(Florian Schulz /visionsofthewild.com)

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the great big man in the red suit and last-minute Christmas shopping.

I’m talking about the House GOP majority trying to deliver on their year-long assault on environmental and public health protections in the last two bills that will be passed by Congress this year.

The first is the omnibus spending bill that was passed by the House and Senate today. For the past two weeks, the GOP House Leadership and Appropriations Chairs have had a priority list of anti-environmental policy riders they had to have in any final spending bill. Some of those at the top of the list included blocking measures to require the clean up of industrial boilers and incinerators, cement kilns and power plants, and attempts to railroad Clean Water Act protections for streams, rivers and lakes. Removing protections for gray wolves in Wyoming and the Midwest were also on the list.

Thanks to the efforts of the White House, and Senate and House Democrats, none of these anti-environmental riders will become law in the final spending bill. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Arctic. A last-minute, backroom deal tacked on a measure that excludes oil companies from complying with Clean Air Act protections in the Arctic.

Caribou form large herds on the coastal plains north of the Brooks Range, one of the most splendid stretches of wilderness left in America. Arctic Refuge, Alaska. (Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

The Palmyra Atoll is a tropical coral reef island in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. It’s warm, tiny and far from the vast, frigid Arctic. And yet these distant, disparate places are as alike in one sense as any two places on Earth.

Each is an early victim of humankind’s addiction to fossil fuels and our constantly affirmed determination to stay addicted.

Like other low-lying communities around the world, the Palmyra Atoll, only a few feet from sea level, is quietly disappearing under rising ocean waters. As the Arctic melts—at a near-record pace—the ocean is warming and expanding. These islands and their inhabitants are literally at the water’s edge of global climate disaster.

But, while the evidence of global warming is clear and the science overwhelming, the unwillingness of nations to address this shared problem is perplexing. Even the Obama administration has taken actions that keep us tethered to the oil dependency that contributes so much to climate change.

Photo courtesy of laffy4k

Associated Press – “Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Second Lowest Level”
Sept. 15, 2011 – Last week, scientists reported that Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level since monitoring began more than 50 years ago. Earthjustice’s recent telepress conference on the issue brought together top scientists and NGOs to discuss the sea ice loss, ways that the loss of sea ice might relate to mid-latitude weather patterns, what the Arctic warming means for Greenland melt and rising sea levels, and the role that CO2 emissions and short-lived global warming pollutants like black carbon and methane play in causing ice melt; and where reductions of these pollutants can be made. Approximately 25 journalists called into the conference to hear such experts as Dr. Robert Dunbar, professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University’s Center for Ocean Solutions; James Overland, research oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Dr. Walter Meier, Research Scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

Earthjustice attorney Erika Rosenthal says the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice “is a powerful indicator of the rapid warming occurring throughout the Arctic….[which is] causing the extraordinary increase in the melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet that led scientists earlier this year to project a sea level rise of between 0.9 and 1.6 meters by the end of the century. For low-lying communities from the Pacific Islands to Bangladesh to Florida this would be calamitous.” The news story has been picked up by the Associated Press and USA Today, and continues to make headlines in several national and local publications, including NPR and the Vancouver Sun.
 
Additional coverage:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/arctic-sea-ice-shrinks-lowest-level-14528576
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2011-09-15/hot-summer-record/50419070/1
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140516890/arctic-ice-hits-near-record-low-threatening-wildlife
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Going+going+Arctic+cover+nears+record+lows/5371781/story.html
 
Related Earthjustice Resources
Press Release: Second Highest Loss of Arctic Ice on Record
UnEarthed: Arctic Ice Melt Second Highest in Recorded History

(Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

Update (9/15): Scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado confirmed today on a conference call with Earthjustice that the Arctic has lost the second highest amount of ice since monitoring began. Listen to a recording of the conference call:

We’ve all heard about the rapid pace of the Arctic ice and glaciers melting. The sea ice at the end of this summer's period of melting is predicted to match or beat the all-time record low of 2007 and one research group at the University of Bremen in Germany has already announced that the ice this year has already set a record.

Another ice-analysis team, closer to home, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder, Colorado has yet to make their annual determination but is expected to within the coming days and offers daily monitoring maps to prove their point.

Earthjustice attorney Erika Rosenthal says the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice is important because “it’s a powerful indicator of the rapid warming occurring throughout the Arctic. This warming is causing an extraordinary increase in the melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet that led scientists earlier this year to project a sea level rise of between 0.9 and 1.6 meters by the end of the century. For low lying communities from the Pacific Islands to Bangladesh to Florida this would be calamitous.”