Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change

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Hello and welcome to this episode of Behind the Lines with me Arthur Snell.

Last week on the 12th of March, my new book, Elemental, The New Geography of Climate

Change and how we survive it came out, both in hard back as an e-book and also as an

audiobook.

So for this week's episode, I'm giving you an exclusive clip of the audiobook, specifically

a chapter on the Arctic and how the climate crisis is changing the strategic dynamics of

that region.

It's something I was fascinated in long before Donald Trump started blethering on about

Greenland.

Some of the book is written for my own travels in the Arctic, including to the Norwegian

controlled archipelago of Svalbard, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where under an

obscure 100-year-old treaty, Russia has both a port and a coal mine.

I hope you find this interesting and I hope you find it interesting enough either to order

the audiobook or the physical copy from any book shop that you would like to support.

Many thanks and enjoy the episode.

Chapter 17 The Polar Regions A New Great Game

The polar bear is back in Long-Yarbien.

The governor has started chasing.

We ask people to be careful.

This curt message posted on the website of the governor of Svalbard was a reminder that

humans were not the only predator on these islands.

Andre, my laconic guide, Green, does he went over the protocols for encounters with polar

bears, which outnumber people on Svalbard.

It's not actually very complicated.

By law, whenever outside the sparse settlements, Andre uses his rifle to scare the animal away,

only shooting at it if all else has failed.

We're driving snowmobiles which are supposed to go faster than the bears, but only just.

These huge animals can cover ground at 40 km per hour, roughly the sprinting speed of

Usain Bolt.

On our two-day journey across the snowy mountains of Spitzberg and the largest of Svalbard's

islands, the only bear we see is a stuffed one in the lobby of a hotel.

Given that this beast stands three metres tall and has claws the length of my entire hand,

I'm content not to have met the living version.

The polar bear is the quintessential Arctic animal because its habitat is defined by the

Arctic Ocean itself.

Over the course of their lives, bears will cover hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometres

as they search for prey under the frozen seas, mostly seals.

The one constant is the polar ice cap, a shifting but ever-present surface across the top of

our planet.

In reality, of course, nothing is constant or ever-present.

For how long has there been ice at the North Pole?

Robby Mallet is a climate scientist based at University College London and a specialist

in the cryosphere, the academic term for those parts of the world, high mountains and

polar regions, where water is naturally found in its solid form.

Arctic sea ice has been a year-round phenomenon for all of recorded history.

But as Mallet explained to me, there have been prehistoric periods when the Arctic has

been like any other ocean, just a huge body of water.

The most recent of these was around 8,000 years ago during the Holocene climatic optimum,

also known as the insulation maximum, which was the warmest period prior to today before

you start getting back to 125,000 years ago.

In 2020, an international research team used a complex computer model of the climate system

to predict the future melting of the polar ice cap.

When the sun shines on a white surface such as an area of sea ice, most of this heat

is reflected back into the atmosphere, a phenomenon known as the albedo effect.

In contrast, when the suns rays hit a dark surface such as a pond of meltwater sitting

on top of the ice, these ponds absorb the suns radiation and transfer it to the ice

below and ultimately to the ocean, leading to warming.

As the research has noted, melt ponds forming in the summer months contribute to melting

sea ice as more radiation reaches the ocean.

According to the 2020 research, a supercomputer prediction model provides independent support

for predictions of ice-free conditions by summer of 2035.

The thought that a major geographical feature of our planet, the year-round sea ice at the

North Pole, might disappear in the middle of the next decade, is hard to rationalize.

In 1980, the minimum area of sea ice in the Arctic was about 7 million square kilometers

about the size of Australia.

By 2020, this had shrunk by roughly half, but this ice is also much thinner.

The overall volume of ice at the summer minimum, the point at which the ice is as its least

extent in September, has halved in a much quicker time period of roughly 10 years, according

to Danish government data.

What was effectively a solid continent in the world of 1980 may have disappeared entirely

by the summer of 2035, and this profound geographical change brings with it an equally significant

geopolitical change.

A frozen Arctic is also, to a large extent, frozen in strategic terms.

It is too difficult to terrain for countries to be able to gain major advantage or seek

to exercise control.

Yet an open Arctic ocean adds a new, unplayed field in the great game of global power politics.

In the coming decades, a range of established and rising powers will seek to dominate this

newly accessible space.

Ben Saunders is one of only three people to have walked alone to both poles.

He has seen this change at first hand.

In 2001, attempting to ski to the North Pole from Navaya Zemlia in the Siberian Arctic,

he told me, we were essentially able to walk from the beach onto the frozen sea.

I went back to exactly the same spot in 2004, three years later, and there was 20 kilometers

of open water before the ice, so I started from the edge of the pack ice, and I made it

to the North Pole that year.

A few people said, well, it doesn't count, you didn't start from land, you cheated,

and other people said, well, it's a freak year, you know, the ice will be back.

But nobody's repeated that journey since because there has never been the consistent pack ice

to make it possible.

The ecological effects of this change will be profound, a warming Arctic weakens the

jet stream and causes more intense storms in the northern hemisphere.

This means more hurricanes, floods, so-called once-in-a-century events occurring every year,

but it will also have profound effects on the wildlife of the Arctic.

The bears will be forced to swim longer distances between ever smaller pieces of ice as they seek

seals to hunt.

This will lead to weight loss at a time when, in preparation for hibernation, they're supposed

to be gaining reserves of fat, they risk hypothermia and starvation.

In the wild, polar bears give birth to their cubs over the dark Arctic winter.

These cubs can expect to live around 30 years.

This means that those born at the time of writing in the winter of 2023 are likely to live

to see an ice-free Arctic ocean, a moment of geological time happening in real time.

These majestic and terrifying animals, the kings of the polar regions, will be the last generation

of bears to have an ocean to hunt on.

The Arctic Grail, a 500-year quest.

In 1544, Sebastian Kabbert produced a world map of impressive accuracy.

Kabbert was a Venetian who had grown up in England and became one of the greatest navigators

of his age.

This was in his blood.

His father, John Kabbert, as generations of Anglophone school children will have learned,

had discovered North America in 1497.

The indigenous inhabitants might question this version of events, as might the Vikings

that settled in Newfoundland in the 10th century.

Regardless, both father and son were significant figures in expanding European knowledge of

the Americas in the early modern period.

Sebastian Kabbert's map attests to this.

As Michael Engelhard, a wilderness guide and essayist recorded, his map has the Arctic

Circle at the approximate latitude and two bears just south of it in what today is Northern

Quebec, Canada.

The land is very sterile.

There are in it many white bears, a handwritten comment on the map reads.

Kabbert, Jr., had direct knowledge of the Arctic Circle.

In 1508 he attempted to navigate the Northwest Passage, the Maritime Channel between the

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, across the top of what is now Canada.

When European sailors began to explore the oceans beyond their own, they calculated

that the shortest maritime route from Europe to the fabled wealth of Asia would be via

the Arctic.

These early modern explorers were right in principle.

The route from Rotterdam to Tokyo via the Northwest Passage is 16,000 kilometres, as opposed

to over 27,000 via the Cape of Good Hope.

The problem was practical, sea ice that would prevent any sail-powered ship of that era

from making progress.

As Kabbert's contemporary Peter Marta wrote in his history, De Orbo Novo, for purposes

of commerce, Kabbert equipped two vessels in England at his own cost and first sailed

with 300 men towards the north to such a distance that he found numerous masses of floating

ice in the middle of the month of July.

Daylight lasted nearly 24 hours.

Kabbert was defeated by the ice flows, but the efforts to traverse the Arctic Ocean

continued.

More than any other voyage of discovery, Arctic sea routes, often called the Arctic Rail,

would remain graveyards of overweaning ambition for 500 years.

This was not for one to have tried.

Literally hundreds of sailors lost their lives to this effort from the age of discovery

onwards.

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy returned its attention to the Northwest

Passage.

The 19th century Britain, at the height of its power and confidence, to identify and

control a shorter sea passage to Asia, would give it a crucial advantage in the imperial

age.

In 1845, Admiral Sir John Franklin left London at the head of an extraordinarily well-equipped

expedition.

Franklin had state-of-the-art, specially reinforced steamships, the Arabus and Terra, as well

as food for three years and every possible scientific device to record his findings and

smooth his passage.

Like others who had tried to find a Northwest Passage before him, Franklin and his entire

expedition disappeared.

Nearly ten years later, another Victorian explorer of the Arctic, John Ray, encountered

inuit hunters who could tell him what had happened to Franklin's men.

It's worth noting that these indigenous peoples have always been able to travel across

the high Arctic, although they had no need of a shipping route connecting the Atlantic

to the Pacific Ocean.

As ever, concepts of discovery and exploration are mostly ones of perspective.

From the inuit hunters, Ray acquired relics from Franklin's expedition and learned the

shocking news that Franklin's desperate team, their ships trapped in the ice, had turned

to cannibalism.

This news ignited huge controversy in Victorian Britain, where the possibility that civilized

Royal Navy officers could have resorted to such savagery was greeted with dismay and

derision.

The times, in its editorial of the 27th of October 1855, were suitably dismissive.

Like all savagers, they are liars.

It concluded of the inuit, hinting darkly that in fact they may have attacked Franklin's

party.

Ray, an alkeny surgeon and far less well connected than Franklin and his aristocratic

widow, was quickly accused of having invented the story in the hope of claiming a reward.

This anti-ray tendency became a phenomenon with even Charles Dickens jumping on the bandwagon.

Not for the first time, British snobbery would prevent the passage of knowledge.

Ray's most significant discovery may not have been Franklin's fate.

He had also figured out the link in the complicated geography of northern Canada that would prove

the key to the northwest passage.

It was ruled Ammonson, that great Norwegian explorer, who would complete this journey by

sea for the first time at the start of the 20th century.

But as he did so, he paid full credit to Ray, whose route finding through this trait

is the only navigable route for the voyage round the North Coast of America.

But the presence of pack ice that could sink a substantial ship meant that the passage

would remain a technical novelty rather than a route accessible to regular shipping.

As early as 1522, Spanish sailors had circumnavigated the world, but even in 2022, a passage

of the northern sea routes from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean remained a challenging

journey for regular shipping even in summer.

What 500 years of exploration could not solve will in the next two decades be ripped open

by man-made climate change.

The impassable channels of the high Arctic, both the northwest passage through Canada and

the northeast passage across Russia's northern coast, will become open water within a few

decades.

And as a result, they will also become immensely valuable shipping routes for the countries

that control them.

Canada claims full sovereignty of the northwest passage, which has been challenged by the United

States and the European Union, both of which argue this should be considered international

waters.

Whoever controls the northwest passage would also have huge leverage over Greenland.

Trump's desire to take over both Canada and Greenland appears increasingly explicable,

even if it flouts most global norms.

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Planting the flag

The explorers left their mark in the classic way by planting a flag, laying claim to

460,000 square miles of maritime territory.

This was not centuries ago, but in 2007.

In that year, two specially made Russian submarines dived to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean

and left a special underwater flag sitting on the bed of the ocean.

The Russians claimed that the underwater Lomonosov Ridge was connected to the continental

shelf and this was therefore part of Russian territory.

Canada scoffed, this isn't the 15th century, you can't go around the world and just plant

flags and say we're claiming this territory, their foreign minister Peter McKay responded.

The underwater flag did not change Russia's legal status in any way, although it was a brilliant

publicity stunt.

Russia also made its Arctic claim in a more formal setting.

At the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, CLCS, Russia has since 2001

lodged a series of increasingly bold claims to an exclusive economic zone, EEZ, stretching

over and under the waters of the Arctic Ocean.

By 2021, these claims extended to 70% of the unclaimed seabed.

Effectively, Russia announced that most of the Arctic belonged to it, including the

North Pole itself.

These claims overlap significantly with the pre-existing claims of other Arctic nations,

notably Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland.

There is no debate about the importance of the Arctic to Putin himself, who has said

that the region is a concentration of practically all aspects of national security, military,

political, economic, technological, environmental and that of resources.

One motivation for Russia's Arctic claims is economic.

As the oceans warm, the Arctic becomes an ever-richer fishing ground, but it is also

replete with mineral resources, particularly the oil and gas that are the lifeblood of

the Russian economy.

However, a far more important objective is Russia's security and power.

If we consider the other countries of the Arctic region, in addition to Denmark, there

are the USA, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland.

All of these countries are members of NATO.

All have difficult political and security relations with Russia.

All have taken a firmly negative stance on Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This last point may not be said to apply to the United States since the re-election of Donald

Trump.

Nonetheless, the Arctic is where Russia shares geographical space with its geopolitical

adversaries without the presence of any buffer states.

On the Arctic Cola Peninsula, in the extreme northwest of Russia bordering Norway and

Finland, is the headquarters of the Northern Fleet.

This exists to support the dual in the crown of Russia's navy, its nuclear-powered ballistic

missile submarines, the majority of which are based at Cola.

In the event of a nuclear war with NATO, it is these submarines lurking deep in the waters

of the Arctic Ocean that will have the grim job of striking Western targets.

In this context, Russia laying claim to the Arctic is not some quick-sotic post-imperial

dream, but careful positioning to take advantage of a new world.

Having these newly accessible seas is also the key to controlling trade.

As Bruce Jones, a director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings

Institution, told me, something in the order of 85% of all-world trade moves by sea.

Two-thirds of the world's energy is either found at sea or moved by sea.

We live our entire lives connected to our smartphones and our bank cards in the internet.

And we either ignore, or simply don't know, that 93% of all data worldwide moves on

undersea cables that line the ocean floor.

Every part of our life is shaped by the dynamics of the world's oceans.

Control of world trade's naval chokepoints can alter world trade, as we all learned when

the container vessel ever given blocked the Suez Canal in 2021, causing worldwide supply

chain delays.

Russia, seeking to control the Arctic, will also seek to control the key access points

to this ocean, the bearing strait between it and Alaska, and the barren sea between Russia

and Arctic Norway.

As we have seen, the opportunity to sail through the Arctic Ocean will take thousands of kilometers

off the standard shipping routes from Europe to Asia, representing a huge economic boost

to global trade.

Nevertheless, both the northwest and the northeast passages remain complex waterways under

the control of Canada and Russia respectively.

Russia envisions the northeast route becoming a controlled waterway generating revenues

for the country, rather as the Suez Canal makes the Egyptian government billions of dollars

in tolls every year.

Under laws passed by Russia in 2013, only Russian flagged icebreakers can use this route,

and Russian captains will have to pilot vessels through the passage, in return for fees

paid to the Russian government, in its way a Russian version of Canada's assertion of sovereignty

over the northwest passage.

That was a clip from Elemental by me Arthur Snell.

If you'd like to hear more or read more, please get hold of the book from whichever bookshop

you choose to support.

But if you click on the bookshop.org link in the show notes for this podcast, you can

buy a discounted copy which will also help support local bookshops.

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