Threatened by warming, Arctic people file suit against US

[cosmicone]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051207/wl_canada_afp/climateunusjustice_051207182757

MONTREAL (AFP) - The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.

"For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct," said Robert Corell, who spearheaded an Arctic climate impact assessment.

More than 150,000 Inuit, formerly called eskimos, are spread throughout the vast frozen northern territories of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia.

[greyl]

1. Wow, I love this.

I wish them the fairest of judges.

[MissMarple]

2. Perhaps they should include the oil industry in that petition.

""High in the Arctic, in our interior and along our coasts, the country we know is being transformed," he said.

"Winters are growing milder, summers hotter and more severe, there is plant life where before there was none; there is water where before there was ice. Our permafrost is thawing -- and releasing methane gas into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change itself."

"Within short decades, the Northwest Passage, the famously un-navigable thoroughfare of history, may be passable -- a striking and unsettling example of our delicate balance succumbing to untenable strain," Martin added.

The United States, with only five percent of the world's population, emits some 25 percent of all harmful greenhouse gases."

[TX-RAT]

3. Who did they file suit against, the last time it warmed up?

[Barrett808]

4. " We will not become a footnote to globalization."

Nice. Sounds like the Zapatistas.

[pushycat]

5. ANWR and Inuits - didn't they want the drilling for the local $ ?

[texpatriot2004]

6. Yeah. Good for them. They are right. nm

[badgervan]

7. A Snowball's Chance in Hell

This should be interesting. Does anyone really think that boy george and his oil buds really give a gnat's eyebrow what happens to anyone but them?

[Moderator]

8. kick

[barb162]

11. kick

[barb162]

9. Inuit sue US over climate policy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4511556.stm


Last Updated: Thursday, 8 December 2005, 18:53 GMT
Inuit sue US over climate policy
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
People living in the Arctic have filed a legal petition against the US government, saying its climate change policies violate human rights.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) claims the US is failing to control emissions of greenhouse gases, damaging livelihoods in the Arctic.

Its petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demands that the US limits its emissions.

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average.
snip

[NVMojo]

10. bless these people for they have suffered dearly ...