| Arctic
Nations Find Cold
Comfort in Putin Joke
ReutersNetAlert
Posted September 29, 2003
MOSCOW - An unscripted gag about global warming won Russian
President Vladimir Putin an icy reception on Monday at a
U.N. environment conference, where Arctic nations warned
the frozen north faces disaster from climate change.
"In Russia, you often hear, either as a joke or seriously,
that Russia is a northern country and it would not be scary
for it to be two or three degrees warmer," Putin said
in an unexpected interjection at the conference.
"Maybe it would be good and we could spend less on
fur coats and other warm things," he said.
Other delegates, who had earlier heard Putin snub U.N.
pleas for Russia to set a date to ratify the Kyoto protocol,
a key pact which aims to cut emissions of greenhouse gases
across the world, did not see the funny side.
"Climate change is the biggest and most serious environmental
threat we face," said Norwegian Environment Minister
Boerge Brende.
"In Norway, it will lead to much more extreme weather.
It could, in the extreme, weaken the Gulf Stream,"
he said, referring to the warm ocean current that moderates
Western Europe's weather.
His Canadian counterpart David Anderson said climate change
could melt the ice which covers a swathe of northern Canada.
"The decreased sea ice has made it difficult for the
polar bears in the Arctic to find seals," he said.
"The iconic emblem of the Canadian north is in danger
and at risk."
In Canada's Arctic, where indigenous peoples have lived
for millennia, people were seeing "weather conditions
that even the oldest residents have never known and have
no tradition of in their historical oral records".
He added that warmer weather provided the conditions for
a surge in the population of insects and had sparked the
largest forest fires in Canada's history, which killed a
forest area half the size of France.
"The Permafrost will thaw and big parts of Russia
will become uninhabitable," he said.
ReutersNetAlert
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