Nordic nations – Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland – are adding their voice to a growing worldwide consensus by sounding the alarm about an increase in the rate at which Arctic ice is melting: the thaw, caused by global warming, could soon be irreversible. With an eye on the upcoming Bali Conference on Climate Change the five nations (who all have Arctic territories) appealed to all governments to agree as soon as possible to a more far-reaching UN plan to curb greenhouse gases as a follow up to the Kyoto Protocol.
“The Arctic and the world cannot wait any longer,” environment ministers from the five nations said in a joint statement after talks in Oslo. “The climate is hurtling towards a turning point after which irreversible processes will have been set in motion,” they said of the Arctic thaw.
The ministers pointed up the fact that the ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank to 4.13 million square km (1.6 million square miles) by September 2007; this is the smallest it has been since satellite records began in 1979, and far worse than the low point in 2005. Naturally, the ice is now expanding as winter approaches, but is nevertheless smaller than in previous years.
The melt threatens the livelihoods of indigenous hunting peoples and wildlife such as polar bears and seals. The large-scale thaw is blamed by the UN climate panel on heat-trapping gases emitted by burning fossil fuels.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren warned that the melting of Arctic ice might already have reached a point of no return. “We may have passed the tipping point,” he said.
The Nordic nations declared that the conference of environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007 must reach agreement on “tangible measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases”. The Bali talks are meant to initiate two-year negotiations on a new climate treaty to take the place of the Kyoto Protocol with an eye to finalizing agreement at a UN conference in Copenhagen in late 2009.