Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic

Wrigley, a postdoctoral fellow in environmental history at the University of Stavanger, Norway, debuts with an esoteric exploration of the consequences of permafrost thaw. She describes scientists’ efforts to study the changes wrought by climate change in and around Yakutsk, Russia, the largest city built entirely on permafrost, and describes how unprecedented flooding has threatened research there by filling the outdoor ice tunnels that serve as natural freezers for storing fieldwork samples. Wrigley also details the work being done at Pleistocene Park, located in nearby Chersky, where a team of father and son Russian scientists are attempting to “resurrect” the region’s ecosystem as it might have existed during the Pleistocene era, work that includes importing bison and musk oxen thought to have helped compact and preserve the permafrost they trampled over. There’s some stimulating scientific tidbits, but philosophical arguments about how climate crises offer opportunities to make a more just world are thwarted by opaque academic jargon, as when she contends that attempts to restore extinct ecosystems are a mistake because they reinforce the “heteropatriarchal narrative of apocalyptic manhood,” an idea that goes underdeveloped. This will leave readers cold. Photos. (Apr.)