This past Feb. 24, just 440 miles shy of the North Pole, the world’s northernmost weather station recorded a temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 11 degrees above freezing in the middle of what’s normally the coldest period of the Arctic winter, when the sun’s rays are totally absent, 24-7.

I took particular note of that fleeting news item, as just two days before a friend was telling me about “SILA and the Gatekeepers of the Arctic,” a film presented by Bowdoin College on the plight of those indigenous to that area of northwest Greenland. He related the film’s narrative about how those native peoples are now hard-pressed to survive, as they have for time immemorial, in a culture based on being one with the environment and dependent on a tradition where sustenance is derived from once predictable seal and polar bear populations now irreparably dislocated and species threatened. He exasperatingly conveyed how the documentary juxtaposed other Greenlanders’ nonnative opportunistic embrace of the short-term economic advantages of such climate change.

Too bad for those that can’t warm to an ironic pragmatism where every environmental degradation has a silver lining, and cataclysmic glacial eradication is rebranded as a now navigable cruise ship destination for those wishing to take a selfie before the arctic is gone forever.

None of what he related was outside of what I already knew or what anyone can Google from other sources. None of it was news, or of any real shock value if one has paid any attention to the reluctant mainstream media coverage of the human causation of this inescapable handbasket we have so persistently and recklessly fashioned despite all the evidence of its ultimate destination.

Two-thirds of the Arctic’s sea ice has melted since 1980. None of this global environmental destruction that so many find themselves in denial about happened overnight, and the ongoing parade of countless red flags marches on to still largely averted eyes or the persistent escapist optimism that small individual environmentally correct gestures can actually make any real endgame difference.

No matter how bizarrely unseasonable our Maine weather presents itself, many continue to comment on it as if it was a “cyclical” meteorological aberration having nothing to do with an alarming, argued alarmist, acknowledgment that human activity is responsible. Freakish warmth only prompts: “I wouldn’t mind some more of this.” Uncharacteristic cold just reaffirms the rationalization that “global warming” is simply so much fake science.

“What we are seeing before our eyes is the revealing of a new and enormously important ocean resource with respect to energy, security and commerce.”

Sen. Angus King said that just two years ago in regards to climate change’s rapidly advancing creation of open-water Arctic passage providing the prospect of new trading lanes across the top of the world between Maine and the Far East.

Gov. LePage and Sen. King share that sentiment despite opposing positions on basic environmental policy. Both nevertheless mouth the establishment bottom line rallying cry that “Change is inevitable. What matters is how we use it to our best advantage.” Or, more blatantly, “How can capitalism best capitalize on it.,” an American worldview familiarly expressed by the classic bumper sticker wisdom: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

That the planet is dying due to mankind’s obsessive exaltation of myriad unneeded toys over nature’s irreplaceable, unmatched and essential wonders is, pathetically and cowardly, still an existential challenge America won’t step up to, let alone lead on.

Some may nevertheless, maybe truly innocently, ask how a warming Arctic matters to our everyday Midcoast Maine existence. The kick the can answer is: “Very little in the immediate future.” Unless, one has thoughts of frequenting a landmark restaurant on Bath’s downtown interface with the Kennebec without consulting a tide chart to find out if it’s currently land-tied. Each time Commercial St. now floods most still act as if that’s just a curiosity that will ultimately return to normalcy.

A historic shipbuilding town is of course near sea level, and much of present day Bath was historically part of the Kennebec. The question is how will today’s Bath deal with oncoming historic sea levels? How will it finance necessary infrastructure to assure its future habitability as the Atlantic continues to rise ever more rapidly? How will Maine’s 3,478 miles of coastline be reconfigured as tidal ranges increase?

Status quo procrastination needs a nuclear wake-up call. Those still dreaming that earth’s environmental nightmare will somehow eventually go away are only passing the buck as our cumulative planetary disregard gets more costly and less affordable with each passing day. The ultimate bill coming due will never be fully payable. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the world back together again. The foretold tipping point has past.

The Arctic’s once indomitable remoteness is poised for materialistic exploitation that will only pile on more insult to an environmental injury that Midcoast Maine is similarly destined to suffer. Maine’s traditional way of life will be equally hard-pressed to survive when its entire coastline is moved inland and its iconic cold-water fisheries are insidiously decimated.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.