The coming north

[imomus]

I'm in a northerly mood today, not just because I went to the Hamburger Bahnhof yesterday to see Berlin North, a show of the work of Scandinavian artists working in Berlin, but also because I read this article in The Observer saying that Britain 'will be Siberian within twenty years.' It's not cranky eco freaks who are saying this, but the Pentagon, which now ranks the risk posed by climate change as greater than that posed by terrorism. The report, commissioned by influential defence adviser Andrew Marshall, continues: 'Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.' (The reason that global warming will make Britain colder is that Britain is on the same latitude as southern Alaska, but has a much warmer climate thanks to the Gulf Stream, which will be disrupted by the effects of CO2 emissions and the melting polar ice caps.)



So, in the spirit of these coming norths, imaginary and real, idealised and apocalyptic, here's a little tale you can tell your children after the nuclear war. It's called The Female Beaver:

'A young man was coming home from a hunting trip late one winter day. He had been walking through deep snow all day and was very tired, but decided to keep walking until he got back to camp. He walked and walked, but didn't see any of the familiar signs of home. He suddenly realized that he was lost.

It was dark by now, but he kept walking, hoping that he would find the camp of another band. Then, he saw a fire through the trees. There was a camp ahead, next to a lake. He started running toward it, and when he got to the camp, was happy to see people, at last!

The man was greeted by the people. They told him that though they looked like people to him, they were really beavers. He had strayed out of human territory and into beaver land.

The young man was very tired. He looked around at the beavers' camp. He saw a pretty young woman next to one of the houses. Although he knew she was really a beaver, he decided to take her as his wife and to stay in the beaver camp. He lived there all winter long, with his new wife and her relatives.'

Read more...

When People Meet Animals is a page on the Alaska Native Education Kindergarten Unit website. You can learn more about climate change and the Gulf Stream here. I chose the forest picture because it's pretty, but it's worth pointing out that if the Gulf Stream really does switch off, Britain will lose most of its trees.

Comments

English Siberia

[guojennifer.livejournal.com]

There goes my retirement plans.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

http://billmon.org/archives/001089.html#more

[qualities.livejournal.com]

notwithstanding the sort of immanent, though largely imaginary, threat of apocalypse thats always hung over humanity at large...have times ever been so damned...bleak? back when i was just a little kid, it seemed that all a person had to do was block out logging in the rainforests and nuclear weapons and then, presto!: life could move on. but now there seem to be so many catastrophies lurking just over the horizon. reasonably real catastrophies, that is. what gives?

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

For all those taken in
By devious Nick Currie's sin
Of selling, under the Momus brand,
Immortality for a cool grand
Well, I'm sorry
3D Corporation and Stefano Zarelli
But your names
Will remain half-buried relics
Because all human life will die someday
CDs and vinyl LPs will decay
So your names may now be in
His songs and odes
But they won't be when the Sun
Explodes