WENTWORTH GROUP OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

• Main Author: Peter Cosier
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Antarctic; Shackleton; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Iceberg*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.652.2370; http://www.wentworthgroup.org/docs/The+Economics+of+Nature+-+Mitchell+Library+Feb+20081.pdf

One year ago today, I was aboard the Akademik Ioffe – a converted Russian research vessel – steaming towards the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia en route to the Antarctic mainland. It has been one of my lifelong dreams to visit Antarctica, but I wasn’t just content to visit this remarkable land, I was determined to use this opportunity to explore the history of Antarctica in the context of today’s great challenges of climate change and the destruction of nature. I even made a film of the journey. It’s called ‘One Summer Dream’, and it uses Antarctica as a powerful visual and historical metaphor for how we can manage planet earth in the 21st century- the heroic era of Shackleton, the power of the industrial revolution, the giant 19th century whaling stations, the melting glaciers and the icebergs, and nature at its most beautiful and pristine. For those of you who haven’t seen the film – it’s being screened again here at the Library on Wednesday 20th February. My premise in this film and in tonight’s lecture is that we don’t need to destroy the machines of the industrial revolution, but we do need to change the way we power them. That premise is based on hard core economic modelling that’s been conducted around the world over the past few years. And it is from this premise, that comes a fundamentally new way