Arctic Meltdown

Arctic Meltdown is the story of international conflict resulting from the melting of the polar icecap and the ensuing jostling for jurisdiction over additional seabed resources as permitted by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The story is based on the current reality and shows how rapidly this could develop into conflict and a free-for-all without the international political will to create a long-term sustainable solution under the auspices of the UN and the Arctic Council. The novel is also prescriptive, in that it suggests a possible solution: the creation of an Arctic Nature Reserve through an Arctic Treaty (presented as an Appendix) to avoid such conflict over the north in the future. 

The heroine, Hanne Kristensen, a beautiful geologist, teams up with a Canadian diplomat, Richard Simpson, to lead the joint Danish-Canadian effort to gain the award by the relevant UN Commission of vast sub-sea territory along the Lomonosov Ridge, a geological formation that cuts right across the Arctic seabed from Siberia to Ellesmere Island and Greenland. With Chinese help, Lock McTierney, an Australian Professor of Geology at Beijing University, and a one-time casual lover of Hanne, is named to head the Sub-commission charged with considering both the joint Danish-Canadian and the Russian submissions. Hanne’s presentation is successful, while Russia's competing proposal by a team led by Pavel Laptov, the aging polar explorer appointed Minister for the Arctic by Russia’s aggressive President Gusanov, is rejected (as it was in fact in 2001). Russia withdraws from UNCLOS (which it has in reality threatened to do if its submission is rejected again) and claims half the Arctic (previously appropriated by the USSR based on the sector principle). Greenland secedes from Denmark (it is actually now on a defined path toward autonomy) with guarantees of its independence by both Russia and China and the promise of funding for resource extraction from the latter. Hanne, who is named Minister for Natural Resources in the new Greenland government, has to contend with a Russian landing at a mine that the Chinese, on the counsel of their retained adviser, Lock, want to develop and where the Green Liberation Front, led by Hanne’s Danish boyfriend, has planned serious disruptive activity to protest the partitioning and exploitation of the pristine Arctic. The US, to protect its base at Thule, sends two planes to overfly the invading Russian submarine force and drop depth charges; one of the U-boats sends a missile that destroys the radar at Thule. 

With mounting international tension, Hanne joins her aging Russian adversary to save the world from war and the Arctic from environmental catastrophe. She and Simpson engineer the convoking of a high-level meeting of the Arctic Council to sign an Arctic Treaty creating an Arctic Nature Reserve, where resource extraction and military activities are prohibited.

This discussion guide was created and shared by the author, Geza Tatrallyay.