• The United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Copenhagen  Dec 1 - 11, 2009.

The Arctic—like the canary in the coalmine—has reacted more quickly and dramatically to global warming than many had anticipated. Hundreds of scientists are urgently trying to predict just how the Arctic will change, and how those changes will in turn affect the rest of the planet. But plenty of other people, driven by profit rather than data, are interested as well. The riches of the world’s last virgin territory have spurred the reawakening of old geopolitical rivalries. The U.S, Canada, Russia, Norway and the Danish territory of Greenland all control chunks around the Arctic Ocean. We face a new era of oil rigs and drill ships, of tankers and ships taking a short cut from Yokohama to Rotterdam—as well as the potential for fighting over the Arctic’s treasures.

Alongside the potential winners from an open Arctic sea are the many losers, from the nomadic reindeer herders of Siberia and Scandinavia to the Inuit hunters of Alaska, Greenland, and Canada. Other creatures that rely on the vast expanses of sea ice, including seals, birds and whales—and the ecosystems within which they live—may disappear to be replaced by different creatures.

Combining science, business, politics, and adventure, Alun Anderson takes the reader to the end of the earth for what may be the last narrative portrait of this rapidly changing land of unparalleled global significance.