Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Security and the Environment)

246 Pages·2009·0.91 MB·English

by  Barry Scott Zellen

Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom
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Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom
The Geopolitics of Climate Change
in the Arctic
Barry Scott Zellen
Foreword by Walter J. Hickel,
Former Governor of Alaska
Foreword by Daniel J. Moran
Security and the Environment
P. H. Liotta, Series Editor
P
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Zellen,BarryScott,1963–
Arcticdoom,Arcticboom:thegeopoliticsofclimatechangeinthe
Arctic/BarryScottZellen;forewordbyWalterJ.Hickel[and]DanielJ.Moran.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-313-38012-9(hardcopy:alk.paper)—ISBN978-0-313-38013-6
(ebook)1.Climaticchanges—Arcticregions.2.Arcticregions—Climate.
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CONTENTS
ForewordbyWalterJ.Hickel vii
ForewordbyDanielJ.Moran ix
1 Introduction:ArcticSpring 1
2 TheGeopoliticsofSnowandIce 7
3 AnArcticImperative? 45
4 FromColdWartoWarmingEarth 69
5 PolarUncertainties 103
6 TheEndoftheArctic 137
Notes 165
Bibliography 195
Index 225
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FOREWORD
THE DAY OF THE ARCTIC IS UPON US
To understand sustainable living in the Arctic, you have to have sustained
thinking in the Arctic. You have to live it, over time. As Barry Zellen
knows from his years in the Canadian north, those of us who live in the
Arctic and sub-Arctic have a unique perspective that may surprise those
from more temperate climes. The latter see the high latitudes as cold,
remote, and as mysterious as the Moon. But to those of us who live here,
the Arctic is home. The Arctic is heritage. The Arctic is our here and
now, and our hereafter.
As the world awakens to the realities of climate change, a typical reac-
tion of policymakers “down South” is to fear the North and want to lock it
up. But sustainable living requires more than preservation. It requires stew-
ardship. The Arctic will never compete with the rest of the world for peo-
ple, but the Arctic is rich with the resources people need. At Alaska’s
North Slope, nature condensed a continent of food into an ocean of oil.
Our history of development, with the exception of the Exxon Valdez disas-
ter, has enjoyed the finest environmental record in the Arctic world. In
the last thirty years, with state oversight, industry has shrunk the size of
the drilling “footprint” to one quarter of its former size. No waste products
are left on the surface. These innovations are extremely important to us
who care about the future of the North.
As the indigenous peoples learned long ago, in a cold, harsh environ-
ment you have to care about others. You waste nothing. You share to sur-
vive. You care for the total. Every hunter’s prize is a gift, not just to that
hunter, but to one’s family and village. Throughout the world, the same
sense of shared responsibility must now be awakened as we become sensi-
tive to the needs of the global environment. Pollution knows no borders.
All rivers eventually run into a common sea. All living things breathe the
viii Foreword
common air. In truth, it is a collective world, but one in which we live so
privately. Without concern for other people, for their needs and wants,
activities for strictly private gain become destructive, not only to others
but eventually to oneself.
That’s why in Alaska, we are as proud of our development accomplish-
ments as we are of our environmental victories. Sustainable living requires
both. And a large percentage of the resources of the future will come from
the Arctic, the oceans, and space. In the case of the Arctic, instead of
fearing to use our resources, we are determined to use them wisely. As we
in the far North look at the world from the top, we observe that the ma-
jority of the earth’s surface, including the oceans, is commons. It is com-
monly owned, or owned by no one, therefore owned by all. By my tally, 84
percent of the earth’s surface is commons, and the commons is a great
responsibility for this generation and a key to the future of the world.
Because, if the human race learns to use the commons correctly, there will
be no legitimate reason for poverty.
The commons is obvious to us in Alaska, because nearly all of Alaska is
commonly owned. As a result, our economic/political system is a hybrid
combination of a constitutional democracy, a free enterprise economy, and
public ownership of resources. Our “Owner State” goes beyond both social-
ism and capitalism. We survive and subsist from the commons. We fund
government from the commons. Economists and thinkers around the Arc-
tic are fascinated by this model. The People’s Chamber, created by former
Russian President Vladimir Putin, invited me to Moscow in 2006 to
explain the Alaska approach. I believe it is well suited for Russia and all
cultures with a tradition of community. Before Alaska became a state in
1959, the Alaska people were poor people living on rich land exploited by
outside interests. But our statehood compact and our innovative constitu-
tion require us to develop our natural resources “for the maximum benefit
of our people.” This has worked well.
To be able to benefit from the Alaska economic model, and the peace-
ful relationships that Icelandic President O(cid:2)lafur Ragnar Gr(cid:2)imsson calls
“The New North,” it is vital that policymakers worldwide take the time to
understand the northern experience and welcome it. This book will help.
Barry Zellen explores the complexity and the challenges facing the Arctic
whilerecognizingtheexcitingrealitythattheDayoftheArcticisuponus.
Walter J. Hickel
Anchorage, Alaska
Governor of Alaska, 1966–1969 and 1990–1994
U.S. Secretary of the Interior, 1969–1970
Founder, Institute of the North
FOREWORD
FROM ULTIMA THULE TO THE MIDNIGHT SEA
I have a map of the Arctic on my wall that was drawn around 1700. It is,
by and large, a work of pure fancy. It shows the “Arctic Circle,” a carto-
graphic convention imported from astronomy that marks the southern-
most point at which the earth receives 24 hours of sunlight in a single
day—the so-called midnight sun. What lay beyond was anyone’s guess. On
my map, the spirit of the Scientific Revolution has asserted itself, so that
the artist (the only fair description) has omitted any representation of
Ultima Thule, a dreamland that often appeared on medieval maps as a
kind of place-holder to fill the space between knowledge and imagination.
Instead the northern borders of the known world fade into the unknown,
to nothing. The center of the page is occupied by an amorphous space
called the Midnight Sea, into which some pleasant looking monsters have
been inserted to add interest, as do a half-dozen sailing ships that, as the
caption explains, are on their way from Europe to Asia.
Try as they might, they would not get there. As everyone soon realized,
the northernmost reaches of our planet’s surface were covered by an im-
passable carapace of ice—a thrilling discovery to Victorian adventurers,
who eagerly risked life and limb to reach the North Pole, but a discourag-
ing prospect to nearly everyone else, for whom the Arctic remained
scarcely more familiar than it was in the seventeenth century. Now the ice
is melting and, with it, whatever inhibitions may have stood between man-
kind and a more thorough acquaintance with what has long been one of
the most socially and economically isolated regions on earth. My antique
map is becoming more accurate every day. The Arctic is indeed an ocean,
and if ships are ever able to sail across it unhindered it will mean that the
world is on its way to becoming a much different place than it is now.