Kivalina, Alaska: A Melting Village (page 3 of 4)

Lucy came to Kivalina-along with her parents and 6 of her 11 siblings-from Point Lay, 150 miles to the north, by dogsled and skin boat in 1943. "My dad supported us by hunting and trapping and selling furs," Lucy says. "We liked it here. It was nice and quiet and so rich and pretty-the beach was wide and full of tall grasses, and there were lots of willows and flowers. We had vegetables when we ate meat. There were blackberries, blueberries, and cranberries where the airport is. But now it's all just dust and gravel. It's sad; last summer I went up the island and there were cracks from ice melting inside the ground."

Lucy's brother-Colleen Swan's father, Joe, who lives 100 yards away-didn't take climate change seriously until last year. "They said global warming was melting the permafrost, but we never had problems," he says. "Here it was still frozen 10 or 12 feet down." Joe always stored seal and caribou meat in the ground, but in 2007 the ice cellar filled up with water and the meat rotted. Now, he says, "I believe in global warming."

Preserving meat is crucial for Kivalinans, who get 80 percent of their calories from what they hunt. According to Colleen, the four basic Inu_piat food groups are seal, whale, fish, and caribou: "When you don't have one for a while, you start craving it."

Enoch Adams agrees: "Other foods start tasting bad. You're starving and you don't even realize it. But Mom knows; she'll say, 'I need fish! I'm tired of caribou!' "

The hunting of different animals is closely tied to the phases of sea ice formation: Whales customarily appear in April, when channels begin to open, while ugruks (bearded seals) increase their numbers in late spring and early summer, as the ice breaks up.

In recent years, however, warmer weather has disrupted these patterns. "When I was growing up, ugruk season lasted the entire month of June," says Adams. "But since 2004 there's only a three-day window-the ice breaks up and then it's gone." Hunters used to establish whaling camps for several weeks, but now the ice seldom extends far enough to reach the mammals' migration routes. "Even if you got a big whale," says Joe Swan, "you wouldn't be able to pull it up on the ice-it might crack anywhere and float away."

The global-warming lawsuit isn't Kivalina's first foray into litigation. Soon after the Red Dog Mine-the world's largest zinc operation, located 50 miles to the east-began operating in 1989, dead fish started showing up in the Wulik River, Kivalina's primary source of freshwater. Examining the company's discharge reports, Colleen Swan found what appeared to be several permit violations. Enoch Adams and five other members of the Kivalina Relocation Planning Committee sued the mine's owner, Teck Cominco Alaska, Inc., for violating the Clean Water Act. In 2006 a U.S. District Court ruled in Kivalina's favor.

The fight against the power companies is far more quixotic. Judges have repeatedly ruled that global warming is a political issue for legislatures, not a matter for the courts, and many people agree. Nevertheless, Kivalina's argument-which is similar to the one that finally forced the big tobacco companies to pay billions in damages, after decades of failed attempts-is attracting widespread attention in the legal community. Stephen Susman, who defended Philip Morris in the 1990s, is one of nearly 20 attorneys who have signed on to represent the town. As Yale environmental law professor Daniel Esty observes, "The growing clarity of the science and understanding of emissions are giving these cases a greater bite and potential than they've had in the past"-particularly because of the conspiracy charge.

Before similar charges were leveled against the tobacco companies, most people viewed smokers not as victims but as willing participants in an ill-advised pastime. As Heather Kendall-Miller, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, puts it, "The prevalent point of view was, How can you hold tobacco companies responsible? Nobody is forcing people to smoke. But not only were tobacco companies profiting from smoking, they were making people believe it wasn't as bad as they thought."

Following that precedent, the Kivalina suit documents energy companies' support of trade associations such as the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which was founded by Philip Morris's PR firm to downplay the hazards of secondhand smoke and later refocused to discredit science about climate change. ExxonMobil is accused of channeling $16 million over a seven-year period to 42 organizations that promote false information on global warming. One is the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank cofounded by the late Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences who also worked as a research adviser for R.J. Reynolds. (The academy later dissociated itself from his findings.)

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