Original subtitles

PINSENT: Last time on The Polar Sea,

arctic hitchhiker Richard Tegner

is aboard the Swiss yacht Libellule as she sprints West,

trying to exit the Northwest Passage before the ocean freezes.

On the Alaskan coast the oil industry dominates everything

and nobody believes in climate change.

I think that's just one of the biggest hoaxes that's been perpetrated on us.

PINSENT: The oil industry hopes to expand across the melting Arctic,

even as scientists gather more evidence of environmental disaster.

Albedo is a positive feedback loop for adding heat.

GEORGE DIVOKY: There has been certainly a decrease in black guillemots in this region.

I mean, you just can't look away but at the same ways

you can't look away from a train wreck.

TEGNER: If a tanker breaks down here,

it would be terrible catastrophe.

(WIND BLOWING)

TEGNER: We rounded Cape Barrow coming from the Beaufort Sea.

The smell of the air is different.

Now I can feel

the smell of pine trees little bit.

PINSENT: Libellule is on the final stretch of the Northwest Passage.

It will exit the passage through the Bering Strait

but not be safe until it reaches Dutch Harbor

in the Aleutian Islands.

It will be the first recreational catamaran to complete the passage,

which is one of few records still to be broken here.

And that is a fact that would amaze the man for whom Barrow is named.

John Barrow commanded the British admiralty in Victorian times.

He was obsessed with finding the Northwest Passage

and sent more than 20 missions on that quest.

None succeeded and many ended with ships destroyed

and sailors perished.

Much of the fault lay in Barrow's methods.

He insisted captains follow his strict sailing orders.

But his routes were based on bad information and whimsical theories.

The worst was Barrow's belief in an open Polar Sea at the top of the world.

He thought sea ice was just a fringe surrounding open water

that connected the world's oceans.

But the Polar Sea did not exist in Barrow's time.

It was created by the industrial age.

Burning fossil fuels warmed the air, melted the ice

and made an open sea that even little boats can sail.

TEGNER: In the distance we have walruses blowing in the water.

We can feel their fishy breath.

It smells like a can of sardines, well used.

And there are several of them and we're heading towards the island here

see how close we can get before they dive into the water.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

(WALRUS BELLOWING)

PINSENT: The spectacle of the big walrus herd

is actually a sign of climate change.

Walrus normally spread out across sea ice.

They raise their young there and forage under the ice.

Since ice moves with the ocean currents,

they always have fresh food.

Without ice, walruses are forced to crowd rocks and beaches.

They quickly exhaust the nearby food

and their young are often crushed by the crowd.

On the Alaskan coast, the decline of walrus

is also a loss to the Inupiat culture.

Inupiat have always survived by hunting marine mammals.

People here still have a deep attachment to hunting.

However, many are reluctant to believe

that it is undermined by climate change.

Barrow's main business is UIC, the Inupiat owned corporation

that was built with money the community got in exchange

for giving up its oil rich land.

EDWARDSEN: We have our own engineering firm,

we have our construction firm

and oil field services that Umiak.

We have our bowhead transportation and barge delivery.

And then we have our Bowhead technical services

that are government contracting

and, um, we also have our foundation.

Our engineering firm has done an outstanding job

doing logistic works for oil field services

when it comes to ConocoPhillips, Shell, Exxon Mobil.

We have our fingers in the jar.

PINSENT: UIC has some 40 subsidiaries.

But the work that excites Anthony is whale hunting.

One of our very successful whaling captains.

And you can see all these pictures of these whales he's got,

he's got dates on them.

Good eating.

His dad taught him about whaling and he kept that in his heart.

That's what it's all about we keep it in our heart and when it comes to family

it's, it's in us already.

It's very important to us.

It's our way of life.

Our culture

and we try and pass it down from generations to generation.

It's all about family.

This is our boardroom.

Yeah, that's a traditional Umiak right there.

With this Ugruk skin.

Ugruk is bearded seal.

This one's a six skinner.

Matter of fact that's my boat.

The white fish, the caribou,

and you know that's just like our, the beef that you have.

Caribou is our main source of meat.

Then we catch the geese,

polar bear, the ptarmigan,

the walrus, and the main course is our bowhead whale.

PINSENT: The bowhead is a true Arctic whale.

It has no dorsal fin

so it moves easily under ice and can break through with its massive head.

(WHALE SNORTING)

It can live for 200 years.

Alaska's bowheads were nearly wiped out by commercial whaling.

Now, they're threatened by the burning of fossil fuels,

which makes sea water acidic

and weakens the crustaceans that bowhead eat.

Inuit are the only people still allowed to hunt bowhead.

The seasonal hunts in Barrow

are big community events.

TEGNER: It's our way of life.

We provide food to people that cannot go out

and go to the store and buy.

PINSENT: But Anthony doesn't worry that burning fossil fuels

will harm the whales, nor does he believe it is warming the Arctic.

EDWARDSEN: I don't know if the industry's causing the climate change.

My oldest boy you know he would do a lot of research on

the climate change and he said,

"Dad you know what, when the axis tilted so much,

"it can only go so much,

"and then it's gonna suddenly go back to where it was.

That's when that catastrophic event happened."

And I think that's what's happening it's just tilting so much.

And it's only going to go so far then when it has to,

when it goes all back to...

And that catastrophic event will happen.

PINSENT: One of UIC's most active companies is Umiak.

The company is named after Umiak boats,

which are made from walrus skins and used for hunting whales.

Umiak supplies logistic support on the Alaskan coast.

Most of its business comes from oil companies

or from scientists studying climate change.

Anne Jensen is Alaska's most prominent archeologist.

She works on the eroding beaches outside Barrow,

where every storm washes up more walrus and carries away more history.

Anne's team is trying to salvage an ancient Inupiat house

that is being destroyed by the thawing permafrost and raging ocean.

JENSON: We're at a site that's known as Walakpa.

People have lived here for about 3,500 years.

Uh, and it's been used for camping up until more or less the present day.

It was first excavated at

in 1968-1969 and it was very stable.

The bluff actually sloped out,

you know it was a normal coast flow but it went out to about here.

There was a storm and it came all the way back to here,

it took out all that.

Just, you know, gone over night essentially.

And you know, so if we had another storm like that

and it got up to there it would pull out a lot of this.

So here we are trying to do some salvage immediately.

MALE ASSISTANT 1: It's pretty interesting.

There's a lot more to it than what I thought.

You know, you envision them living like such simple existence.

I always thought they were just up here,

people were up here just freezing their asses off.

You know, all the time.

I don't think it was like that I think they were pretty warm.

Living in pretty decent houses,

and I'm sure at times it was feast or famine

but you know at times they were living pretty good I think.

That's baleen right there.

Just thrown out, frozen, and it stayed that way for a long time.

PINSENT: Most of Anne's young team are amateurs

who spend half their time working with oil companies

and half with climate scientists.

MALE ASSISTANT 2: We all work for Umiak

and that's our native corporation.

And then once one project's done

usually they bring us to another project

so, this is the second project.

PINSENT: They are learning from professional archeological technicians.

Tango, elephant, lima, India, zulu.

PINSENT: Their cultural roots show in their phonetics.

U is for Ulu, an Inuit knife.

Or U is for umbrella.

Ulu, ulu, ulu.

Ralph.

(ON DEVICE) Umbrella, roger that.

(CHUCKLING) Oh, umbrella, that's it.

JENSON: There's a layer that has fox skulls in there

and that's probably from like the 20's.

But then you got a layer with a lot of baleen

in it underneath that and that's probably

prewhaling so more or less precontact here.

But contact is really 1850.

You can see all the bones in there, you guys see all that?

Stacks of bones.

JENSON: There's actually whole bunch of fox skulls have fallen out.

Because after whaling collapsed a lot of people

did to earn cash money was fox trapping.

Because at that time Arctic fox furs were really valuable.

Obviously this stuff has been frozen

until very, very recently because they're in beautiful shape.

Between the erosion and the permafrost melting.

I actually am starting to think there would be

a fairly good idea to just spend money

on digging and conserving stuff because it's just not gonna be there in 50 years.

There's buildings that have managed to endure

and as the climate gets warmer and wetter a new bacteria or whatever

show up then they start to rot faster.

It's a real problem.

It's affecting the heritage of pretty much anyone whose lived in the Arctic.

The preservation of it.

People are losing massive amounts of their heritage daily.

They're important places that are getting eaten up by the ocean.

PINSENT: As climate change erases history,

it writes a new future.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

PINSENT: They sail toward the Bering Strait,

where the passage ends in overlapping, invisible finish lines

the border between America and Russia,

the International dateline and the Arctic Circle.

More than 30 yachts attempted the passage this summer.

Only five succeeded.

Libellule will claim a victory that eluded the world's greatest navies

for centuries, at the cost of many men.

TEGNER: Here we are in the Bering Strait.

We are closing up on the Diomede Islands.

This side we have the USA

and on the other side here, we have Russia.

That was an interesting experience

just passing between these huge political forces.

Russia on one side, and USA on the other side.

You can almost stretch out your hand and touch these islands.

On board Libellule we celebrated when we passed Diomedes,

because that's more obvious than

the just a theoretical line in the middle of the sea.

(SHOUTING)

I'm not the one to look for publicity but I posted a press release

to two of the biggest newspaper in Stockholm, in Sweden.

"I hitchhiked through the Northwest Passage,"

but I have not got any answer.

I don't know if they really took it in.

But it occurred to me it's some sort of record

being the first one aboard a catamaran doing the Northwest Passage.

That's something. But it...

I was just lucky being there, at the right moment.

PINSENT: The journey has taken Richard almost 10,000 kilometers

from its start in Iceland.

PINSENT: He began as a reluctant sailor

urged on by his adventurous friend Martin,

who was forced to abandon the quest when his boat broke down.

TEGNER: Martin invited me here

and now he has returned home.

I'm grateful to him.

For him it was to achieve something

that he had done with his own hands.

I was wondering about that, if,

if I, if this just sort of came to me like a,

like a huge gift.

Or if I have

accomplished something

by struggling and...

(EXHALES) I'm not sure about that.

We are just entering Nome, Alaska.

The hub of this part of Alaska.

So here we will stop for refueling.

Philipp and his uncle, Michael

will leave the boat here and go home.

PINSENT: Libellule's captain, financier Philipp Cottier

is pleased with her success,

but not convinced that it means much for shipping

through the North West Passage.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

American French Fries!

MAN 1: Hey Richard what do you think of this trip?

Ah, well at least the beer was nice at the end.

(MAN 1 LAUGHING)

At least the beer was nice!

# The sun it shines on Baffin Bay

# My turn is over now

# Our course is straight on, Westward ho

# Say hello to Canada #

(ALL CHEERING)

Thank you very much!

PINSENT: The remaining crew of Libellule make for Dutch Harbor,

a safe port to overwinter.

And the sailors reflect on their voyage.

They saw more ice this season than last year's sailors did.

But the trend is unmistakable.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT: The voyage has taught them that ice can be a barrier or a guardian.

The open polar sea that allowed them passage

is a menace to people on the shores they pass.

Nowhere is that so obvious as Kivalina,

a sandy island reachable only by ice road, plane or boat.

SWAN: Ice is very important to us.

We are not able to adapt as we'd like to because

we are dealing with the effects of a changing climate.

When we're out hunting for whales we need to be out on the ice.

That's where we set up camps.

And we used to able to spend weeks out there.

Now, we're lucky to if we're able to even spend the night

out on the ice when we're out whaling.

PINSENT: Twenty years ago seasonal ice began melting earlier and freezing later,

making hunting harder.

SWAN: Whatever survives in the Arctic is what helps us to survive.

And it's been really hard because the migration of the birds,

the seals, the caribou, it seems like they're confused a lot.

PINSENT: Community leader Colleen Swan has spent her adult life

advocating for Kivalina.

SWAN: This used to be a seasonal hunting ground.

The federal government came, built a school on this island

and forced the people to move here.

They were threatened if they didn't bring their children to school,

that they would either be fined or sent to prison.

There are some records from 1911 when a meeting was held

and some elders voiced their concerns about this particular site.

They had concerns about the, um, fall storms and

you know, flooding, erosion.

Back when my great grandmother was 14 years old, she said there was a flood.

She did tell a story.

I guess when you grow up in this environment it's just normal to you.

But what wasn't normal is what happened in 2004.

There was no ice to protect us from the storm surges. We get them every fall.

It's just that we didn't have the ice anymore.

One of the elders came up to me and said he had never seen,

the storms this bad and the water that high in his lifetime.

There was nothing that our people could do to stop it.

They threw everything they could at it but the ocean surge was so strong that

it was just sucking everything into the ocean.

The land just started falling apart.

It's the corner of the house.

We had already decided that we're going to move this village for more

economic development opportunities, for more residential homes.

You know, because we're overcrowded here in the first place.

Erosion was at the bottom of the, of the list of reasons to move.

But since 2004 it's now at the top.

PINSENT: Austin Swan is the mayor of Kivalina.

The rock revetment that was put in to

prevent erosion on the beach.

When we have all the storms this, all this stuff gets washed away.

The grass is what basically holds it together.

PINSENT: The American government response to Kivalina's plight

was to build a rock barrier.

AUSTIN: It's working now, I don't know how much longer it'll work.

They say at least 15 years.

If it takes that long to start relocating well,

we'll probably will stay here 15 years.

Might, maybe even longer the way things are going.

(SINGING IN OTHER LANGUAGE)

PINSENT: People here feel they are facing climate change alone.

They're terrified of a storm surge that they won't be able to escape.

With hunting bad, good food is scarce.

And authorities seem paralyzed to help them.

We hear a lot of that. We're not going to spend any more money on this island

because you're talking about moving.

And then they're not giving us the money to move, which doesn't make sense.

SWAN: We need to have the money to move.

They're telling us it's going to cost too much to move the entire village.

It's not going to be a benefit nationally.

It's just going to benefit like, 400 people.

Four hundred people, whose lives are in imminent danger.

We can't just move to the next town.

People try, but they always come back.

This is who we are.

PINSENT: It's not the place, but the community itself that is home to the people here.

They won't move unless they can move together.

So, they are stuck in overcrowded homes with no services,

except for power and TV.

SWAN: By Western standards, we're economically disadvantaged.

We're a very poor community.

We don't have a cash economy.

We have no modern sewer services.

And that's one of the things that they really want to have, is water and sewer services.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

JOSEPH: We have a problem with fecal in the lagoon.

The dump gets compromised during floods.

PINSENT: A frozen ocean fed the people of Kivalina for generations.

The open Polar Sea now imprisons them.

In Alaska, where their story is known,

some argue governments won't move the village

because native relocations have always gone badly.

Others say they don't want to set a precedent.

In Kivalina, people suspect

that authorities are overwhelmed by unleashed forces they can't control.

SWAN: Why isn't this getting the attention that it needs.

This problem with the ocean.

They're afraid to look at that problem.

And they don't know what to do with it.

Even with the long term

suggestions, you know which is to reduce carbon emissions.

I think we're at that point where it's, it's too late to,

I mean we're too far gone,

that we really are at that 11th hour.

That things will only get worse before they get better.

I mean it's been going on for too long.

That it may take longer to bring it down, to reduce the damage.

SWAN: How it relates to the rest of the world I think, is where we really need to focus.

What does it mean you know when,

when you have a community like Kivanlina

experiencing these things. What does it mean to the rest of the world?

I think people have to get that themselves.

Otherwise it's just another story.

TEGNER: I've heard stories about how climate change is affecting people's lives here.

But these things have become more profound since I have witnesses on the trip.

You can see very clear examples of climate change in the glaciers.

There is a lot of ice melting.

Millions and millions of square kilometers.

Some places there are less animals like caribou.

There were hundreds of thousands on Baffin Island,

now there are just a couple of thousand.

Also polar bears get affected by climate change

their, their way of seeking their food.

Most people you meet here they sort of accept,

what can you do about it, that's the way it is.

Local people have a tradition. A culture.

Thousands of years back that they have learned to deal with

uh, natural problems that occur, coming their way.

Nature behaves that way, suddenly it changes

and maybe take longer time for some things to change

but now it's the climate change and the temperature is rising. It's...

If you live in the nature, you have to adapt.

That's the way to survive.

PINSENT: Climate change is not just a story.

It's a journey, through uncharted seas,

with nothing to guide us except what we learn by sailing them.

TEGNER: It's like when you go on a vacation

and you think you can conserve this feeling and take it with you home.

And after you have to return home things turn out a little bit different.

The things you have experienced they sort of fade out.

Usually it does.

I think and I hope,

that the feeling will remain.

And I think it has humbled me a lot.