It’s difficult to write about a victim who is dying. To experience several days of 34 C with sunny clear beautiful skies in early August 2024 in Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik – places in the Northwest Territories north of the Arctic Circle that are still associated with Canada’s frigid cold, takes a while to absorb. The communities are harbingers of the rapid changes we are facing on a warming planet that are so massive with an accelerating cascading effect that they will be very challenging to deal with both mentally and logistically. How much time do you have to see the Arctic before it disappears? I’d say 3- 5 years. Here are the reasons why you should be alarmed and saddened by what is happening in our own backyard.
I went back this summer because I wanted to see the changes from the last time I was in the Northwest Territories in the summer of 2017 before the Dempster Highway was completed from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk. The changes from seven years ago are heartbreaking. Scary, too.
The Arctic is a beautiful, vast, and wondrous place that is delicately balanced on a fragile environment. It is still a wilderness that is mostly untouched. Consider that during World War II, Canada didn’t even have a map of the north.
I went the first time because I had wanted to see for myself the effects of climate change since Canadians have front row seats in the Arctic, and yet most of us have no idea, or don’t care about what is happening there. I wanted to return this year because the pictures on the internet showed the ponds in the permafrost were getting larger, and more numerous, especially in the northerly area of the new section of the Highway. The Highway looked like it would be compromised sooner than later.
Most of the landscape around the Dempster Highway is on the permafrost. The gravel road is well maintained, and has no potholes since it is not asphalt. The Liberal government kept its promise to complete the Highway, and also connect the remote communities to Wi-Fi with an optic fibre cable that runs alongside the Highway. They had to complete the Highway because the ice roads were no longer reliable. But, the infrastructure investments looked doomed from the start from what I saw in 2017.
Then, the temperature was a shocking 28 C in Inuvik, and Tuktoyaktuk, and this time it was a hard to believe 34 C.
Given the exposure to the long summer days of the midnight sun, the slow-growing miniature vegetative groundcover that consists of densely packed lichens, Labrador tea, and other plants is drying out, and it is no longer insulating the permafrost underneath. The permafrost is melting because it has lost its insulating protection. Since the boreal forest also grows on top of the permafrost, the same vegetative cover around the base of the trees is drying out, too, making the forest susceptible to fires. Vast fires.
Then, there were the occasional small ponds visible from the Highway, but now there are lakes, and ponds. There are many large lakes.
The first time I was in Dawson City in 2013, I walked on Yukon Plateau north of Tombstone Territorial Park, and poked my hand up to my wrist through the dense spongy vegetative groundcover to the ice of the permafrost. This time at the same place, my fingers were feeling warm water just below the scraggy thin vegetative groundcover. I assume this is happening all over the Yukon and the Porcupine Plateaus, which are vast areas like the Altiplano in the Andes. It looks like the Plateaus are rapidly turning into a big body of water north of Dawson City in the Yukon.
The vulnerability of the Dempster Highway to being submerged in the near future is visible. Now, there are many lakes close to the road, and there are pools of water from the melting permafrost next to the road. It is especially obvious at the northernmost tip of the Highway heading into Tuktoyaktuk. There, the ponds are very close to the road, and to the nearby gasoline storage tank farm. It will have to be decommissioned very soon.
There are also many military and oil structures in the vicinity of Tuktoyaktuk that need to be decommissioned in the near future to prevent an environmental disaster.
In addition to being surrounded by water from the melting permafrost, Tuktoyaktuk has had their shoreline swept away by the Arctic Ocean, and have had to move their buildings and houses several times.
This time, there is a thin line of continuous boulders of rocks and concrete sheets at the end of the road to bolster the peninsula’s shoreline, and although it was a calm beautiful hot sunny day with no wind and not a cloud in the sky, the incoming tide seeped past the boulders. Although the government spent the money to do something to protect the community, it looks like it is well aware that it is futile.
Seven years ago, there were about 5 visitors a day in Tuktoyaktuk, and now there are hundreds. The Highway is the only public road that goes to the Arctic Ocean so now there are tourists from around the world, including Americans who can’t access the Ocean from Alaska. Now, there are signs on the Highway for the Arctic Ocean, and there is a sign in Tuktoyaktuk for pictures.
It looks like the people of Tuktoyaktuk will stay as long as they can in their homeland until the water from the Arctic Ocean and the water from the melting permafrost will force them to be relocated by the government to the south. They will soon be Canada’s first environmental refugees.
Clearly, Tuktoyaktuk will be the first of many communities that will have to be relocated because of climate change. This is a very expensive and upsetting experience that the government will have to get good at in a hurry as it has no plans and no budget for this reality that is happening now – not in 30 to 70 years.
In addition to the roads that are extremely vulnerable to the rapidly changing climate, the other infrastructures that make our lives easier such as electricity, WIFI, water, wastewater, heating, and even air conditioning are also vulnerable.
Last time in Inuvik, I got a tour of Aurora College, and met some scientists from Carlton University. This time, the College was closed. They had to send everybody home as the College’s air conditioner had broken down, and it was 30 C inside.
On a happy note, I was impressed by the large size and beautiful local produce of potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and peas that were for sale at the farmer’s market in Dawson City. They were perfect because the bugs from the south hadn’t arrived yet.
Sharolyn Mathieu Vettese
President
SMV Energy Solutions
www.smvholdings.com
SMV Energy Solutions provides simple smart solutions that conserve energy