Climate change's common ground

Alaska and the Arctic are proving to be hot topics at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, underway this week in Copenhagen.

"Alaska is ground zero for global warming; everyone wants to know what's it's like here, what we have seen in our lifetime and what is still changing," University of Alaska Fairbanks student Loren Anderson said during a phone call Tuesday from Denmark.

Anderson is one of 14 students with UAF's Alaska Native Rural Development Program attending the conference. The Kodiak native says after a 20-hour flight there, it's turning out to be a good experience.

"It makes you feel like you are part of the global community rather than just an isolated village or a city like Anchorage," he said.

A few things have struck Anderson about the Danish capital. Unlike Anchorage, where bicyclists and motorists often see one another as foes, in Copenhagen, cyclists have their own lanes, complete with stoplights. Walking through the streets one evening, Anderson was shocked when a group of cyclists stopped to give him the right of way. Wireless connections there are lightning fast, and the numerous windmills dotting the landscape remind him of three new windmills perched atop a mountain overlooking his Kodiak Island home.

"The windmills are beautiful, like a beacon for people who are affecting change," he said.

Anderson and his fellow students were invited by the World Wildlife Fund to give a presentation Monday night during an event called Klimaforum09, a non-government people's forum organized in tandem with the U.N. conference. The UAF students spoke about how loss of sea ice affects hunting practices for marine mammals, and contributes to coastal erosion, about how different insects are showing up in unexpected regions, and how some illnesses -- like lung worms in caribou -- seem to be on the rise, Anderson said.

Anderson said he even sees changes in activities as simple as clam digging in Alaska. As a child, the shells seemed sturdy and hard. But these days, he thinks the shells seem thinner, more brittle, and easier to break. And it was in Copenhagen that he found an explanation -- ocean acidification. As the level of carbon dioxide in the ocean increases, the calcification abilities of clams and other shellfish appear to be decreased.

Where Alaska has melting sea ice and glaciers, climate change leaves different signatures depending on where a person lives, something Anderson has had a chance to learn firsthand from other conference participants. People at the equator are suffering severe drought and heavy rains, the Swiss Alps are experiencing devastating landslides, and China -- which relies on glacier-fed rivers to irrigate food crops -- fears food shortages in the event rivers that serve vast regions start drying out.

Making a connection across cultures over a common plight is another aspect of the conference Anderson has enjoyed. He is Alaska Native -- Alutiiq -- and had a chance to spend time with a man from Greenland of Inuit and Danish heritage. With iPhones in hand, the men used a map application to show each other where they were from, then found they both understood Anderson's native language. As Anderson spoke the words "nuna," "imaq" and "lla" -- land, sea and sky in Sugstun -- they were similar enough to the man's own language that he recognized them immediately.

A member of Gov. Sean Parnell's administration will travel to Copenhagen this weekend with his own message to share. At the invitation of the U.S. State Department, Larry Hartig, commissioner for the Department of Environmental Conservation and chair of Alaska's subcabinet on climate change, will speak about helping communities adapt to environmental changes they are already experiencing.

His presentation, to be delivered Tuesday night, is entitled "Working together to keep cultures and communities intact in climate change." With several Alaska villages facing severe erosion and, in some cases, impending moves, it's a topic Alaska knows a lot about.