Antarctica Examined: Part I

Antarctica Case Study: Overview

Today marks the beginning of our examination of the earth's southernmost continent, Antarctica. Over the next week, the Global Strategy Institute will use the South Pole as a case study highlighting several of our Seven Revolutions in action. Both the problems Antarctica articulates and the solutions it promotes deeply resonate with our research. These challenges include resource management, governance, and rapid technology development as well as the use of water and the spread of information across the globe. Each one of these topics will be covered during the upcoming week. As a historic breeding ground for long-range thinking and a laboratory for strategic innovation, Antarctica serves as a useful example of how global leaders experience, and consequently, engage the policy challenges of the 21st century. 

But why Antarctica? At first glance, Antarctica appears to be nothing more than a huge block of ice. 98 percent of the continent is blanketed in a thick sheet of frozen water. Only 1,000 to 5,000 people inhabit an area 1.5 times the size of the United States. On the South Pole there are 24 hours of daylight in the winter and 24 hours of darkness in the summer. Regardless, this situation provides a foreign policy and environmental vacuum that allows scientists and policy pioneers to act without traditional obstruction. The continent offers an opportunity to place our foreign policy challenges under the microscope.

Antarctica Connection I: Resource Management and Energy

Pressing Challenge:
Antarctica vividly illustrates the limited supply of our earth’s natural resources. While it sits upon 70 percent of the world’s fresh water reserves, other staples such as food and energy remain almost impossibly out of reach. In an environment void of natural resources the cost of sustaining life skyrockets. Take energy for example. Shipping a barrel of oil from the United States to the American base at McMurdo Station is tremendously expensive. If that diesel is needed at the South Pole, more than 800 miles away from McMurdo, it must be shipped via an ice road (a journey that could take between 10 to 20 days) or flown in via a specially-equipped cargo plane (a process that consumes more fuel than is being delivered!). Antarctica highlights the unique challenges and deleterious effects that arise from a limited base of natural resources.

Strategic Response:
Simultaneously, Antarctica presents an opportunity for long-ranging, innovative solutions to combat complex challenges such as energy asphyxiation. Despite the cold climate, the McMurdo and the South Pole stations are ironically hotbeds of energy innovation. In 1962, the United States employed nuclear energy to cut back on the massive amounts of fossil fuel they were using to power their polar operations. A decade later they turned towards more environmentally friendly solutions such as solar power. Today, renewable energy sources are being implemented below the 60th parallel.  For instance, individual scientists often use solar or wind energy to power their experiments, cutting costs and maintaining the pristine polar environment. Even more impressive is a soon-to-be opened Belgian science center at Dronning Maud Land in East Antarctica. The Princess Elisabeth Research Station will be the first carbon neutral, zero emissions research base. Nine compact wine turbines mounted outside of the station will power the new center. These green energy solutions underscore that from challenge comes opportunity and from opportunity comes innovation.

Therefore, what lessons does Antarctica provide about energy efficiency and managing our precious resources? Simply put: great problems catalyze forward-thinking solutions. Antarctica presents a glimpse at what the world would be like if its natural resource stockpiles were threatened. And more importantly, it offers a chance to prepare new methods of dealing with such shortages.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow we will look at the second Antarctica connection, global governance.