Winfred Obruk points to the lost beach in Shishmaref, Alaska, where the community's playground and fish-drying racks are now under water. The island faces rapid erosion due to the effects of climate change, and residents have voted twice to relocate. They are determined to move as a community, but while they try to navigate this costly and complicated process, the Chukchi Sea pushes ever-closer to their homes." Image by Nick Mott. United States, 2017.
Winfred Obruk points to the lost beach in Shishmaref, Alaska, where the community's playground and fish-drying racks are now under water. The island faces rapid erosion due to the effects of climate change, and residents have voted twice to relocate. They are determined to move as a community, but while they try to navigate this costly and complicated process, the Chukchi Sea pushes ever-closer to their homes.' Image by Nick Mott. United States, 2017.

A lot of reporting from the Arctic starts with ice and polar bears. On season two of Threshold, we'll start with people. We'll take listeners to the homes, hunting grounds, and melting coastlines of Arctic peoples, where thawing permafrost and loss of sea ice aren't abstract concepts, but important parts of daily life.

Listeners will meet a family of Sámi reindeer herders in northern Norway, a fisherman from Greenland, and the people of Shishmaref, Alaska, who are at risk of becoming among the first climate change refugees in the United States. And we'll introduce listeners to people living in the urban Arctic as well—places where you're more likely to find shopping malls and gas stations than whaling ships and dog sleds.

The Arctic isn't just one kind of place, and there isn't just one type of Arctic person. But the people of this vast region do have this in common: they've developed ingenious ways of surviving and thriving in some of the harshest environments on the planet. Now, with the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, they are being challenged to adapt again. Not somewhere down the line—right here, right now. What do they have to teach the rest of us? What does global warming feel like when it becomes an unavoidable part of your reality? On season two of Threshold, we'll find out.

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Environment and Climate Change

Environment and Climate Change