On Dutch cartographer and navigator Willem Barentsz’s third voyage questing for a Northeast passage from Europe to China in 1596, the entire crew of the De Witte Swaen almost perished from carbon monoxide poisoning over a brief period of an hour or so. With the bitter cold of the Arctic winter on Novaya Zemlya, a Russian archipelago that sits in what is now called the Barents Sea, being simply unbearable, the crew decided to start a coal fire inside “Safe House,” a log and driftwood based dry shelter they made after the ice disabled their ship from moving. The “burghers of Novaya Zemlya,” as they called themselves, were trying their best to clog every place air could escape to prolong the effects of the coal fire. The sick felt the impact first, according to Andrea Pitzer’s Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, but everyone eventually felt queasy as the coal poisoned them. Those least affected had to scramble to open every point of access, praying the cold would save them.
As twenty-first-century people who learn about the dangers of carbon monoxide in middle school home economics class, it’s easy to accuse Barentsz’s crew of stupidity or worse. Let’s grant them the benefit of the doubt, seeing as the discovery of carbon monoxide came nearly two centuries after the famed third-voyage of Barentsz. Without knowing of the potential calamity awaiting them, can they be blamed for turning to the coal to ameliorate the bitter cold, a cold that can frequently broach -30°F? Perhaps not…but according to Pitzer, only a week or so after, unable to tolerate the Arctic climate once more and having already encountered the dangers of those deadly sable rocks, the crew debated another coal fire. Later into the winter, their temptations got the best of them. I think we can call that stupid.
That’s how Arctic survival (or near-survival) stories tend to go. Tales of woeful human ignorance, a thirst for death, and a shield of ignorance and sometimes stupidity to overwhelm all bravery. They fight polar bears (often unsuccessfully) and die of scurvy. They kidnap indigenous peoples and mutiny against their captains. They forget to properly pack for the weather, and of course, they poison themselves with coal fires. Their immense ignorance of the Arctic screams louder for attention than the prose of the author telling the tale, whether skillful or dull. (If you don’t believe me, just check out the Goodreads reviews for Icebound.)
Yet, there is a place for such stories. They sell well, for starters. In The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides has garnered itself over thirty editions and several literary awards, televisions shows like AMC’s The Terror have followed suit, and several bookstores have an “Arctic adventures” sub-section. In most, few if any of the crew survive the entire ordeal, a fact readers know from the onset. Barentsz’s voyage is known to history precisely because of its tragic conclusion. As such, readers eat up not just the ignorance of the stories, but also the inevitably of the crew’s doom. It’s not unlike the appeal of the great mythological character of Sir Gawain, who bravely sets out on a quest while knowing its probable conclusion: his demise.
But perhaps more relevantly, it’s us. We are doomed and we know it. “Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years,” as a New York Times article recently summarized a United Nations scientific report. The outlet’s tweet sharing the article added, “A hotter future is now essentially locked in.”
Global warming will get progressively worse and cannot be stopped over the next 30 years, a major new UN report has concluded, because the world's nations delayed so long in curbing emissions. A hotter future is now essentially locked in.https://t.co/tMnu8VJMpo
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 9, 2021
When I read Jonathan Franzen’s unfairly maligned 2019 New Yorker article, it felt like a punch in the gut; I knew his thesis was true—that “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it”—but I just couldn’t buy into it. That was three years ago, and the global carbon emission leaders still haven’t changed their behavior in any meaningful way. In 2019, more than 11,000 accredited scientists from around the globe gave what could be called a final warning: “It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. … These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.” The catastrophe is past dire. Franzen writes,
Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same.
As I stress about how much water my not-quite-scorching and relaxing showers waste, Jeff Bezos flies to space and American airlines pile onto carbon footprints larger than some small nations. But I’m the one who feels bad; the individual is the one in need of changing their lifestyle. “The message stays the same.”
But we’re doomed. Every year of inaction this apocalyptic fact becomes harder and harder to deny, despite credible scientific reports to the contrary: it’s too late. The Anthropocene, the geological term for the epoch of human impact on Earth, is not literally coming to an end, at least not in strict geographic definitions. But the notion that nature can be restored to a force independent of humans is likely false. Popular environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben calls this the “end of nature.” This end will eventually include us; there is no denying that. Like a non-fiction historical novel about a failed voyage through the Arctic, the end is all but indelible.
And with humanity doomed, I think I understand the sixteen-man crew from Barentsz’s third voyage a little better. Sure, it still seems stupid, and I’m not suggesting we sit back, crack a beer, and watch the train come. But if the ending is inevitable, why not put the coal on the burners to make our time left more comfortable? At the least, I understand how they gave into that life-taking temptation the second time.
Joshua Polanski (’20) is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and has contributed to the Bay Area Reporter, In Review Online, and Off Screen amongst other places. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking and exhibition, slow and digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Eastern and Northern European, East Asian, and Middle Eastern film.
