The Climate Change and the Arctic Weltdown: Jules Verne’s Fiction becomes a 21st Century Reality

Abstract

The Arctic is undergoing an unprecedented transformation in recorded history as a result, of anthropogenic climate change. This reality surprisingly compares in some respects with the speculative geoengineering ambitions imagined by Jules Verne in his 1889 novel, The Purchase of the North Pole. Verne’s science fictional premise was a deliberate effort to melt the frozen ice-covered Arctic region for industrial profit. This premise mirrors today’s accelerated rate of the melting of Arctic sea ice, which is primarily linked to a worldwide dependence on fossil fuel in their drive for economic development of their own country. Here, we briefly track the historical trajectory of the temperature of the atmosphere, the political inertia surrounding UNFCCC’s COP (Conference of Parties) attempts to limit if not reduce greenhouse gas emissions from various sources, and the foreseeable geopolitical constraints on international climate crisis negotiations to curb global warming. We also note the implications of various proposed geoengineering schemes for altering the existing global climate regime to counteract the adverse consequences of a foreseeable runaway global warming. It is not unreasonable to view the Arctic region’s loss of sea ice as a proverbial «canary in the coal mine», which means providing a stark warning of an impending disaster and in this case of global proportion. Although past generations have ignored earlier science-based signs of a possible continued atmospheric warming, societies today face an already critically narrowed window of opportunity to act to prevent its potentially irreversible adverse consequences.