As the final issue of CPR was going to press, volcanic ash was still spewing out of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland and bringing much of our globalized world to a relative standstill. When I first heard the news, I couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of ash covering huge swathes of land was simply ludicrous to me. The idea conjured up paintings of Pompeii from my middle school Latin textbook. Seeing an eerily similar photograph grace the N...
...an aggressive policy in the Arctic over the last decade. From its investments in icebreaking naval capabilities, to the exponential increase in Arctic research funding, and through diplomatic means developed in Greenland and Iceland, China has managed to become an unavoidable interlocutor at the Arctic table. As China rose in the region, Europeans became lost in their environmental sentimentalism, and Russia was prone to grandiloquent announceme...
...ys been a heavily guarded and militarized region, as well as one ripe for oil exploration. In the protection of the interests of the Western Arctic state, US maritime and air capabilities stationed in Alaska and in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway have sufficed. If need be, the US Navy can mobilize nuclear attack submarines that routinely patrol the Western Arctic up to the North Pole. Since they can break the ice from below, they can serve as a fu...
Last year when the May issue was released, former editor-in-chief Catherine Chong, now graduating, introduced me to the Review’s readership alongside her thoughts on the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull glacier. How fragile, Catherine mused, we all are—nature can still sweep away all of the order and peace of our world, and can do so whenever and however it should like. It is humbling when these things happen from time to time. But when n...
...ic hydrocarbons will no longer be of interest for oil-consuming powers since affordable, renewable energies will have been developed and democratized. Such a desirable outcome requires carbon-based economies, like Germany and Iceland, to turn their national industrial strategies toward green technologies and sustainable development. The democratization of renewable energies is not a trend shared by all advanced economies, as many strive to build...
Follow us at
Like us on
Recent Comments