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Arctic Yearbook 2013
What Does the Arctic Teach Us?
not typically the way academics write about the Arctic either, considering that they have no unified
point of view, owing to their disciplines, their nationalities, as well as their scientific and economic
interests. Political scientists, along with experts in international law and world affairs, for example,
are interested in possible conflicts around Arctic issues, such as, recently, fisheries, oil, gas, minerals,
shipping routes, and others more (Anderson, 2009; Byers, 2009; Emmerson, 2010; Osherenko &
Young, 1989: Sale & Potapov, 2010; Young & Osherenko, 1993). They also write about nation-
building, for example, in the case of Greenland, or territorial aspirations of indigenous peoples
around the circumpolar North (Zellen, 2009). International relations specialists are furthermore
interested in the so-called ―globalization of the Arctic‖, as well as ensuing possible conflicts, notably
shaped by national interests (Fairhall, 2010; Heininen & Southcott, 2010). They actually have a long
history writing about the Cold War and corresponding military buildup, and have refocused,
recently, on so-called ―Arctic security issues‖, defining global warming as an Arctic security threat
(as part of securitization theory) (Huebert, et al., 2012). Anthropologists write about Arctic
indigenous peoples and their culture, or about the Arctic as yet another territory where indigenous
peoples are being modernized and traditions are being lost (Malaurie, 1955; Golovnev & Osherenko,
1999; Einther, G. et.al., 2010). Economists, along with geographers, write about Arctic development
and local, regional, national and even global growth prospects thanks to the Arctic‘s resources
(Einarsson, et.al., 2004). Natural scientists – in particular oceanographers, marine biologists,
geophysicists and geologists, in addition to others – write about the Arctic because it is a new
territory from where new species and new resources can be discovered. Meteorologists,
climatologists and glaciologists have found a privileged terrain where to observe warming and
melting ice sheets and glaciers, or, earlier, Arctic haze (Hassol, 2004; Nillsson, 2007). Environmental
scientists, finally, observe and write about global pollutants, in particular Pb, PCBs, POPs, as well as
others (Wadhams, et.al., 1996). All of this of course warrants research, conferences, publications and
academic careers. But what is missing so far, in my view, is a more ethical and epistemological
reflection about how the Arctic and its rapid changes relate to military-industrial civilization and its
future.
To me there is more to the Arctic than a new territory where one can apply concepts, methods and
theories that have already been tested numerous times elsewhere. The Arctic is the territory where
the future of industrial civilization is currently being played out and for two paradoxically related
reasons. On the one hand, the Arctic cryosphere constitutes one of the main identified tipping
points (Fleming, 2008; Lenton, et al., 2008; Nature, 2011; Nuttall, 2012; Wadhams, 2012; Wassmann
& Lenton, 2012; Young, 2012): if we are to lose Arctic ice cover, and especially Greenland‘s ice
sheet, then this will trigger an irreversible ―dangerous change‖ of the global climate system. On the
other hand, the Arctic holds such an important portion of the Earth‘s fossil fuel resources (Gautier
& Pierce, 2008, Howard, 2009) that, when exploited and burnt, it will inevitably trigger the
aforementioned tipping point. As such, the Arctic is a significant part of a broader phenomenon,
called the ―Anthropocene‖, i.e., the geological period during which humans – or more precisely
industrial civilization – have become an important or the important geological force (Steffen, et.al,
2011). This interlinked process is actually well underway already. Therefore, the question I am asking
in this article is, whether industrial civilization is capable of restraining itself from exploiting the