for Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010
Simon Lynge is watching his country melt. Every time he goes home to Greenland on the edge of the Arctic, something has gone.
When he was last there in June, the snow had disappeared from the hill, and there were no icebergs in the water. It was 28 degrees centigrade, the hottest he has ever known.
Previously, the drinking water that used to supply Alluitsoq, the small village where he was brought up, ran out. The mountain lakes from which it flowed had evaporated in the heat.
His country is changing so fast that he fears for its future, and he has no doubts what is to blame. “We’re spewing too much carbon dioxide into the air and drilling for more oil makes it worse,” he says.
“To paraphrase an old native American saying: only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught, will we realise that we cannot eat money.”
Lynge (30) is no ordinary Inuit. He is the first Inuit singer-songwriter to be awarded a major recording contract. He has his first album out, and he is playing King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow this Thursday.
He did have a traditional Greenland upbringing, however. He worked as a shepherd when he was young and, to much family rejoicing, caught his first fish when he was five, and killed his first reindeer when he was 17.
It’s an accident that his visit to Scotland coincides with major protests against the companies that are causing the climate pollution which is destroying his homeland. But it’s not an issue he shies away from.
He opposes the drilling for oil off Greenland, begun last month by the Scottish oil company, Cairn Energy. “I feel a certain sadness about it,” he tells the Sunday Herald.
“It’s the wrong thing to do. It’s old world rather than new world. I think it’s short-sighted.”
Lynge recognises that his views may not be popular with many Greenlanders who support oil exploration. “I can understand the attractiveness to people because there’s a potential to make a lot of money,” he says.
But he worries that they are being naïve, and are not thinking ahead. “Certain politicians are very eager and are almost stuffing it down the throat of people in Greenland,” he claims.
“And when these companies are trying to get permissions, they talk sweet, but often the reality is different once the oil is found. They are very predatory. They will do anything to get their way - and I mean anything.”
He wants his homeland to be more progressive. “We should look into other methods of creating revenue for our country rather than contributing to the very thing that is causing its demise, and destroying that culture that Greenland has been based on for thousands of years.”
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