Arctic Thaw: Climate Change and the Global Race for Energy Resources

Gr 6 Up—An important case study and source of current information for serious students of climate change. Drawing almost exclusively from recent documents and news reports, McPherson surveys the ambitious, conflicting, and increasingly hostile claims that the major countries circling the Arctic have made on the polar region's major oil and gas resources. Along with showing how melting ice has already opened both the Northwest (over Canada) and the Northeast (over Russia) Passages to shipping, she frankly explores the ecological and economic challenges faced by indigenous peoples and by Greenland, which is inching its way toward independence over vast and increasingly accessible reserves of oil, rare earths, and other potentially lucrative natural resources. The author closes with a consideration of sources of renewable energy, including Russia's potentially alarming plan to build multiple floating nuclear reactors in Arctic waters, and generous lists of relevant print and web documents. Revealing maps and small but often telling color photos underscore the idea that serious climate change isn't just coming to this region; it has already arrived.—John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York City