12Foreword
Per Espen Stoknes
Traveling northward on the Swedish Railway’s Midnight Arctic
Express train for 24 hours, we cross the Arctic Circle heading
north toward Kiruna, a small mining village with a huge mountain
of mining debris as its most prominent characteristic. We’re a band of
climate researchers, entrepreneurs and adventurers, pulled by dogsled
deep into the wilderness to Tarfala, the arctic glacier research station
where a few researchers painstakingly and patiently clock the slow
race of global warming’s impact.
Far from any major human infrastructure in these northern
reaches of Scandinavia, we see the strongest and most severe impacts
of global warming on the rapidly melting glaciers. These glaciers are
equivalent to the famous canaries in the coalmines, speaking clearly
and early about the dis-ease of these times. Unfortunately, the term
at glacial speed no longer carries its original meaning. Year by year,
decade by decade, they melt relentlessly away. Here, you can daily see
climate change. People who stayed here just 20 years ago, like one
researcher in our band, are shocked by seeing how much they’ve
declined since they first visited.
Our journey combines extreme skiing on glaciers with extreme
thinking, exploring the edges of what is possible (but still safe).
The vision is to combine cutting edge climate science with eco-
entrepreneurial thinking, and to find and renew our commitments
for innovative ways of navigating these unprecedented times.