips the surface into a chaos of whitecaps, scudding mist, and foam.<\/p>\n<p>The ancient cinder cone I\u2019m perched on reminds me that St. Paul, was, oh so long ago, one of the last places woolly mammoths could be found in North America. I\u2019m here doing research for my book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1620972344\/ref=nosim\/?tag=tomdispatch-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The End of Ice<\/em><\/a>. And that, in turn, brings me back to the new reality in these far northern waters: As cold as they still are, human-caused climate disruption is warming them enough to threaten a possible collapse of the food web that sustains this island\u2019s Unangan, its Aleut inhabitants, also known as \u201cthe people of the seal.\u201d Given how deeply their culture is tied to a subsistence lifestyle coupled with the new reality that the numbers of fur seals, seabirds, and other marine life they hunt or fish are dwindling, how could this crisis not be affecting them?<\/p>\n<p>While on St. Paul, I spoke with many tribal elders who told me stories about fewer fish and sea birds, harsher storms, and warming temperatures, but what struck me most deeply were their accounts of plummeting fur-seal populations. Seal mothers, they said, had to swim so much farther to find food for their pups that the babies were starving to death before they could make it back.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Climate Disaster Is Upon Us The question is no longer whether or not we are going to fail, but how are we going to comport ourselves in the era of failure? Ice falls from Margerie Glacier into Glacier Bay, Alaska. (Kimberly Vardeman, CC BY 2.0) I\u2019m standing atop Rush Hill on Alaska\u2019s remote St. Paul [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,12818,6003,23401],"class_list":["post-42845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-disaster","tag-dahr-jamail","tag-the-nation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42846,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42845\/revisions\/42846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}