I highly doubt that the Yup’ik fishermen are even contributors to global climate change, but we expect them to then completely stop fishing the waters they have fished for decades because of change we're largely to blame for?
From forced settlements to fishing bans, we're still forcing our will on indigenous people.
Edit: the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used.
The modern regulatory state forces pretty much everyone to do all sorts of things. People are prevented from aging cheese less than 30 days, from having sex with people for money, forced to purchase unwanted health insurance, and penalized if they don't rent or purchase a home. A person can own a piece of land for decades, and suddenly wetland regulation or a community action board can prevent them from using that land.
Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik?
Indigenous cultures are kind of a special case because of the whole conquest and genocide thing. You can't say "if you don't like it go back to your home country" when it was taken from them.
THe idea is that indigenous groups are supposed to self-govern as much as possible... but there's no way these tiny middle-of-nowhere towns can build up enough infrastructure to run their own federal government.
My ancestors are Sicilian, Greek, German and a bunch of other things. I've never met an ancestor who was born outside the US. Can you say to me, "if you don't like it go back to Sicily"?
(Note that I speak no Italian outside the kitchen and I doubt Sicily would let me immigrate.)
Indigenous cultures are kind of a special case because of the whole conquest and genocide thing
There isn't a homosapien alive whose ancestors' people weren't subjected to some sort of brutality. Either the rules should apply to everyone or they should apply to no one.
Carving up perpetual special classes in any society will always serve to divide that society and promote dysfunction.
This is not about ancestors or special classes. A lot of people seem to be missing the fact that most indigenous tribes are sovereign nations with their own laws and government which have existed since long before the U.S.A. This is why we have casinos on tribal lands while they are banned elsewhere. The laws are different. Treaties with these people are the only reason the U.S.A. even exists, although they are regularly ignored.
The fact is that it is disingenuous to pretend to have a nation governed by the rule of law while ignoring the rights of older sovereign nations which exist within your borders. Not all tribes have the same rights and status, but how we treat them is the best indicator of how legitimate our own legal structure can claim to be.
> You can't say "if you don't like it go back to your home country" when it was taken from them.
You can't really validly say that to anyone but aliens and non-citizen immigrants -- for everyone else in the country, it is their country, whether or not their ancestors came from elsewhere (which they did, at some point).
> Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik?
Maybe it would be better to ask why it is bad to impose those ( and many others not mentioned) burdens on everyone as opposed to asking why we aren't burdening everyone equally.
Very few are willing to live with the consequences of this which ought to be letting the person who didn't get health insurance die because they chose to not afford care.
If you really believe you shouldn't force people to protect themselves, you should believe you shouldn't "force" them to recover when they're sick.
Or, if you do believe they shouldn't be left to die, and that you shouldn't force them to purchase individual health insurance, a logical reconciliation of those two positions is universal health care.
> Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik?
I would agree with you here.
Reading between the lines suggests the dwindling catches are causing them to adopt more aggressive fishing measures, a vicious cycle of bad consequences. Dialing back their new fishing to earlier methods isn't imposing a burden as much as thwarting total collapse from their own changes.
They've been fishing those waters for thousands of years.
the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used.
Their religious argument is actually an expression of common sense, and has more to do with the scientific method than it seems. Indigenous people hunted, fished, and gathered every year for generations. Through direct observation, they noticed many patterns. When you hunted the same area too consistently, fewer animals came back in the following seasons. So they came up with a belief system along the lines of, "If you hunt too much, you have offended the animals, and you must stop hunting for several seasons until they return."
The scientific approach makes the same observation, and the same recommendations, from a different explanation. Dismissing the religious approach is easy when people don't understand how it was developed, and what role it has in guiding people's interaction with their entire environment.
There are a couple of problems with this kind of argument.
First, do we really want to have different laws for different races? (Aside from the moral issue, that's explicitly unconstitutional in Alaska.)
Note that I'm talking about the fishing limits here. You mentioned forced settlement, which is, of course, a reprehensible thing. It is also a case of enforcing the law differently for different ethnic groups.
Second, we need to watch out for implicit assumptions that native americans are somehow different from the rest of us -- perhaps intellectually inferior, or morally superior, or committed to a traditional lifestyle. But really, these are just regular old people: just as smart and just as selfish as you and I, and just as uninterested in living the way their ancestors did in past centuries (short lifespans? famine every few years? no tech? no Cheetos?). And so they are also just as capable of short-sightedly wrecking the environment.
>First, do we really want to have different laws for different races?
It's not about having different laws for different races. This is about different nations having different laws.
The political relationship between the United States and the indigenous peoples of the Americas is much different than the relationship between the US and its citizens. It's more akin to asking if we want different laws for people in Canada and America.
I think your second point is similarly misguided. It's not a matter of anyone being different, but whether the US has a more compelling claim to exercise sovereignty in this situation.
I think there is some merit to that point of view. However, from a strictly legal standpoint, it seems to be a bit outdated. Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924 by the Indian Citizenship Act.[1]
Also, since we're dealing with Alaska here: Alaska Natives are dealt with under a different legal framework than that used with natives in the continental U.S. Because of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act[2], I believe that Alaska Natives are not considered citizens of tribal nations, but rather shareholders in territory-based corporations.
During Prohibition, there was an exemption for sacramental wine. Surely that's a precedent for exempting a particular group from specific laws on religious grounds?
If humans cause climate change and industrialization began around 1850, then logically, there'd be an exponential and consistent increase of global temperatures. Al Gore himself said that, in five years, the polar ice cap would be ice-free.. and he said that 7 years ago. There hasn't been warming for almost 18 years, yet CO2 emissions (especially from China are still increasing.)
The facts are very clear: CO2 increased, temperatures have not. Another fact: the climate changed long before humans were around to drive Escalades.
The AGW movement is nothing more than an anti-capitalist false flag with a professed desire for wealth redistribution. Al Gore, for example loves the environmental movement so much because he became a multi-billionaire as it's Chicken Little. Those who still follow the religion of human-caused global warming are like a bunch of elderly Soviets nostalgic about Stalin's First Five Year Plan.
Ottmar Edenhofer, a UN official with the IPCC said, "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole." In that same interview he made the case that "climate change" policy was more of an anti-globalization policy than actual environmental policy.
Greenpeace cofounder Dr. Patrick Moore, who would presumably know more about environmentalism than almost anyone reading this, rejects the climate-anti-capitalism hysteria that has co-opted the "old" environmentalism of reducing pollution, whaling, overfishing, nuclear waste and other, more pure protections of our environment.
Let the downvoting begin! I am always amazed that within such a smart bunch as HN readers, that there is still a large number that ignore critical scientific analysis and instead let political or ideological beliefs cloud their otherwise rational minds. It's almost religiously intense. Rarely do I see a balanced debate on the subject of human-caused climate change. It's like telling Christians that Jesus wasn't resurrected.
How is the drive to reduce pollution anti capitalist? Is there only one type of capitalism?
Is the incentive to make made-up money supposed to be morally superior to everything else? Even when you are raping ecosystems, overfishing etc. because it happens to be a free externality at the moment, and gives an advantage over the company who doesn't?
Or are these just noises made by people who are too busy playing game made up for them and don't want to consider the effect of the rules even a little bit? In a completely unregulated laissez faire market, where money is the only signal, companies are incentivized to produce and sell as much stuff as possible, and exploit any free externality they can as long as it leads to a profit. In a system whose corporations have their ultimate fiduciary obligations to shareholders first, and where fiat currency continually decreases in value, it's also hard to have a sustainable system in terms of resources. But hey don't let that bother you. Live for the short term upticks in stock prices.
Funny enough, the same people who cry about governments printing fiat currency "stealing from our children" (even in times of money supply contraction) are the same people who are in favor of not giving much thought as to what REAL WORLD CONDITIONS those children will inherit.
I down-voted you. You know your facts are wrong - if you really believe them spend 10 seconds on google. You're cherry-picking your information. You throwing out buzzwords and name checks instead of information. You're appealing to scientific principle without demonstrating any understanding of such or respect for scientific consensus. You appeal for balanced debate without actually starting a debate.
Also, please don't compare facts to religious belief - you insult both.
For an exponential increase to show up temperature would need to linearly relate to CO2. However, temperature basically never linearly relates to anything. For the simplest example suppose you use light to heat a sphere in space. Double the light and you don't double the temperature because black body radiation is T^4. Doubling temperature takes 16 times the light.
As to earth, simple models are laughably inaccurate because the equator and the poles have wildly different temperatures and heat is moved between them though the movement of air and ocean currents.
The climate is a very complicated system. Saying that there has to be a consistent exponential increase in temperature is a gross oversimplification. There are all kinds of buffers and feedback systems that govern global temperatures.
There are so many obviously illogical statements in the first few lines of that rant (at which point I stopped reading) that it's hard to imagine you could actually be meaning any of it seriously.
"If humans cause climate change and industrialization began around 1850, then logically, there'd be an exponential and consistent increase of global temperatures."
CO2 emissions during the industrial revolution were smaller by several orders of magnitude. We produced on the order of 3-7 million tons per year towards the start. Now, we produce 8000 million tons per year. CO2 levels have risen accordingly in those time. If you imagine plants taking CO2 from the atmosphere as a person drinking water from a cup that refills, imagine the industrial revolution adding an extra teaspoon worth of water to the cup. Now imagine today as shooting a fire hose into the cup.
"Another fact: the climate changed long before humans were around to drive Escalades."
Climate changes according to whatever factors act upon it. Earlier in our planet's history, this force was the slow, natural cycle of CO2 as plants would grow in the early parts of the year and then die and decompose in the fall and winter. In every case, increased CO2 levels resulted in increased temperatures. Now, we're adding more CO2 than anything else ever before.
If you rarely see a debate on the subject of human-caused climate change, it's because there is no validity to the other side. Skepticism is healthy, but there is such a thing as false balance. Just because there's another side doesn't mean it still has any valid arguments left.
That said, if you do have evidence that one or more of these papers is inaccurate, I'd appreciate the info. As you said, let the downvotes begin.
I couldn't have said it better my self. Global Warming is the biggest scientific fraud since Galileo got into trouble with the Catholic church over the idea that the earth is not the center of the Universe.
Globar Warming is definitely contributing to this process, but I think some people are definitely trying to fight natural processes which would have happened anyway. Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right?
In Poland there used to be a church build right by the sea on a cliff - but the sea has eroded the cliff(as seas do), and now only one wall of that church stands, on a tiny piece of land , and which is getting further eroded every single year. Yet because the church(or rather, those few bricks of the last remaining wall) have a religious significance to some people, millions of zlotys are spent each year trying to reinforce that one remaining bit of rock. Why? The cliff erosion is a completely natural process which was bound to happen. And there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing - while to others it's completely clear that only massive reinforcements that are built with hard cash are keeping it standing.
> Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right?
That's not the point of the article anyways. I think we can agree that the Yup’ik people understand that their villages are going to disappear and that they will have to move. Traditionally they were nomadic people as it was, although they don't really have many choices as to where to go these days.
I don't think the ruins have any particular religious significance. It's protected because it's a landmark. Even the communists tried to stop the erosion.
Oh, and it was built like a mile from the sea originally.
> there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing
I find it amusing that those same people would probably not be too receptive to a comment that it was the "work of god" that caused the erosion of the cliff and consequent collapse of the other walls of the church.
If global warming is killing your god, it may be time to find a new god. After reading the description of Yup’ik religion in the article, all I can say is that their perception of what is necessary to do is not the only possible response to the situation that faces Yup’ik people in that place. The environment has been changing throughout the existence of human beings (we know from archaeology that humankind has lived through ice ages and some major changes in sea level already), so human beings will have to go on being adaptable to face the changes that are inevitable in the environment, and think with sound judgment about how to keep some kinds of changes from happening, if that results in the best trade-offs for humankind. Religion can not be exempted from that general process of human beings reality-checking their own thinking to see if their adaptations to their environment (and adaptations OF their environment) are successful or not.
This is about much more than religion. The western approach to life is to work at a job to earn money to pay for food an shelter. The subsistence approach is to spend much of your time hunting and gathering, and maybe some of your time working for money.
Many people are so far removed from the subsistence approach, that they can't relate to what these people are going through. Asking these people to stop fishing and move to a place where they can find other work is the cultural equivalent to telling everyone on HN to stop working in tech-related fields, and go find something else to do. Sure you could do it, but it would take part of your identity away. When your two-year old kid looks up and asks why you're not doing something your people have done for thousands of years, that's a hard question to answer. The Yup'ik people, and all other people who lived subsistence-based lifestyles responded to previous environmental change by finding a different area to live their subsistence lifestyle. That is not really an option. The move away from subsistence is much more drastic than many people can fully understand.
My perspective on this is shaped by having moved to Alaska 12 years ago, and knowing many people who live a subsistence lifestyle to varying degrees.
I was hoping the title would refer to, you know, our tacit "God": our unrelenting faith in gratification through material consumption; essentially unbounded and ever-accelerating growth; and the idea that we can safely ignore any non-human impact this pursuit of "happiness" may have (or for that matter, to future human generations).
What is religion if not one means to address the suffering we encounter in life? (finding meaning and purpose, existing in a community of shared beliefs and goals, encountering illness and death, etc.)
What is consumerism if not another means to the same thing? (if I obtain these material things - a house, a car, a family - I will be happy, I will not suffer)
Both provide faux meanings, pretend structures, to people with empty lives. Speaking non-hyperbolically, of course.
If you're a believer, you're a better person than a nonbeliever. If you're a consumer, you're supporting economic growth and the American Way, even if you live in Burkina Faso.
It doesn't need to be made about the arctic circle anyways. While we can argue until the cows come how about hurricanes and the California drought and things like that, there is no ambiguity about the arctic - it has severely warmed and this is having drastic changes on local weather and ecosystems. Salmon aren't an isolated case, every species up there has been severely screwed up.
A near-total majority of scientists who study the climate say humans are causing climate change and the opposition is a mix of people paid by the fossil fuel industry, conservatives motivated by tribal loyalties to make another tedious attack on environmentalists, and would-be contrarians who may or may not realize they've been duped by the previous two groups.
The only debate is how much further death and destruction will be caused by the short-term profit crowd.
From forced settlements to fishing bans, we're still forcing our will on indigenous people.
Edit: the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used.