USA: Global Warming

SHISHMAREF, AK - JUNE 09: Inupiat Eskimos Tony Weyiouanna and his wife Fanny, with their soon Perry, untangle a fishing net that they will set up in the ice crack behind them, as they wait for the northeast wind to shift before going seal hunting on the frozen Chukchi Sea, June 09, 2005 in Shishmaref, Alaska, USA. The northeast winds push the floating ice toward the island, preventing boats from leaving or returning for days at the time. "We risk our lives every day" says husband Tony Weyiounna. "This ice is getting thinner each year". Traditionally, spring seal hunting around the village of Shishnmaref has been done on the ice, by dog sled or snow machine, but climate change has forced the Eskimos to use their hand made boats, normally reserved for the fall hunt when the sea is clear of ice. They must drag the boats over the thinning ice to open water, where they must navigate between floating ice in search of seals. Located on the small island of Sarichef off the coast of Alaska near the Artic circle, Shishmaref, population 591, is a century old Inupiat Eskimo village whose economy depends partly on subsistence fishing and hunting. Shishmaref will have to be evacuated within the next few years because of global warming. Climate change has caused the Chukchi sea, which surrounds the island, not to freeze before the arrival of the fierce fall storms, as it has for centuries, leaving the island unprotected. In the last ten years, hundreds of feet of shore as well as several houses have been lost to the storms. Eighteen houses also had to be moved away from the edge of the island, to which scientists have given another nine years. Poised to become the world's first global warming refugees, Shishmaref's Inupiat Eskimos are struggling for their survival: the government would like to move them to the suburbs of the city of Nome, where the Eskimos fear that their traditional lifestyle will be lost. (Photo by Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)