Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic“A slender but punch-packing overview of the environmental destruction of the Far North” from the award-winning environmental reporter (Kirkus Reviews). Traditionally thought of as the last great unspoiled territory on Earth, the Arctic is in reality home to some of the most severe contamination on the planet. Awarded a major grant by the Pew Charitable Trusts to study the Arctic’s deteriorating environment, Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Marla Cone traveled across the Far North, from Greenland to the Aleutian Islands, to find out why the Arctic has become so toxic. Silent Snow is not only a scientific journey, but a personal one with experiences that range from tracking endangered polar bears in Norway to hunting giant bowhead whales with native Alaskans struggling to protect their livelihood. Through it all, Cone reports with heartbreaking immediacy on the dangers of pollution to native peoples and ecosystems, how Arctic cultures are adapting to this pollution, and what solutions will prevent the crisis from getting worse. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Addison Alaska Aleutians Allan AMAP Andersen animals Arctic inhabitants Arctic Ocean babies Baffin banned Barrow beluga birds blubber bodies bowhead bowhead whales brain breast milk Canada Canadian changes Charlie chemicals circumpolar compounds concentrations contaminants crew cubs culture decades Derocher says Dewailly diet disease ecosystem effects Environ Health environmental experts exposed exposure Faroe Islands Faroese fish flame retardants food web Gedion global Grandjean Greenland harpoon hormones human hundred hunters hunting immune cells indigenous industrial Ingmar Inuit Inupiat kayak killer whales Kristiansen Lake land levels live Mamarut marine mammals meat mercury miles mother move Muir narwhal nations neurological never North Pole numbers Nunavik Nuuk organochlorines otters PBDEs PCBs percent pesticides pilot whales polar bears pollution population predators prey Qaanaaq Québec ringed seals risk scientists sea ice sledge survive Svalbard temperatures tests toxic traditional foods village Weihe wildlife winds women
Popular passages
Page ix - ... upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and littlerecognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world — the very nature of its life.
Page ix - Under nature, the slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the nicely balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far "truer...
Page ix - Nature's productions should be far "truer" in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?
Page x - The Great sea has set me in motion Set me adrift And I move as a weed in the river The Arch of sky And mightiness of storms Encompasses me And I am left Trembling with joy.
Page ix - This is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars.