It’s time to go back to outer space – and to explore another frontier region – as we push the boundaries of sustainability in new directions.
We bring together Donald Trump, satellites, Greenland, rocket launches, polar bears – and penguins – to explore the connections between the Arctic and Outer Space.
Dr Mia Bennett, from the University of Washington, has seen a polar bear in Svalbard, but her expertise is on the indigenous people of the Arctic and how the space industry has grown in their homeland and affected their lives.
She tells us how her dreams of being an astronaut evolved into an interest in the Earth’s poles, and then the links between them in the forms of satellites, inter-continental missiles, and spaceports.
We go back to the origins of the connections between the Arctic and space, when stars were used to navigate and to monitor the seasons; how the threats of the Cold War turned the Arctic into a region to monitor space, and the impacts of this development on the land and the local peoples.
We discover how populations have been displaced and damaged by colonial and militaristic expansions, how land and sea have been polluted by radioactive waste, how food systems have been disrupted, and how Trump’s Greenland obsession fits into the bigger historical picture.
But we also learn how the growth in the satellite industry – particularly Elon Musk’s Starlink network – has brought jobs to new areas through ground stations in the harsh environs of the far north, and that there are other benefits for the indigenous communities as well.
Jan dredges up her worst snow-related puns, Paul ponders why he keeps forgetting Greenland is an island, and we ask, what is the perfect number of penguins in a fight?
Mia and Klaus Dodds have written a book about the future of the Arctic, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic. Discover it here: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300259995/unfrozen/
Read about the Outer Space Treaty here: https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html
And find out more about Mia and her work here: https://www.cryopolitics.com
