Profs & Pints San Francisco: The Arctic in Transition

Profs and Pints San Francisco presents: “The Arctic in Transition,” a look at the political, environmental, and technological forces reshaping Earth’s northernmost region, with Mia Bennett, associate professor of geography at the University of Washington-Seattle and co-author of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic.

[Tickets available only online, available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/san-francisco-arctic-transition .]

In the Arctic, reliably frozen sea ice and thirty years of post-Cold War regional cooperation are ceding to the intertwined pressures of climate change and geopolitical competition. Melting ice, raging wildfires, and permafrost thaw are drastically reshaping the environment, while tensions between nations and peoples with a stake in the region’s future are heating up.

Come gain a deep understanding of the change underway at the Arctic and of the various forces reshaping it with Mia Bennett, a scholar of the Arctic who has done years of fieldwork there.

Situating the contemporary Arctic within a longer history of human habitation and migration and ecological change, she will show how the region is an arena of constant political, environmental, and technological transformation. What is happening there portends the future of global politics, resource competition, climate governance, and Earth as a whole.

Dr. Bennett will set the stage by offering background on the Arctic’s 32,000 years of human habitation and its ecological transformations marked by the expansion and retreat of ice cover. She’ll trace how the region evolved from a sparsely connected frozen periphery into a central arena of global strategic interest. You’ll learn how the Arctic has been the site of twenty-first-century political experimentation producing governance mechanisms that incorporate Indigenous Peoples and giving rise to a farsighted superpower accord over fisheries.

We’ll look at how today’s growing global attention to the Arctic reflects the region’s transition from a reliably frozen desert into an increasingly navigable ocean as it warms four times faster than the Earth as a whole. Such environmental change has intensified competition among manifold stakeholders seeking to intervene in the region’s governance and defense and having interests in shipping and resource extraction there. They include the eight nations with territory north of the Arctic Circle, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, and non-Arctic nations such as China, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

At the same time, efforts to maintain international cooperation over the region are being tested by growing tensions between Russia and the West, intensifying great power competition, and the Trump administration’s fixation with acquiring Greenland. Adding to the uncertainty there are technological transformations, including emerging geoengineering innovations, some of which seek to refreeze the Arctic ice cap.

You’ll gain an appreciation of how what is happening in the Arctic affects all of us. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The Canadian Coast Guard Ship Louis S. St-Laurent approaches the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy during a 2009 Arctic survey (U.S. Coast Guard Photo / Public Domain).