I sympathize with the plight of the Inuit. They are losing not just their way of life, but the very place they call home. Still, there is a certain degree of hypocrisy associated with a lawsuit against the world's largest source of climate-changing emissions. Inuit are among the biggest users, per capita, of fossil fuels, due in part to their extreme climate, but also due to their failure to embrace alternative sources of fuel.

As Sheila Watt-Cloutier points out, no one is more familiar with the effects of climate change than the Inuit. And yet, they have done nothing to take advantage of new clea-energy technologies that, while still prohibitively expensive in the South, are more than economically attractive in the remote off-the-grid communities of Nunavut and other Inuit homelands.

The Inuit case could only benefit if they cleaned up their own act first. While their numbers are too small to make a global difference to the climate, freeing themselves from fossil-fuel dependence would go a long way toward claiming the high ground, as it were, but it melts.

James Hrynyshyn
blog: islandofdoubt.net

Their whole ecosystem is at risk from CO2 emmission.

The other day I read in our local newspaper that there is a crisis along the Pacific Coast.  Because the North Wind did not blow down the coast this year there was no upwelling of cooler water along the coast and the zooplanktons have died from a 7+ degree rise in water temperature.  As a result there are no feeder fish for the species up the food chain and masses of sea birds have died. Along the Atlantic Coast carcasses of seldom seen rare dolphins and other denzins of the deep litter the beaches in mass strandings. Climatologists have told us these will be the signs that we are at the point of no return and the oceans are dying. If the oceans die, we die as a species. Meanwhile, our president has his minions revising environmental reports to hide what is happening. We can run but we can't hide from this impending disaster. What is happening in the Arctic is just a sample of things to come...

Nice blogging!!  Onward!!

Thanks amazingdrx!

Amazingly, some people still hold the simplistic view that global warming is a good thing for humanity. The situation in the Arctic, and the plight of the inhabitants of Tuvalu, are powerful statements to the contrary. And we needn't think that we in the U.S., with all our power, wealth and technological know-how, will be spared any trouble and inconvenience.  We are all in this together, and we all need to work together.

"...some people still hold the simplistic view that global warming is a good thing for humanity"

My favorite example of this is the wing nut environmental taunt that then the oil tankers will have a shorter trip across the arctic ocean, once the ice is gone.  

Hehey, those darn fundamentalist lunatics.

I tell 'em they can heat their trailers for free with nuke-you-ler waste, neehawww.

Heya dreads -- Yep, saw that CEI article; I think we link to it from mine.  Responding to what you posted on sustainablog: I hate to spare many pixels entertaining CEI-style hacks of legal reason, but here is the reason this bears little resemblance to the tobacco suits:  It involves international human rights law, and the right of an indigenous people to live according to its traditional culture and lifestyle.  Not that this is always respected by others, but it's an established facet of the international human rights system.

Casting the Inuit as graspers at potentially lucrative legal restitution is of a piece with demanding they resolve all the internal conflicts of their modern-day lifestyles before taking action on global warming (while we go on existing within ours): beside the point.  Sure, individuals have individual motivations, which I can't speak to based on this article.  But if you look at the history of the ICC, you'll see a group that has been active on the political stage on behalf of the Inuit as a people for some time.

Yes, you did indeed link to another version of that article with your Chris Horner link - missed it first go around. Just want you to know that I'm not trying to take uncredited snipes of your links!

Anyway, yes, agreed that the tobacco/climate change comparison is spurious at best - just knee-jerk right-wing rhetoric.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier's contention that US greenhouse gass emissions are violating Inuit human rights is a bloody joke. Does Watt-Cloutier think India, China and Russia (just to name a few other global polluters) get their power from teams of monkeys running on treadmills? Obvious her self-righteous stance and perhaps limited intellect leaves her vulnerable to the trend of America-bashing that's all the rage these days, because surely the greenhouse gas spewing from her Inuit brothers' and sisters' diesel heated homes, diesel generated electricital plants, gas burning snowmobiles and diesel/gas burning pickup trucks contribute nothing to overall global climate change... what a hypocrite.