Polar Cities, Part I: Background need for survivability
By Susan Wilson
Imagine the world, as we know it, has come to an end due to global warming. Much of the world has been radically changed by the rising of the oceans. Life has devolved to survivability and little else. Welcome to Polar City.
Polar City is the name given to a series of high density sustainable living facilities envisioned by The Polar Cities Research Project. The Polar Cities Research Project was started in 2007 by Danny Bloom. Danny is a climate blogger who currently lives in Taiwan. He is assisted in his research by volunteers who try to envision the needs of a population three to five hundred years in the future.
Each Polar City would be located along the arctic circle in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Norway and Iceland. The Cities would be able to house large populations in safety. As with most doomsday scenarios, security will be a major issue in the future as livable land and food resources become scarce.
The basic premise takes the idea of global warming to the limit, envisioning most of the earth as no longer habitable except at the polar extremes. The parts of the planet currently inhabited would be either too hot or too flooded for human habitation, hence the need for polar cities.
British scientist Dr. James Lovelock, self described “independent scientist, environmentalist, author and researcher”, was the first to posit the Gaia Theory in the 1960s, of earth as a self-regulating living organism. In an online chat, September 29, 2000, Lovelock described Gaia in the following way,
So far as Gaia is concerned, humans are not special. We’re just another species. There is a strong ethic attached to Gaia, and that is that the species that lives well with its environment favours it for its progeny and the species that fouls the environment spoils it for its progeny and goes extinct.
He was one of the first scientists to discuss global warming and what these effects might mean for Earth. Many of his theories and ideas resulted from his work for NASA in the 1960’s and 70’s. He developed several sensitive instruments to analyze the atmospheres and surfaces of other planets to determine the viability of other planets to sustain life.
The Polar Cities Project has named the online images of a proposed Polar City, The James E. Lovelock Virtual Museum of Polar City Images, in honor of Dr. James Lovelock’s work and research. The images included online were drawn by Deng Cheng-hong.
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July 29th, 2008
Dear Susan Wilson,
Thanks for posting this very good story abouyt polar cities, part 1. Looking forward to reading part 2. The hope, of course, is that global warming never becomes so bad that we ever need polar cities, and we should do all we can NOW to try to mitigate global warming now, but if all else fails, as Lovelock and Flannery and Monbiot and Lynas seem to feel, then we might need something like polar cities, in Alaska and Canada and Russia, north, and in New Zealand and Tasmania and Antarctica, south, yes. Prray it never comes to this. But let’s be prepared, just in case.
thanks for a very good article!
danny
July 29th, 2008
Among these volunteers is Joey Stanford, who lives in Longmont, Colorado, and was interviewed by the Longmont Times-Call newspaper, for a front page story, see pics here:
http://northwardho.blogspot.com
RE:
“The Polar Cities Research Project was started in 2007 by Danny Bloom. Danny is a climate blogger who currently lives in Taiwan. He is assisted in his research by volunteers who try to envision the needs of a population three to five hundred years in the future.