Tuktoyaktuk (dpa) – Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier concluded his visit to Canada by travelling to the Arctic to see the extreme impact of climate change for himself. Steinmeier summed up his impressions in the small settlement of Tuktoyaktuk in the frozen north of the country. “The icy beauty we see here is under threat”, he said, stressing that in 50 years or so large parts of the place would no longer exist.
“Of all regions of the Earth, the Arctic is warming the fastest. We are talking about a rate of warming which is four times faster than the global average of the past 40 years,” explained Antje Boetius, a marine biologist. Boetius is the Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, which has been conducting polar and marine research for decades, and was accompanying the Federal President. She explained that, for the permafrost under the ground, this trend meant that “something been solid, hard ground for thousands of years, is turning into sludge.” Boetius also stressed that “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It affects our lives, too.”
After talking to Boetius, Steinmeier emphasised that it was “incredible how much effort, commitment and ambition people are putting into resisting the consequences of global warming.”He also reminded those present how urgently people were asking “not to be left to fight climate change on their own in this inhospitable region, but that it should be a task for the whole global community,”