It used to be a truism that to be the best salesman in the world, one has to be able to sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo living at the Arctic.
It sounded more like a joke than a challenge to a salesman worth his salt for in reality, how could a fridge sale be consummated at the Arctic region, especially to the Inuits, the indigenous people of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia, when it is, perhaps, the last thing that they need.
With permafrost practically all over the area, all the Inuits have to do is dig a hole to store their food and cover it back with ice so their provisions do not go bad prematurely.
But, with the issue of global warming hotly contested now, indeed, it may be highly probable these days that a salesman can close a deal with an Inuit by being able to persuade him to buy a unit of a cooling or a freezing appliance such as a refrigerator.
Climate change in the Arctic is considerably affecting communities and, thus, the lifestyle of the Inuits. Their hunting culture has been altered and so are the ways to store the meat of the Arctic species they hunt for food, like seals, polar bears, whales and the caribous.
In fact the Inuit communities are said to be appealing for funds to build communal deep freezers as an alternative to the fast melting ice cap.
The ice is no longer thick and safe as before that the Inuits have to find other ways to store their meat. Some of their villages are literally falling into the seas because of erosion as a result of global warming.
There is greater apprehension especially that the ice cap is melting much faster now. It has raised ocean levels and thinned the winter ice and in the process is threatening the Inuit’s existence.
Unless the U.N. talks in the Danish capital of Copenhagen on a new global climate deal is being agreed upon by the 190 governments attending it, could we be seeing pretty soon a proliferation of refrigerators being sold at the Arctic?
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