(TAN): British teenager Mya-Rose Craig has travelled all the way to the Arctic Ocean to take the climate change battle to the northernmost reaches of the earth. Armed with a placard reading “Youth Strike for Climate”, the 18-year-old activist is furthering a series of youth strikes worldwide.
“Time is running out. The Arctic is melting, and could be gone by the time I’m in my 30s, and we need our leaders to make a decision now,” she said on Twitter. “I did the most northerly climate strike ever in the Arctic to convey my desperation and the urgency of the issue.”
“I’m here to… try and make a statement about how temporary this amazing landscape is and how our leaders have to make a decision now in order to save it,” Craig told Reuters as she stood with her placard on the edge of the Arctic sea ice.
Craig feels there could not have been a place better than the Arctic Ocean to convey the message. The health of the arctic is deteriorating fast and it has been tagged as one of the fastest changing ecosystems of the world with serious consequences for wildlife from polar bears and seals to plankton and algae, while the melting sea ice contributes to rising sea levels worldwide. Increasing tourism in the Arctic circle and the movement of cruise ships in the fragile ecosystem are often seen as reasons contributing to the problem.
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According to reports, In 1990, only 7,952 cruise passengers passed through Iceland. By 2016, a quarter of a million were visiting the country yearly. Experts warn that the increasing traffic raises the chance of a catastrophe such as an oil spill or a sewage leak that would damage the pristine polar environment.
“It is a matter of time, not a matter of if,” said Jackie Dawson, an associate professor of geography, environment and geomatics at the University of Ottawa. “We will see some sort of disaster related to climate change and increased human activity in the Arctic.”
However, the cruise industry is little bothered about the environmental impact of the arctic cruise trips. Marta Bystrowska, a climate scientist was quoted by the media as saying, “The cruising industry may shift toward bigger and bigger ships to accommodate rising demand and making cruises more profitable.”
With the Arctic facing this imminent danger, Craig thinks that adults have failed to take the urgent action needed to tackle global warming. “I absolutely think that my generation has always had to think about climate change… which is why as we’ve got older there’s been this massive wave of just this need for change, this demand for change when we realised the grown-ups aren’t going to solve this so we have to do it ourselves.”
Craig has travelled hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle aboard a Greenpeace ship named Arctic Sunrise.
