At the End of the Day Somebody Has to Mop A Bear Off the Street

As I crossed an open space to get to my office the other morning I was confronted with the sight of a rather large block of ice shaped (very) roughly like a bear. There was at least one person engaged in chipping bits off it, no doubt in an attempt to make it more ursine in appearance. I saw it again at lunch and it definitely looked more like a bear if only because wombats have stumpier legs. Finally I saw it again on my way home and it looked like a somewhat smaller bear.

Ice sculptures seem a little self defeating to me. There can be few other artistic endeavours where a blown thermostat can lead to you literally drowning in your work. Granted some people have little choice in the materials they use for their artistic expression. The Eskimo woodworker can sit for as long as he likes staring at the permafrost praying for just one little tree but we all know he's going to have to go home and ask the neighbours if they mind him doing something creative with their spare igloo.

Yep, when you spend all your life north of the Arctic Circle your sculpture options are pretty limited. It's really either ice or whalebone and I don't honestly think we can blame our anonymous sculptor for picking the medium that doesn't involve paddling out into icy waters in a kayak in an attempt to spear a seventy tonne sea monster. I can't help thinking these guys must be desperate for global warming.

Forget the Northwest Passage and newly exploitable oilfields can you imagine the breadth of Inuit art we're going to experience once the variety of sculpting materials increases? It isn't just sculpture either; once movement can be something other than a desperate attempt to keep your feet warm I think we will see an explosion in Eskimo interpretive dance. Poetry readings, too, will become more popular once the author doesn't have to worry about the audience freezing to death in mid recital.

It won't only be in the artistic sphere that the Eskimos will benefit from what is being marketed as the greatest environmental catastrophe of all time. Property values will rise, communications will become easier and best of all those ferocious bears will become a thing of the past seen only in non melting stone or wood sculptures. There are going to be so many upsides for the Inuit people once global warming kicks in that it will quite make up for the fact that their houses have melted.