Meine Welt schmilzt

When Nothing Is the Way It Was: A Report from the Arctic

Line Nagell Ylvisåker lives with her family in Svalbard, which is heavily affected by climate change. By 2100, temperatures here will have risen by eight degrees. An alarming report from a small village, about living with avalanches, landslides, and starving polar bears.

Longyearbyen is a paradox: the place exists solely because of coal mining, and coal is causing the climate change that the people of Svalbard are suffering from. Ylvisåker has built a life at the Arctic Circle as a journalist with her husband and children, and now she must watch in fear as her village becomes an increasingly inhospitable place. When an avalanche buries several houses and people die, Ylvisåker begins to investigate the causes and consequences of Arctic warming. She speaks with meteorologists, climate researchers, experienced trappers, encounters hungry polar bears, and measures the rising water temperatures of the polar sea. An alarming report and a warning: if we do not act now, our lives will also be radically affected by climate change.