Life is a process of transformation…

Sperm + Egg to foetus.

Foetus to baby birth and human.

Cocoon to Butterfly and so on.

Thus it is no surprise that a whole Ocean can transform.

Now the Arctic transforms itself.

A great transformation is under way.

The change from ice to water is an end for many familiar creatures but, in a wider sense, it is not an end.

The Arctic is being reborn as a sea that is more similar to southerly seas.

Whales, fish, birds and plankton that are more at home in warmer waters are already invading the Arctic.

Off the coast of Alaska, for example, pollock are moving north, bringing also the salmon that feed on them. This is the beginning of a new Arctic ecosystem that is forming as the old Arctic dies.

As yet, we cannot see the exact shape of the new world, or how many of its older inhabitants will hang on in remote, icier spots. But we can guess who will be its new ruler, the top predator which will topple the polar bear from its throne.

Already, in the far north, I have seen pods of killer whales. These animals have a tail fin that makes it hard for them to surface where there is much thick ice. The disappearance of the ice is increasingly exposing the beluga, narwhal and bowhead to this ferocious predator. In some parts of the Arctic, beluga whale, known as the canary of the sea for their constant chattering, have fallen silent. Killer whales are close and are listening out for prey.

In purely biological terms, the new Arctic will be more productive than the old, because there is more water, open to sunlight for longer, with more plankton growing in it, and more food supports more life. The first signs are already there. After the sudden collapse of the sea ice in 2007, a satellite-borne sensor, measuring the water’s “greenness”, showed that the total productivity of the Arctic seas leapt by 40 per cent. That is a huge increase.

Louis Fortier, a marine biologist at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, explained it like this: “If you look at it simply from the point of view of biological productivity, that will increase as the ice disappears. It’s just that the life there, the specialists which we are all fond of, like the polar bear, the walrus and some other species which we have in our unconscious mind, are going to get into trouble.”

Is there comfort in knowing that polar bears hunting on ice will be replaced by killer whales swimming in a warmer, more productive sea? For me, the answer is “not much”, but it will be the consequence of what we have done to Earth. And looking at the changes to the Arctic as a transformation does lead to a larger thought.

For too long, too many fruitless efforts to combat climate change have been billed as “Saving the Planet”.

Right now, in the last week or two before the climate negotiations at Copenhagen, there are few signs of any dramatic action. Perhaps that is because the message is wrong.

As the changes in the Arctic show, the planet continues on it’s own way.  

A paranoia inducing Darwinian marketplace is what the planet has in mind for all of us.

Do we get it?

And shape up?

Or we ship out.  

Simple as that.

Species come and species go.

The planet does not need saving – even from us.

Yours,

PS: Maybe we evolve into something with common sense too…