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Many people have, over the years, told me that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But no one ever told me that I shouldn’t judge a sunset (or sunrise) by its beauty. After all these years, a group of scientists finally pulled the curtain off of the golden lights of dawn and dusk. Musk oxen in the haze of a toxic north, Canning River Delta, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Photo by Subhankar Banerjee, 8 May 2001 There is a kind of Arctic pollution that a photo helped me to understand. Upon seeing one of my photographs people have asked, “Are these colors real or manipulated?” The photograph in question is of a group of musk oxen on the Canning River Delta that I had taken in early May 2001, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (see here). The temperature was about minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit; deep haze severely restricted visibility, as I lay flat on my belly with the lens touching snow to make the animals visible, barely. Indeed, I began to wonder how could there be such vibrant colors in an environment that is supposed to be free of pollution? I remember from my childhood many colorful sunrises and sunsets in Kolkata, where pollution in the air was all around us; it still is. There had to be particulates in the air to create those deep red-orange colors in the musk oxen photo, and I surmised that the source of the pollution was perhaps the nearby oil fields of Prudhoe Bay, but on probing further I also came to know about the Arctic haze that a handful of scientists have been studying. I don’t know if what you see in the photo is indeed Arctic haze or pollution from Prudhoe Bay, but, nevertheless, a fact sheet states: |
“Arctic haze is a thin, persistent, brown haze that causes limited visibility on the horizons of what had been previously very clear Arctic skies. It is most visible in the early spring and can be seen from northern Greenland, the Arctic coasts of Canada and Alaska, and occasionally in eastern Siberia. … The Arctic haze that accumulates by late winter, trapped under the dome of cold air, is as large as the continent of Africa! … Arctic haze is made up of a complex mix of microscopic particles and acidifying pollutants such as soot, hydrocarbons, and sulfates. Up to 90% of Arctic haze consists of sulfates. … We can find out where Arctic haze comes from because the chemicals that make up Arctic haze are like a footprint that can lead us back to their sources. The main sources of the sulfates found in Arctic haze are things like power plants, pulp and paper mills, and oil and gas activities. The other pollutants found in Arctic haze can be traced to industries such as vehicles, shipping and agriculture. The places in which these industries occur, and where these pollutants thus originate, are in the heavily populated and industrialized areas of Europe, North America and Asia.” |
The question is: What is the long–term stress acidification from Arctic haze might put on the fragile Arctic ecology? While we don’t know this yet, the haze might also be contributing to the rapid polar melt. “Industry, transportation, and biomass burning in North America, Europe, and Asia are emitting trace gases and tiny airborne particles that are polluting the polar region, forming an ‘Arctic Haze’ every winter and spring. Scientists suspect these pollutants are speeding up the polar melt,” the Science Daily reported in 2008. Casper David Friedrich’ Woman before the Rising Sun (Woman before the Setting Sun), circa 1818 (source: Wikimedia Commons). Furthermore, the team also found that “depictions of sunsets have gotten redder from the Industrial Revolution onwards, even during periods of no volcanic activity,” Konkel writes. “Artists, they suggest, are inadvertently capturing increases in pollution during the past 150 years.” Gas flaring at Gathering Center 1 production facility at Prudhoe Bay. Photograph by Pamela A. Miller, 1988. Furthermore, Iñupiaq cultural activist Rosemary Ahtuangaruak wrote in her testimony in the Arctic Voices anthology that in her community, Nuiqsut, in Arctic Alaska, between 1986 and 1997 there was “a 600 percent increase in respiratory patients in a village of 400 people.” As a community health aide, she was able to analyze the cause: |
“What was contributing to this increase in respiratory illnesses? The most overwhelming issue was that oil development around Nuiqsut had increased, and had gotten closer. The worst nights on call were nights when many natural gas flares occurred. Those flares release particles that traveled to us. Increased concentrations of particulate matter from flares occur during inversions, a bowl–like trap, with cold air trapped by warm air.” |
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released the “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability | Summary for Policy Makers” report. I don’t want to overstate the significance of art in addressing the Himalaya of environmental injuries that surround us today. I do want to point out, however, that while scientists have been telling us about earth’s climate in the deep past, and into the distant future, artists on the other hand, have been bearing witness, in the present. They always have.
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Subhankar Banerjee is a photographer, writer, and activist. His most recent book is Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (Seven Stories Press). He was recently Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Fordham University in New York, received Distinguished Alumnus Award from the New Mexico State University, and Cultural Freedom Award from Lannan Foundation. For more information visit his website www.subhankarbanerjee.org. |
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