Largely on the periphery of human concerns, most of the world has long thought of the polar regions as remote, barren, and fatally inhospitable. Human populations have adapted to live and thrive there, however, and two centuries of exploration, scientific and otherwise, have begun to unlock the regions' secrets. For the past century, the growing human presence has also meant a growth in the exploitation of natural resources and increased direct pressure on their fragile ecologies and native cultures. Indirectly, distant human activity threatens the regions with pollution and climate change. Average winter temperatures in the interior of Alaska have risen seven degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, a change that has seen shrinking glaciers, earlier springs, increasing precipitation, animal populations under stress, and entire villages relocated because of rising water levels. The amount of summer ice at the North Pole has steadily declined since 1979 and recent scientific studies show that the Arctic Ocean is losing sea ice up to thirty years ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions. New predictions now hold that summer sea ice could completely disappear between 2013 and 2040 – something that has not occurred in more than a million years. WWF research shows also that levels of global warming predicted over the next forty years will lead to winter sea-ice coverage around Antarctica declining by up to thirty per cent in some key areas. These changes endanger the populations adapted to live there and raise new political and commercial issues as countries scramble for newly opened up Arctic mineral riches, the possibility opens up for oil drilling in Antarctica, and the Northwest Passage begins to develop into a major shipping route. These books look at the nature, history, and cultures of the polar regions as they face this uncertain future.
Kieran Mulvaney. At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of the natural and human history of the Arctic and Antarctic, the two similar yet very distinct polar regions. Following cycles of exploration and exploitation, it covers human interaction with the areas from the earliest legends of prehistory, through eighteenth and nineteenth century European exploration, to more recent issues of oil and gas drilling, commercial whaling and sealing, pollution, tourism, ozone depletion, and global warming. Seemingly remote, Mulvaney shows how they have been affected and shaped directly by human activity as well as indirectly by events and trends thousands of miles away.
Charles Wohlforth. The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. New York: North Point Press, 2004.
Alaskan journalist Charles Wohlforth focuses on how two cultures are responding to the dramatic changes brought by global warming to the Arctic: the Inupiat Eskimos who live and hunt on the Arctic Ocean coast and the Western scientists who have come to conduct climate and ecological research. Both a portrait of life in an isolated part of the world and a clearly written account of ongoing scientific endeavor, it illuminates two different ways of seeing and comprehending the natural world. Finding points of interaction between the two groups,Wohlforth demonstrates some unexpected commonalities and suggests that elements of both ways of knowing about the environment will be needed to understand and deal with climate change.
Marla Cone. Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
While the Arctic is widely thought to be isolated and the last great unspoiled territory on Earth, it is in reality the location of some of the most contaminated people and animals on the planet as chemicals and pesticides from thousands of miles away in North America, Europe, and Asia travel there by wind and water and are concentrated through the food web. Awarded a grant to conduct an exhaustive study of its deteriorating environment by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Los Angeles Times environmental journalist Marla Cone traveled across the region, from Greenland to the Aleutian Islands, interacting with scientists and the native peoples. She reports on the implications of this foreign pollution for the survival of entire species and cultures.
Sebastian Copeland. Antarctica: The Global Warning. San Rafael, CA: Earth Aware, 2007.
Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula over the last sixty years have increased by a rate of up to five times the global average. Sebastian Copeland, an award-winning photographer and environmental activist, journeyed to Antarctica on the icebreaker The Ice Lady Patagonia in 2006 and 2007 for Global Green USA and Green Cross International to document the peninsula's changing landscape and threatened wildlife. His collection of over a hundred color photographs is accompanied by scientific data and personal insights about climate change including the question of why the polar regions are melting at an increasingly rapid pace.
Kieran Mulvaney. The Whaling Season: An Inside Account of the Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.
Founding director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, science and environmental writer Kieran Mulvaney recounts his involvement leading four expeditions in Greenpeace's campaign to end commercial whaling in the waters surrounding Antarctica. An examination of how the unpopular activity of whaling manages to survive today, Mulvaney places the expeditions in the context of the history of whaling, Antarctic exploration, Greenpeace, and scientific and political efforts at marine conservation.
Terrie M. Williams. The Hunter's Breath: On Expedition with the Weddell Seals of the Antarctic. New York: M. Evans and Co., 2004.
The Weddell seal is the only mammal able to survive year-round in the harsh Antarctic environment, and it is capable of venturing to deep ice caves beyond the reach of human divers. Biologist Terrie Williams and seven other scientists spent six years studying these mysterious creatures, and her account reveals their discoveries and provides a vivid portrait of the challenges and excitement of conducting research in the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on the planet.
Richard E. Byrd. Alone. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.
Famed for having made the first flights over the North and South Poles and for his exploration of the Antarctic, Richard Byrd led his second expedition of the polar continent in 1934. As part of that effort, he spent five winter months isolated and alone operating the Bolling Advance Weather Base and almost failed to survive the ordeal after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective stove. A bestseller first published in 1938, this book is his personal account of his struggle and rescue.
