Online Event – Tipping Points: Climate Change, History, and the North

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Tipping Points: Climate Change, History, and the North

with Nancy Langston

Thursday, 11 May 2023 – 1:00pm PDT, Zoom

Hosted by UBC Emeritus College and Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies

Register Here

In this talk, Langston explores tipping points, caribou/reindeer restoration, and the possibility of hope in the Anthropocene. In climate models, tipping points are critical thresholds that, if crossed, can lead to self-perpetuating, runaway warming in an ecosystem. Societies may contain social tipping points, where small changes in behavior can trigger—or possibly slow–runaway warming. Reindeer (which are the same species as caribou in North America) are critical partners in the effort to prevent runaway Arctic warming, because their browsing can reduce brushy shrubs, increasing albedo effects and cooling local climates. But now, across the Arctic, reindeer and caribou populations are crashing. They have retreated from roughly half their 19th century range, and their populations have dropped by 56% in the past decade. Restoring them across the north may be critical for resilience in a warming world. Langston examines the history of caribou/reindeer translocations across the global north as a controversial tool for a green transition. She argues that moving wildlife about the world has never been just about taking an individual or herd and putting is somewhere else. Rather, it has always involved questions of power, social relations, and visions of a desired future. Langston ultimately asks: what can we learn from the past to sustain our fellow creatures and ourselves in a warming, politically-fractured world?

Iceberg
Nancy Langston
wild fire

Nancy Langston is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University. In 2021, she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Environmental History, and she is the author of five books on climate history, Great Lakes history, forest and wetland history, and toxics history.

Langston’s most recent book is Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene (Brandeis University Press), based on her 2019 Mandel Lectures in the Humanities at Brandeis University. You can find more information on her work on her website.

Feature Image: “Melting sea Ice at Pond Inlet, Nunavut, Canada” by GRIDArendal is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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Graeme Wynn

A long-time member of NiCHE, I am now Professor Emeritus of Geography at UBC. Alongside leadership roles in ASSEH, ICEHO and UBC's new Emeritus College, I continue to edit the Nature|History|Society series with UBC Press and find time (though less than I ought) for several writing projects.

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