Laurence C Smith
Brought up in Chicago and taken on geology field trips as a young child,
he has brought together his twin interests of physical and human
geography in his controversial book The New North: The World in 2050. He
talks to Olivia Edward about the developed northern nation whose
population is growing as quickly as India’s and what the discovery of
the pizzly bear tells us about our world.
I had planned to write a book
about climate change in the Arctic rim, and interview people living up there to humanise the science. When I started questioning people about climate change, they were very happy to talk to me, but I got a sense they had told all of these stories before, and that they really wanted to talk about other issues: the new oil or gas pipeline going in behind them, the immigrants taking their jobs. I quickly realised the scope of the book would have to broaden considerably.
The New North is a thought
experiment about the future. It looks at what the world might look like in 40 years’ time if we carry on the way we’re going. It attempts to bring together the four big forces that have always shaped civilisation and will continue to do so in the future: populations, natural resources, globalisation and climate change.
Although these forces are having
a detrimental effect on the world as a whole, they’re also having some positive effects, particularly on the northern countries. Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia are starting to gain rising importance and strategic value, and will emerge as a recognised geographic region. It’s already beginning to happen.
Climate change is causing
wildlife to move north at a dramatic pace. A paper that came out in 2003 found that mobile species are moving north at a rate of five and a half feet [1.7 metres] a day. It’s crazy. The strangest example I encountered was the pizzly bear. It’s a cross between a grizzly bear and a polar bear. The second one was shot in spring. It was the baby of one shot earlier. That means they’re reproducing. For that to happen requires grizzly bears to have pushed really far north.
People are also moving north. That
doesn’t mean vast cities will spring up in the Arctic, but the capital cities of these northern countries are already starting to grow. People are pouring into Toronto and Vancouver. Their populations are growing very briskly thanks to Canada’s favourable immigration policies, which is why its population is expected to grow by 30 per cent by 2050. This is a staggeringly huge number for a developed country. It’s a growth rate on a par with India, faster than China, and almost triple that of Brazil.
And the aboriginal people
of Canada aren’t protected and mummified as they are in Russia and some parts of Europe. They now have some sort of power over their land and share joint control with central government. In some respects, it’s a business model. They want development but they want it to proceed in a way that doesn’t damage hunting in particular. The Inuit aren’t blue-suited IBM people, but neither are they the exploit-nothing Eskimos of common imagination – they’re a hybrid. They work in the morning and go whaling in the afternoon.
If people actually read the book, I
don’t think they’ll come away thinking climate change is a good thing. The handful of benefits accrued by a tiny fraction of the globe are vastly outweighed by the overwhelmingly negative consequences for the world as a whole. And even in the north, climate change is producing many detrimental impacts. There’s an expansion of pests, thanks to milder winters – the mountain pine beetle is devastating Canada’s timber industry – and there are more forest fires.
The permafrost is also thawing,
and that’s bad. It reduces access to the land because the ground becomes too soft to travel on or build on. As a result, I think there will be an abandonment of the interior of many northern countries. It’s something hardly anyone has picked up on. Everybody is talking about the maritime shipping routes that will open, but nobody is talking about the loss of access to the north’s interior. It will mean any type of resource extraction – minerals, timber – in these remote areas that relies on temporary winter roads will have to stop. The seasons are already shortening.
As a scientist, what I’ve tried
to bring to the table is objectivity. I deliberately abstained from making any value judgments because I want people to be informed enough to make up their own minds. I think what the world needs right now are clear-eyed, thorough, factual summaries about what’s going on in the world. I wanted to show people where our current actions are taking us so we will think harder about what we’re doing now, and how we should maybe do things differently.
Curriculum vitae
1967 Born in Chicago
1981–85 Attended Whitney M Young Magnet High School, Chicago
1989 BSc in earth sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1991 MSc in earth sciences, Indiana University
1991–92 Hydrologist, US Geological Survey
1996 PhD in earth and atmospheric sciences, Cornell University
1996–present Positions ranging from assistant professor to vice chair at UCLA
2006–07 Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
2011 Published The New North: The World in 2050
June 2011
I had planned to write a book
about climate change in the Arctic rim, and interview people living up there to humanise the science. When I started questioning people about climate change, they were very happy to talk to me, but I got a sense they had told all of these stories before, and that they really wanted to talk about other issues: the new oil or gas pipeline going in behind them, the immigrants taking their jobs. I quickly realised the scope of the book would have to broaden considerably.
The New North is a thought
experiment about the future. It looks at what the world might look like in 40 years’ time if we carry on the way we’re going. It attempts to bring together the four big forces that have always shaped civilisation and will continue to do so in the future: populations, natural resources, globalisation and climate change.
Although these forces are having
a detrimental effect on the world as a whole, they’re also having some positive effects, particularly on the northern countries. Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia are starting to gain rising importance and strategic value, and will emerge as a recognised geographic region. It’s already beginning to happen.
Climate change is causing
wildlife to move north at a dramatic pace. A paper that came out in 2003 found that mobile species are moving north at a rate of five and a half feet [1.7 metres] a day. It’s crazy. The strangest example I encountered was the pizzly bear. It’s a cross between a grizzly bear and a polar bear. The second one was shot in spring. It was the baby of one shot earlier. That means they’re reproducing. For that to happen requires grizzly bears to have pushed really far north.
People are also moving north. That
doesn’t mean vast cities will spring up in the Arctic, but the capital cities of these northern countries are already starting to grow. People are pouring into Toronto and Vancouver. Their populations are growing very briskly thanks to Canada’s favourable immigration policies, which is why its population is expected to grow by 30 per cent by 2050. This is a staggeringly huge number for a developed country. It’s a growth rate on a par with India, faster than China, and almost triple that of Brazil.
And the aboriginal people
of Canada aren’t protected and mummified as they are in Russia and some parts of Europe. They now have some sort of power over their land and share joint control with central government. In some respects, it’s a business model. They want development but they want it to proceed in a way that doesn’t damage hunting in particular. The Inuit aren’t blue-suited IBM people, but neither are they the exploit-nothing Eskimos of common imagination – they’re a hybrid. They work in the morning and go whaling in the afternoon.
If people actually read the book, I
don’t think they’ll come away thinking climate change is a good thing. The handful of benefits accrued by a tiny fraction of the globe are vastly outweighed by the overwhelmingly negative consequences for the world as a whole. And even in the north, climate change is producing many detrimental impacts. There’s an expansion of pests, thanks to milder winters – the mountain pine beetle is devastating Canada’s timber industry – and there are more forest fires.
The permafrost is also thawing,
and that’s bad. It reduces access to the land because the ground becomes too soft to travel on or build on. As a result, I think there will be an abandonment of the interior of many northern countries. It’s something hardly anyone has picked up on. Everybody is talking about the maritime shipping routes that will open, but nobody is talking about the loss of access to the north’s interior. It will mean any type of resource extraction – minerals, timber – in these remote areas that relies on temporary winter roads will have to stop. The seasons are already shortening.
As a scientist, what I’ve tried
to bring to the table is objectivity. I deliberately abstained from making any value judgments because I want people to be informed enough to make up their own minds. I think what the world needs right now are clear-eyed, thorough, factual summaries about what’s going on in the world. I wanted to show people where our current actions are taking us so we will think harder about what we’re doing now, and how we should maybe do things differently.
Curriculum vitae
1967 Born in Chicago
1981–85 Attended Whitney M Young Magnet High School, Chicago
1989 BSc in earth sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1991 MSc in earth sciences, Indiana University
1991–92 Hydrologist, US Geological Survey
1996 PhD in earth and atmospheric sciences, Cornell University
1996–present Positions ranging from assistant professor to vice chair at UCLA
2006–07 Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
2011 Published The New North: The World in 2050
June 2011
