Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom : The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic

An expert examination of the way climate change is transforming the Arctic environmentally, economically, and geopolitically, and how the challenges of that transformation should be met.

A growing number of scientists estimate that there will be no summer ice in the Arctic by as soon as 2013. Are we approaching the "End of the Arctic?" as journalist Ed Struzik asked in 1992, or fully entering the "Age of the Arctic," as Arctic expert Oran Young predicted in 1986? Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic looks at the uncertainty at the top of the world as the shrinking of the polar ice cap opens up new sea lanes and the vast hydrocarbon riches of the Arctic seafloor to commercial development and creates environmental disasters for Arctic biota and indigenous peoples.



Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom explores the geopolitics of the Arctic from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective, showing how the warming of the Earth is transforming our very conception of the Arctic. In addition to addressing economic and environmental issues, the book also considers the vital strategic role of the region in our nation's defenses.

Barry Scott Zellen is a senior research scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, USA, where he is Director of the Project on Climate and Conflict and Editor-in-Chief of The Culture and Conflict Review and The Climate and Conflict Review journals. He has published several books, including State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World (Continuum, 2011).

Barry Scott Zellen is the research director of the Arctic Security Project at the Center for Contemporary Conflict at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, where he is also the deputy editor of Strategic Insights.


Barry Scott Zellen is editor of the Strategic Insights Journal and the Culture and Conflict Review at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he also serves as research director of the Arctic Security Project.