In tiny `Tuk,' they man climate's front line (People little to blame, but feeling it most)

[Kadie]

In tiny `Tuk,' they man climate's front line
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley, Ap Special Correspondent – 1 hr 28 mins ago

TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories – Caught between rising seas and land melting beneath their mukluk-shod feet, the villagers of Tuktoyaktuk are doing what anyone would do on this windy Arctic coastline. They're building windmills.

That's wind-power turbines, to be exact — a token first try at "getting rid of this fossil fuel we're using," said Mayor Merven Gruben.

It's a token of irony, too: People little to blame, but feeling it most, are doing more to stop global warming than many of "you people in the south," as Gruben calls the rest of us who fill the skies with greenhouse gases.

They're feeling climate change not only in this lonely corner of northwest Canada, but in a wide circle at the top of the world, stretching from Alaska through the Siberian tundra, into northern Scandinavia and Greenland, and on to Canada's eastern Arctic islands, a circle of more than 300,000 indigenous people, including Gruben and the 800 other Inuvialuit, or Inuit, of the village they know as "Tuk."

Since 1970, temperatures have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average. People in Tuk say winters are less numbing, with briefer spells of minus-40 C (minus-40 F) temperatures. They sense it in other ways, too, small and large.

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This photo taken Saturday, Aug. 8, 2008, shows children riding their bikes in the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Seas rising from global warming and land sinking as permafrost thaws are threatening the Arctic community.
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)


This Aug. 8, 2009 photo shows an old dump filled with the U.S. military's trash when it operated a radar station is shown in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada. Seas rising from global warming and land sinking as permafrost thaws are threatening the Arctic community. Residents fear the dump will be flooded and its contaminants spread on and off shore.
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)


This July 24, 1996 photo released by the Government of Northwest Territories shows the Canadian Arctic community of Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Seas rising from global warming and land sinking as permafrost thaws are threatening the Canadian Arctic community. A beach barrier of small boulders has slowed the erosion of the peninsula, upper left. Geologists believe the protective Tuktoyaktuk Island, upper right, will erode away in 30-40 years, exposing the hamlet more to Arctic Ocean waves.
(AP Photo/Government of Northwest Territories)