Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North

American Fuel for a Global Apocalypse

143 American Fuel for a Global Apocalypse At the 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that argued the United States is legally responsible for climate changes that are destroying “the Arctic environment” and “hunting-based economy of Inuit.”1 Though the United Nations reported prior to the conference that Canada’s emissions had increased by 24 percent and the United States’ by 13 percent between 1990 and 2003,2 the Inuit Circumpolar Conference only singled out the latter nation. The reason for this decision was not only because the science indicates the United States is “the largest emitter of greenhouse gases,” but also because its Republican government had not joined “the international effort.” In contrast, Canada’s Liberal government that preceded Prime Minister Harper’s 2006 Conservative election had ratified a national commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and was, apparently , just performing badly. South of the border, a more overt and dismissive denial of this international response and related climate research was displayed from the moment George W. Bush first publicly spoke about the issue as president in 2001: “We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America.”3 It was because of this unconscionable attitude and resulting policies that the Inuit Circumpolar Conference claimed the United States bears responsibility for the destructive impacts of Sila’s northern warming. The approach President George W. Bush took to climate change had a familial history stretching back to when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began its interdisciplinary endeavour in the early 1990s. It was at this time that his Climate Culture Change 144 father, Republican President George H. W. Bush, inaugurated America’s conservative approach to climate research by releasing a memorandum that proposed “the best way to publicly deal with concern about global warming would be to raise the many uncertainties.”4 Similar actions became prevalent in his son’s government eight years later and then in Harper’s Canadian Conservatives, even as the ipcc and Arctic Climate Impact Assessment documented a heightened scientific consensus.5 In the first official post-election response to the question of the Kyoto Protocol and a policy for reducing fuel consumption, President George W. Bush’s White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was emphatic: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.6 Influencing this Republican conservation of the “American way” from what was portrayed as flawed climate policy and research was, as will be discussed, a unique blend of corporate fossil fuel and fundamental Christian interests. While the energy sector has an obvious financial stake in delaying any reduction in fossil fuel consumption, Kevin Phillips explains some powerful Christian interests were also supporting the Republican government’s delaying approach because climate change was seen as “irreconcilable with the Book of Genesis.”7 He clarifies that the economically conservative executives of energy and automotive industries did not have to believe in the end times of their Christian partners. Rather, there was simply an alignment between their concern with delaying climate and fuel policies and the politics of “the economically undemanding religious right.”8 Offering a related analysis that resonates with the wasteland economizing described in the previous chapter, Bill Moyers writes the energy sector’s view of American Fuel for a Global Apocalypse 145 “the environment as ripe for the picking” and the fundamental Christians’ regard of “the environment as fuel for the fire that is coming” coalesced in “President Bush’s approach to the climate and environment.”9 For the Inuit represented by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference petition, this cultural defence was seen as having a global impact on the North that some climate research portrayed in terms as dark as the Christians. Even though the ipcc’s most likely scenario has been the gradual continuation of warming over the next two centuries due to rising greenhouse gases, it has, with each successive report, recognized an increasing possibility of more abrupt projections that have an almost apocalyptic feel. This chapter not only examines the way in which the Republican alliance to conserve American culture has fuelled a dark sorcerous impact...