The coldest places are ravaged by a warming world.
“I describe this as the Arctic paradox,” explorer and educator
Subhankar Banerjee said. “The very thing that is devastating the
Arctic—global warming—is the result of accumulation of greenhouse gases
that we see from the burning of coal, oil and gas. And these are the
very resources industry are entering the Arctic to extract and release.”
From his journey and journals, the photographer describes the melting
and retreat of sea ice at an unprecedented pace, and the effects of
that on the marine ecology. Simultaneously, and magnifying upon the
effects, permafrost is melting on the land, freeing tremendous volumes
of methane from primordial wetlands, accelerating the release of
climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Herds and entire
species perish in cycles of thaw and freeze as gales of worsening
weather savage the north.
“Because conditions there are so harsh,
everything grows very slowly, recovers very slowly,” Banerjee noted. “If
you damage the Arctic, it takes a long time to recover. There is a
tremendous provision of life there, but it is not like the tropics. It
is sparse. It is delicate. We have to understand that and respect that.”
Banerjee’s interest in the Arctic took him into the high latitudes as
an amateur observer with a gifted natural eye. He emerged an advocate
to professionals in high places.
An engineer by training with masters degrees in physics and computer
science, Banerjee came to photography late in life, but showed enough
instinctual talent to put together a book soon after he abandoned his
science career in full-time pursuit of his art.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land,
published by The Mountaineers Books in 2003, showed the fecundity of
life on the northslope of Arctic Alaska in all four seasons.
The images Banerjee collected over 14 months spent on the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) were dramatic enough to also persuade
the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to produce an
exhibit. Things got interesting for the lowkey Seattle resident.
The Smithsonian exhibit in Washington D.C. went up just as the Senate
began debating oil drilling in ANWR, a stated priority for President
George W. Bush in his first term. Proponents of drilling in the wildlife
refuge went to great lengths to describe the region as a lifeless void:
Gail Norton, Secretary of Interior, called it, “a flat white
nothingness;” Alaska Senator Ted Stevens described it as “empty… ugly…a
barren…frozen wasteland.”
The Smithsonian exhibit down the street from the Capitol gave lie to
these descriptions. Banerjee’s images show muskoxen, polar bears, willow
ptarmigan, caribou and other creatures inhabiting their ancient niches
on the snowy Arctic plains.
California Senator Barbara Boxer understood his quiet message. She
held up Banerjee’s book on the Senate floor, highlighting a dramatic
picture of a polar bear crossing sunlit sea ice. She recommended
everyone visit the display of Banerjee’s “breathtaking” photographs.
The administrative response was disheartening. Banerjee’s work was
swiftly, without notice, relocated from the main floor to a more obscure
basement gallery, and his informative captions were altered or deleted
altogether.
But the Smithsonian’s censorship backfired as international press
coverage spread Banerjee’s Arctic photos far and wide, giving them far
more exposure than they would’ve received without the political meddling
of the Smithsonian. The vote to drill in ANWR failed in the Senate and
the lifeways of the Pacific loon, Grizzly bear, Dall sheep, Arctic
ground squirrel and buff-breasted sandpiper quietly went on. Yet
national policy also went on, and energy directives advanced by Bush
proliferate under Obama. These events galvanized Banerjee.
“My photographs were quiet, they touched your emotions,” he said. “Now, with the pace of change, my words must be loud.”
His new book,
Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point,
brings together passionate first-person narratives from more than 30
prominent activists, writers and researchers who address issues of
climate change, resource extraction, environmental justice, natural
history, ecology and human rights.
The Obama administration has conditionally approved Shell’s plans to
drill 10 exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Drilling in
these remote areas—the first in offshore Arctic Alaskan waters—is seen
as risky, especially after the traumatizing BP
Deep Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Arctic Voices calls out against the effort to drill for oil in the far north.
We’ve had an unfortunate stealing of language,” Banjeree explained.
“Clean energy advocates talked about reducing our dependence on foreign
oil as a means to achieve that goal. This was taken up by the gas and
oil industry as a reason to increase domestic extraction, to—in
effect—worsen the conditions the phrase originally sought to address.
“Between oil extraction in the Arctic ocean, extractions from the Tar
Sands in Alberta, shale oil and shale gas in much of the Western United
States, deepwater drilling in the Gulf—and now a new emphasis on coal
extraction—all of these have accelerated in recent years. They have not
decreased,” he said. “Instead of taking the country to a cleaner energy
future, we are taking the country into the next century and beyond into a
fossil-fuel driven future.”
Obama’s U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and
Enforcement, under the Department of the Interior, declined to pursue an
environmental impact statement (EIS) for Shell’s plan to drill
exploratory wells. According to the agency, there was “no evidence that
the proposed action would significantly effect the quality of the human
environment.”
They instead issued a Finding of No Significant Impact.
Not so fast, responded a coalition of 14environmental organizations
and a coalition of native Inuit interests known as Resisting
Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL). In a letter sent
to the federal agency overseeing Shell’s drilling plans, they wrote,
“The proposed activity threatens a number of significant effects,
including effects to endangered Bowhead whales from drilling and ice–
breaking noise, effects from a very large oil spill, and cumulative
effects, and has the potential to harm subsistence activities that are
of central cultural significance to Arctic coastal communities.”
The groups want a full EIS “to analyze and disclose the effects of
the proposed drilling.” They maintain this is a clear requirement under
the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969.
The letter also points out, “The recommendations of National Commission on the BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill also strongly support preparation of an EIS for Shell’s exploration plan.”
Vice Admiral Roger T. Rufe, a 34-year veteran of the U.S. Coast
Guard, a former president and CEO of Ocean Conservancy, and former
director of operations and planning at the Department of Homeland
Security, discusses some of the risks inherent in oil drilling in this
remote region:
“The Arctic Ocean has one of the harshest climates on Earth. Even in
the summer, conditions are volatile, with sudden violent storms and
shifting sea ice. The shoreline is sparsely populated, with no roads
connecting the eight main villages to each other or to the rest of
Alaska. The nearest major seaport is 1,300 nautical miles away; the
nearest Coast Guard air station is 950 air miles. A spill cleanup effort
could take weeks to mount and then could suffer endless delays because
of foul weather.”
“Hard questions need to be asked about any oil company’s ability to
mount a response to a major oil spill in hurricane-force winds, high
seas, broken and shifting sea ice, subzero temperatures, and months of
fog and darkness,” Marilyn Heiman, director of the Pew Environment
Group’s Arctic program, told the
New York Times.
“The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are remarkable marine sanctuaries,”
Banerjee writes. “They’re home to estimated 10,000 endangered Bowhead
whales, estimated 3,600 to 4,600 threatened polar bears, more than
60,000 Beluga whales, Pacific walrus, three species of seals, numerous
species of birds and fish, and various tiny creatures all the way down
to the krill that makes much of that marine life possible.”
On May 25, 2012, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals issued a unanimous decision upholding the Obama Administration’s
permitting process, bringing Shell’s drilling plans one step closer
tofruition. Further appeals are pending in federal court.
The New York Times reports, “Shell has already invested nearly
$4 billion on its 10-year offshore leases and preparations for
exploration in the forbidding Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Its current
plan is to drill up to 10 exploratory wells in the two seas, potentially
leading to production by the end of the decade.”
