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21 - Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2023

Adrian Howkins
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Peder Roberts
Affiliation:
University of Stavanger
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Summary

In the twenty-first century, scientists and the media track the health of the planet in the polar regions. Shrinking sea ice in the Arctic and Southern oceans, melting ice shelves in Nunavut, Greenland, and West Antarctica, and thawing permafrost in Alaska and Siberia are signals of global warming. This has led people to refer to these regions as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ or the ‘ground zero’ and ‘epicentre’ of climate change.1 Such metaphors impart an abstract quality to the polar regions, with rising temperatures and loss of ice serving merely as numbers on the dashboard of Spaceship Earth. This view of the polar regions as integral yet neutral – transparent indicators of a global system – has an intellectual and political history. Created by the scientific context of the Cold War, it provides a powerful, panoptic perspective of the planet while obscuring the heterogeneity and pluralism of beings and places.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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