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Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic
Smithsonian
December 2009
On Sale: December 1, 2009
304 pages ISBN: 0061579076 EAN: 9780061579073 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
An eye-opening look at the winners and losers in the
high-stakes story of Arctic transformation, from nations to
natives to animals to the very landscape itself The Arctic—like the canary in the coal mine—has reacted more
quickly and dramatically to global warming than many had
anticipated. Hundreds of scientists are urgently trying to
predict just how the Arctic will change and how those
changes will in turn affect the rest of the planet. But
plenty of other people, driven by profit rather than data,
are interested as well. The riches of the world’s last
virgin territory have spurred the reawakening of old
geopolitical rivalries. The United States, Canada, Russia,
Norway, and the Danish territory of Greenland all control
areas around the Arctic Ocean. We face a new era of oil rigs
and drill ships, of tankers taking shortcuts from Yokohama
to Rotterdam, as well as a potential fight over the Arctic’s
treasures. Alongside the winners from an open Arctic sea are the many
losers, from the nomadic reindeer herders of Siberia and
Scandinavia to the Inuit hunters of Alaska, Greenland, and
Canada. Other creatures that rely on the vast expanses of
sea ice, including seals, birds, and whales—and the
ecosystems within which they live—may disappear to be
replaced by different creatures. Combining science, business, politics, and adven-ture, Alun
Anderson takes the reader to the ends of the earth for what
may be the last narrative portrait of this rapidly changing
land of unparalleled global significance.
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