Author:
Reposted by Betty
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 09:00:36 01/25/04 Sun
In reply to:
reposted by Betty
's message, "Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age" on 08:47:31 01/25/04 Sun
NFB-CBC documentary series carries dramatic message about global warming
Updated at 14:09 on January 22, 2004, EST.
The CBC and the National Film Board are collaborating on a dramatic new five-part documentary series, Arctic Mission. (CP/ handout)
TORONTO (CP) - February might not be the best month of the year to air a documentary series on the Canadian Arctic, especially one with a message about global warming.
Viewers might prefer, say, July. But Montreal-based writer-producer Jean Lemire is delighted that his project, Arctic Mission, was taken up jointly by the National Film Board and the CBC and will begin airing next Wednesday night on David Suzuki's The Nature of Things.
The way Lemire tells it, there's little time to lose.
"Because the polar regions are the most affected by climate change, it's clear that it's started already there," Lemire says. "That's why it was important for us to go there and look and find some evidence."
Magnificently photographed in high-definition digital video, the $6-million series carries some sobering, downright scary messages about an environmental shift that has been much discussed as a future phenomenon, but which is already under way in the Far North and headed our way.
Lemire's camera crews document such events as melting permafrost and the arrival of robins, ants, grizzly bears and moose seen in the Arctic for the first time in history. Suzuki says Inuit kids have been terrified by dragonflies, an insect they've never seen before.
Meanwhile, nomadic Inuit hunters and fishermen - who traditionally know their frozen territory but who are now on the front lines of climate change - are falling through ice that is much thinner than it's ever been.
"All their culture is expressed on the ice, hunting, everything, because of course that's the richest part of the Arctic for them," explains Lemire. "It's really changing fast. They are risking their lives more and more."
Suzuki says most of us live in air-conditioned lifestyles where the world out there doesn't intrude that much, until 15,000 people die in France from summer heat.
"We've had these devastating forest fires in B.C. . .and we've had drought in Vancouver. Now Vancouver's the heart of rainforest, and still our provincial government is fully determined to go full tilt and develop offshore oil and do everything to encourage more use of fossil fuels. Just madness."
Lemire concedes that global warming may be a misnomer, or at least is misunderstood. As the polar ice caps warm, the flow of icy water southward will have a cooling effect at first on the more temperate climates.
"If we have more melting of ice in the Arctic, the Gulf Stream will start to slow down. If the Gulf Steam slows down, part of Europe will probably get colder. But the average for the entire planet will still be warmer."
Suzuki says the Swedes have already detected a slowing of the Gulf Stream.
"If that heat engine stops, Europe is going to be plunged into a catastrophic freezing period that will be like nothing we've seen."
Lemire says the biggest impact, though, will be in the form of wild weather.
"We won't have a big change in terms of quantity (of rain or snow) but in terms of big storms, big floods and all that."
While the series doesn't preach overtly, its message is clear. Lemire says that unlike acid rain, which was blamed directly on industrial pollution, greenhouse gases are a shared fault, part consumer, part transport and part big companies.
"Now we are part of the problem so we have to be part of the solution as well."
Lemire believes the CBC and the NFB should be collaborating on more such projects. He says it is very expensive to go to the Arctic and study it up close, and that while Japanese and American scientists are up there, most experts are working at home on computer models.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
|
Feedback: 