Climate change’s effects are reshaping the Arctic profoundly. Landscapes are being radically transformed, animals are dying in unprecedented numbers, and natural resources are being revealed to an energy-starved world. Veteran Arctic journalist Ed Struzik took eleven trips throughout the north to document this rapidly changing land, gaining unprecedented access to scientific expeditions, native communities and security and sovereignty experts.
The product of those trips, The Big Thaw is the only book that looks at global warming’s wide-ranging impact on the Arctic. Struzik goes into the field with the world’s leading polar bear scientist, skis on melting glaciers with glaciologists, travels the Northwest Passage on an aging icebreaker and stalks a carnivorous rogue walrus with an Inuit hunter. His journeys bring him up close to some of the world’s most unique animals, from the iconic polar bear to the mysterious narwhal.
Struzik melds the vivid stories of his experiences with fascinating explorations of the Arctic’s past – from the alligators and giant tortoises that inhabited the north 55 million years ago, to the 19th century explorers who died searching for the Open Polar Sea – and its possible future as the center of international struggle, underground smuggling and ecological disaster.
Reviews
“In The Big Thaw Ed Struzik describes at first hand the most alarming environmental crisis of our times. It's a land that Struzik is passionate about, and he writes of its frozen beauty with an elegance of prose not seen since Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams.”
Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers
“The top of the world is profoundly different than ever before in human history. Climate change is already influencing the lives of the locals, from Inuit to polar bears. But it's poised to make life hard for the rest of us, too. Ed Struzik gives a canny and compelling tour of a world in dangerous and rapid flux.”
Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy
"All-embracing, luminous, and provocative, The Big Thaw is a fascinating chronicle of an infinite, threatened Canadian arctic. Struzik expertly melds past and present into a thought-provoking story about what the current global warming means to Canada and the world. He combines the human and scientific narratives into a wonderful synthesis amplified by his own extensive travels through the north. Everyone interested in the implications of a warming planet should read this remarkable book."
Brian Fagan, archeologist, author of The Great Warming and The Little Ice Age
