How to Reverse the Arctic Crisis
This is an interview with Sally Ranney from Global Choices, as originally heard on Hey Change Podcast Episode 85. Interviewers: Anne Therese Gennari and Robin Shaw.
Melting Artic Ice. COURTESY DENIS BURDIN SHUTTERSTOCK.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
Sally, can you tell us what brought you to the climate conversation and what has kept you here?
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Well, it’s a long story. When I was six or seven, I decided that I didn’t want to go to Sunday school anymore, so I walked out. My Sunday school teacher was very perturbed and went into the congregation, got my mother, followed me, and as I was walking home she yelled at me to stop walking and I wouldn’t stop. And finally, she demanded that I stop and I stopped. She came up behind me, put her hands on my shoulders, turned me around and stooped down. Now that she was talking to me eye to eye, she said, “I understand you don’t want to go to Sunday school anymore.” And I said, I don’t. She waited a minute and said, “Well, if you don’t want to be in Sunday School, where do you want to be?”
And I said with God. And she said, “Oh, and where would that be?”
Immediately I pointed across the street to a huge field that had a stream that was tangling through the long grass, and it had little beaches where there were bugs and worms and all kinds of insects and critters. And there were birds overhead. And there were these huge trees, huge old trees. And I loved it there.
And there was this one tree, I happen to know intuitively that it was a female. And she had a cavity at the base of her just big enough for me to crawl in and take my naps. So I napped in this fabulous tree for probably three or four years after school. I was there on the weekends too. And I learned a lot from that tree, about nature, about myself, about there is really no separation between us and nature. We are nature. And I think that we are nature waking up to ourselves and there is a transition, a transformation happening on the planet. We’re starting to wake up to this.
One day when I came out of my nap, there was this voice (from the tree) that said put your ear to my skin and you can hear me grow. I’m seven years old and I’m going huh, okay, okay, so I put my ear next to her. I don’t know if I heard her grow or not, I was only seven. But I think I did. And so that experience really inspired me and I realized even at that young age that anything that diminished as nature diminishes me.
My path in life was basically set then. I married a cattle rancher when I was very young, and lived on a working cattle ranch, and I learned a lot about nature.
My undergraduate degrees were in fine arts, I made my living for a while as an artist, and also majored in geology, because I wanted to know about the living library of the planet. My masters was in education, because I wanted to teach, I thought, but I realized as time progressed in my early 20s, that nature was really my passion. And so I got a full paid fellowship to Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and did doctorial work there.
I was a resource Policy Analyst for the Wilderness Society and it became very evident that climate change was going to trump it all. And it really was the existential risk of the planet, and whatever else I was doing, was going to eventually become subservient to that. I shifted out of focusing on wild areas, biodiversity and wildlife, and started focusing on renewable energy.
I co-founded the American Renewable Energy Institute that’s in Aspen, and which became a renowned summit on renewable energy, and also not just renewable energy, but all the intersectionality of other sectors and other resources, because in nature everything is connected to everything else.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
When did you become aware of climate change as an issue? Because I think there are people like me, I’m newer to the climate movement. But my understanding is, we’ve known about this for decades.
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
I think it really became prominent in my work about 20 years ago. One of the things I noticed was that I worked on a campaign in Canada for protecting a huge watershed, it actually was 2.3 million acres of the Alsek River, which has a confluence of water from Canada and the United States making it a cross-boundary issue.
On the first rafting trip I took, which was about 20 years ago, there was one curve in the river where there were 21 glaciers that came down to the water. I went back three years after my first trip, or about 17 years ago and in those three years, you could see where those glaciers had receded. Then I went a third time, which now would be about 10 years ago, and oh my god, the difference was shocking. I realized that I needed to be working to save what I considered the biological archives of the planet, because the Alsek wilderness is untouched and needs to just let the genius of nature proceed as intended.
I also realized that we had to go to the source of what was happening. And of course, that is, as we all know, emissions, we need really deep, deep emission cuts now. And we need to decarbonize the economy and we have to really put a lot of R&D money into renewable energy, but we have to get moving on hydrogen because solar and wind are not going to do it.
We have to really look at CCS, carbon capture and sequestration, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and technologies are proceeding. The question of all of these technologies needed is economy of scale. The magnitude of the problem now really requires rapid deployment at scale of these technologies. And I do want to add, technology is not going to save us. Because we cannot keep on consuming the way we’ve been consuming. We can’t just fix it and think that we can live the way we’ve been living and populate the way we’ve been populating. So deep systemic change, not just in our institutions, but in our lives, in our thinking, in our relationship with nature is needed.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
Agreed, it’s so important that we don’t just look to technology in figuring this out. Do you think we can aim for a carbon-neutral world? And how do we do so without overstepping culture and indigenous peoples’ wisdom?
In other words, how do we accelerate the movement into renewable energies, but don’t overlook the complexity of nature and how to merge some of the old ways of doing things with the evolution of our society?
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Well, it’s a deep conversation, because it’s complex. But I think that we have made things more complex than they really need to be. We have laws on the books that are 3,000 pages long!
We are creators, we have created the situation, and we can create like Buckminster Fuller said, “you don’t try to fix the existing paradigm, you make the existing paradigm obsolete.”
So some of the things, and this gets into a much deeper conversation about spirituality like what is our relationship to the cosmos and we are all the elements that a tree is, we are all the elements of the grass, we are all the elements of the water, we are no different. We are just a different form of energy, expressing itself and so on.
Once that realization really settles in, like water sinks into the sand, you can’t ignore it, you simply cannot ignore it because in the end, it’s not so much about responsibility. Yes, we have stewardship responsibility. But it’s even deeper than that. It’s respect. It’s an original knowing of who we are and where we are, and what our place is, in the whole fabric of life.
That’s a deep understanding. That’s a knowledge that we all have. But it’s been overlaid with education with media and now we’ve got Facebook, and all this other stuff that’s all surface. It’s all surface, it’s not the essential human. And so we get further and further and further from nature, which actually, in the long run, gets us further and further from ourselves. So we don’t know where we fit.
And I think the real existential threat on this planet isn’t climate change. And it isn’t nuclear war. It’s the illusion of separation, of separation from each other, and separation from nature. The only way you can predict the future is to design it yourself is to design that and to design it collectively. That’s how you predict the future.
You would think that COVID provided lessons that would not have been available in any other way, as far as humanity coming together doesn’t matter, religion, race, whatever, you know, economic status, coming together to really address a common challenge, a common problem, a common threat. And in some ways, it’s Kindergarten work, compared to climate change. Humanity has never, ever had a calling to collaborate, deep collaboration, in the way that climate change is presenting to us. Now, if you want to go deeper, did we create this so that we would have this opportunity?
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
Haha, yeah that’s for a different conversation 🙂
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Haha yeah, and we won’t go there. But there are so many pieces to climate change that have to be integrated because Earth systems are interdependent.
The work that Global Choices does, is focused on the Arctic. And the reason we’re focused on the Arctic is it’s the centerpiece of the planetary cooling system. And the Artic sea ice is melting at unprecedented rates. NASA put up satellites in 1979 that have been tracking melting and it’s so important because the sea ice reflects the sun’s heat and radiation.
When the ice melts, all of that is absorbed by dark ocean water, called the Albedo Effect. Right now, the estimate of scientists, say 50% or more, one said we’ve lost 54% due the Albedo effect in just four decades. And it’s rapidly advancing.
Have we hit a tipping point? That’s a major question. And some say no, some say yes. The new IPCC report on the International Panel on Climate Change, where hundreds of scientists collaborate on that report, said that sea ice has somewhat of a linear trajectory in that it is highly sensitive to CO2. A lot of scientists disagree on that, I’m sort of in the middle ground. But I’m also an optimist.
I have a lot of hope that humanity can rise to this. But what is so shocking about the sea loss, is its far-reaching global climate stability impacts. The Jetstream is now wobbly, it has these deep troughs, whereas before it was very stable, so it can’t contain the polar vortex. That’s why Texas froze. The severity of the heat dome is linked to the loss of sea ice. That was one of the most extreme climate events we’ve had in the United States in the Pacific Northwest. Literally, the tidal pools basically boiled. Scientists estimate a billion life forms, from urchins to worms to invertebrates were made into stew. To me, that is just heartbreaking.
It’s just heartbreaking that we have allowed ourselves to get to this point, when this was first made public in 1952 or 1954, that this climate change was coming, a few scientists followed it. At least for the 25 years we have known, but the Paris Accord took 21 years! What’s complicated in all of this as humans, is not stepping up to the common good.
This indicator tracks the extent, age, and melt season of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean from September 1979 to September 2020. IMAGE COURTESY NASA.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
It’s so interesting because I think there are these really deep, philosophical, spiritual questions that, you know, for myself, and my friends, were grappling with and as you had said, this is sort of like a kindergarten level challenge that could be seen to prepare us for the bigger University task of truly mitigating climate change and coming back into harmony with ultimately ourselves, with fellow humans with animals and the planet.
At the same time, we have these very practical surface questions like how do we interact with social media? How are we sharing information? What is the government doing right now? How do we get involved with civic activity?
One of the things that keep coming up for me is, it really comes down to corporate greed, so much of the blocking of progress, it would appear from my humble position, is it really has to do with corporate interests. It has to do with money, it has to do with who is holding power.
So I’m interested to talk more about global choices and why focusing on the melting ice is so important.
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Okay, the spiritual piece of this, and the real practical, are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, the spiritual piece can actually be the bedrock for getting the practical done, because and it doesn’t necessarily need to be spiritual, but having the right values in place, being able to walk in principles that support life, does not diminish life, we’ve had an economic system that has been operating as if the environment was subservient to the economy, it’s the other way around, the economy is subservient to the environment.
There’s a lot of systemic changes that need to flip. The reason that the Arctic Sea Ice is so important is that it actually is the global SOS of our time, because it affects so much.
The impacts are so far-reaching, now we know that severe floods, droughts in Northern Africa and even beyond, are linked to sea ice loss. The ocean currents are now affected by sea ice loss, both because freshwaters are coming in, but also because there is a warming of the Northern oceans and all those currents are connected.
The Gulf Stream has slowed down, the Almak has slowed down. Even less moisture in the Amazon is linked and fires in California. And again, the effects of this and the heat dome are global. And they’re measurable, really measurable, because the sea ice, we can see from satellite what is actually happening. I’ve been to the Arctic a few times, and you can’t imagine how pristine and beautiful it is. And when you also think of its service to the planet, we just can’t let this go. We cannot let this go.
Many nations and many corporations are sitting up there like vultures waiting for the ice to melt. And they want deep seabed mining. Because in the central Arctic Ocean, there are these nodules that we’ve heard about where there are rare earth minerals, oil and gas and a new shipping lane to go across the North Pole, like a Suez Canal, which would save two days, taking an estimated two days taking goods from China to Eastern Europe.
Also, there’s a potential for nuclear testing. In fact, Russia has already done that. And radioactive waste dumping and seismic testing. So all of that impacts the existing ice that’s left.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visit the cave of Arctic Pilots Glacier in Alexandra Land in remote Arctic islands of Franz Josef Land, Russia March 29, 2017. COURTESY Sputnik | Alexei Druzhinin | Kremlin via Reuters.
It’s really important how the system functions because the older ice is the thicker ice and ice builds on ice. So you don’t want to disturb that older ice and that is a significant piece of the conversation around what’s happening up there. So in looking at that, we thought, what do we do?
Obviously, there have to be deep emission cuts. But at the same time, we have to protect what is there and use this situation as the global SOS that it is, and what we call the ice crisis, which is polar ice, basically, and glaciers, which is all called the cryosphere, that’s the ice on the planet is called the cryosphere is headed for extinction.
And as far as the Arctic sea ice goes, that is really, as far as I’m concerned, global choices of concern that is the litmus of evidence to which global leaders should be held accountable because we can measure it. So to protect the existing ice, we came up with a moratorium, a pause, a 10-year moratorium, just to stop the Wild West, pause the Wild West approach. And this would prohibit oil and gas exploitation, seismic testing, deep seabed mining, new shipping lanes, particularly they want to cross the North Pole seismic testing, radioactive waste dumping, including low-level radioactive waste dumping, and perhaps most importantly, it would prohibit nuclear weapon testing. So that’s the package.
It is proposed for the central Arctic Ocean and the central Arctic Ocean is nonjurisdictional in the Law of the Sea, in the 1980s, it was listed as common, “it was the heritage of all mankind.” The Antarctic space and high seas were global commons and they belonged to no one, no specific nation. So the central Arctic Ocean is one of those, and that’s where the majority of the sea ice is, and where it is melting. So we’re proposing a moratorium for that area.
It excludes the two hundred-mile limits of the exclusive economic zones that every nation gets under the law of the sea and that’s where it’s basically an extension of national boundaries so they can pretty much do whatever they want oil and gas shipping-wise.
In the law of the sea, there’s an opportunity for nations to submit extensions for their economic exclusive zones. They can submit to a commission on continental shelves at the U. N. for extension of that. Interestingly enough, because these resources that have never been accessible are going to be accessible as the ice melts, Russia has submitted in 2001 for extensions three times the last one was this last March and they want 70% of the central Arctic Ocean they overlap with the extensions filed by Greenland and also I think a bit of Canada.
The United States never ratified the Law of the Sea which is very interesting, so we don’t actually have the legal authority for an extension of our EEZ we do follow the law of the sea to the letter, to the letter, and we have filed for an extension, but you know that’s pretty much going to be a moot point unless Congress ratifies the treaty.
What we have is that complication and it’s a serious one because the reason for filing for that submission is for exploitation, that’s the reason. China right now has a research ship right now going across the North Pole to do mapping and research on the floor of the central Arctic Ocean and they’re also specking out what a route across the North Pole would look like.
The United States has always held and continues under the Biden administration, that the Arctic region has always been a place of cooperation and peace and even though Russia says that they are building up military presence in the Arctic to an extent that is actually pretty alarming.
NATO has obviously raised objections and Russia says they can launch weapons from the Arctic that could wipe out the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Their foreign minister says that the Arctic region should be peaceful and an area of cooperation. But, they have a 157 million project going on for oil and gas in their EEZ and the Russian economy is very dependent on fossil fuels so that’s why they are so interested in the Artic.
On the other side of that, two-thirds of Russia is permafrost and it’s melting. There’s methane gas that comes out and goes into the atmosphere. They’re also finding that when the ice melts there’s this toxic soup, heavy stew if you will, because many of the aerosols that we have put into the air in the past 78 years migrate to the north as do nano plastics with prevailing winds…by the way there’s more nano plastics in the arctic than any other place in the world because of winds and currents so they have a real challenge when it comes to permafrost, but it’s a world problem because permafrost is not just a Russian problem, it’s a global problem that affects all of us.
The methane, CO2, aerosols and the bacteria and viruses that evolved with dinosaurs and things are showing up, so permafrost is really the Achilles heel of climate change and the loss of the sea ice is exacerbating permafrost melt, because the Arctic in total is getting warmer and absorbing more heat because we’re losing that Albedo effect.
We want to protect the existing ice, because it’s so visible. We’re going to be very much present at COP26 in Scotland, the United Nations conference on climate change which was canceled in 2020. 2020 was the year to revisit and see what nations were meeting their commitments, this is all voluntary by the way, and who was and who needs help and who’s ahead except that didn’t happen.
This COP26 is very very important because these negotiations and looking at where the world is collectively is extremely important because right now the 1.5° is a science determined global temperature rise that we think we could survive, 2° is more of a political target but we’re on a trajectory for 3.2°-3.7°.
A team from the Chinese icebreaking research ship Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, on the Arctic Ocean. A second icebreaker, Xue Long 2, is expected to enter service this year. COURTESY NEW YORK TIMES VIA Wu Yue/Xinhua.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
WOW. I think it’s been so hard to get people to action and to understand the urgency in the matter because the ice is so far away from us and so far removed from our everyday life.
When I wake up here in Massachusetts, I don’t think about ice melting. With Russia and China now involved and so much is about the politics you’ve mentioned, how do we bring it back to an individual person and empower ourselves as individuals?
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
First of all, you do have a lot of power and women are rising. There is a reason why that’s happening because we’ve been so out of balance and I could do that’s a whole other conversation, but the fact that women are rising is going to make a measurable difference because we’re natural collaborators and part of this is bringing the world out of competition and into collaboration that’s part of that transformation.
As an individual, you have lots of things that you can do.
First off, two researchers determined that one ton of CO2 melts 32 square feet of arctic ice.
So Global Choices has had a couple of advertising agencies saying this is a really great campaign so they’re going to help us put up together and raise awareness in a creative way. A trip from coast to coast is 1.4 tons of carbon, so when I do this, I think wow, I just melted 32 square feet of my planet’s cooling system, so that is one way you can be very conscious as an individual and how you relate to the ice.
We are all actually ice-dependent species, that’s what’s so important to really understand so the next piece of systemic change and decision making which we can bring upon and I think women are better at this than men, is whole systems thinking instead of fragmenting everything.
As women, we’re caretakers. We take care of our children, we take care of our families and we think in relationship to the community. I want to take the narrative back, pro-life, I’m pro-life for this planet.
We’ve let this moniker be taken away and we’ve never countered that which as far as I’m concerned was a major strategic failure on the part of those that you know that support having control of your own body.
Women can do this and not get stuck in the abortion conversation because it’s not about that at all and we can also start using different language. Right now we’re moving in a world that uses “depletes, diminishes, destroys, degrades.”
We have to go 180° to it’s “reclaim, restore, refresh, reuse, recycle.” Once you get that into your own lexicon it’s amazing how other people go, “oh my gosh you’re right why didn’t I think of that?” We can’t expect people to do something about something they know nothing about and women are such good communicators for this kind of expression.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
When COVID happened, it provided an opportunity to think again and to explore other ways of doing things. For me, it all comes back to stress and how much we have allowed stress to enter our lives from technology. One way for me and for us to regain power is to slow down and stress less.
And I’m actually happier without all the stuff, without all the stress and so maybe that’s the new world. It’s about stressing less, contributing less and cutting consumerism means we’re actually taking power away from the corporations that are trying to destroy the earth.
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
You are exactly right. I just had a conversation with a colleague last night who has decided not to go to Climate week or COP26 and she’s saying there’s so much less stress because now she is gardening and walking more. So many people don’t want to go back into the office situation, because they’ve discovered that it doesn’t serve them and even if you’re just self-focused it doesn’t serve the collective either. We’re hypermobile, to the point where we’re changing life support systems on the planet, we are constantly stressed, bombarded with stimulus from absolutely everything unless you make the conscious decision to turn it off and slow down.
I know so many people who have gone into nature during COVID and that is where you get grounded. You cannot be in grace or in the present moment when you’re stressed and running. I think COVID is going to show us overtime for slowing down, for recognizing what is life.
The way to accelerate that is through social media, bringing forth these different issues and where your power lies in affecting those issues
The question is also, is the United States going to support this? Will the arctic council support a pause? Who will be real champions of global commons? We know France will.
When we talk about earth systems, there are no boundaries just like COVID. There was a study that identified eco-zones and when you overlay nation-states to those eco-zones nothing matches. This is one of our conundrums, which is why indigenous wisdom is so critical because we did not recognize that our boundaries should be the same as nature’s ecosystems!
We just chopped the map here and there and it was all political, it was tribal and it was whatever it was, but now we’re seeing a river system that goes through three different countries or ten different states and everybody’s making their own decisions. It doesn’t work.
That’s where whole systems thinking comes in and I think women are better at that because we bear children and even if we don’t we think of that as a whole system we are a whole system with that child and we’re a whole system with our family.
I have come to the definite conclusion that that kind of thinking now has to go into our decision-making. As a powerful person on your own, it’s acting locally with a global objective.
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
That’s so powerful and optimistic. It’s such an exciting time to be alive.
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Yes, I feel blessed to be here you know at this time and be able to step up. There are women in other countries that can’t step up the way we can. We have an incredible opportunity to make a measurable difference and that’s the key, a measurable difference.
Global Choices actually has an intergenerational and international ice activist network called the Arctic Angels, who are working on these global climate stabilization projects in their countries.
There are an estimated 680 million coastal residents who will be affected by sea-level rise. Most people think of the ice melting means sea level rise and yes that’s true, but there’s so much more to that. These coastal residents will become climate refugees and that creates so much conflict and so much suffering for so many people.
It’s estimated that indirectly or directly, 2 billion people will be affected by loss of the sea ice and sea-level rise is so it is something that we can have an influence on. Get involved with the Artic Angels on our website or as an Arctic Advocate!
We have once-a-month sessions with people like Dr. Slyvia Earle, the mother of ocean conservation. It’s not just about signing up to be an activist, but we are really mentoring the future decision-makers.
Arctic Angels collaborating to pressure policy-makers to act with urgency to protect our planet at a rally. COURTESY GLOBALCHOICES.ORG
Interviewers: Anne Therese + Robin Shaw
Are you climate optimistic, do you believe in an optimistic future?
Interviewee: Sally Ranney
Yes, because I ultimately believe in the goodness of humanity. These pockets of people who are rising now and who are really getting involved and speaking up and speaking out.
Now because of COVID, so many people know that they weren’t happy. The universe is abundant, it’s not as scarce as we are taught that it is. I think that if we arise and women lead, we can do this, but it has to happen soon. We have ten years where we can make global choices that really make a measurable difference for the future of all species, not just humanity. We would be in such poverty emotionally and spiritually without all the other species we share this planet with. I work for the next generation of all species.
To learn more about Sally Ranney:
Website: https://sallyranney.com/
Arctic Angels: https://www.globalchoices.org/arctic-angels
Instagram: @gcarcticangels
Article written by Illuminate Magazine
