Laurence C. Smith

Here’s a teaser for you. Of the following six countries, which will have the fastest population growth between now and 2050 — China, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Iceland or Norway? I’d be willing to bet that your answer is wrong. But then, I’ve got an unfair advantage. I’ve just had a conversation with Laurence C. Smith, dashing Arctic adventurer and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I meet Smith over a coffee in Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell. His new book, The New North: The World in 2050, demonstrates a remarkable knack for divining global megatrends from the stuff of daily life. It seems this is a man to whom the world whispers its secrets. So a simple question first. When he looks around this room — this typical London room — what does it tell him?

Smith weighs his cardboard coffee cup in his hands. “First, I see oil,” he says. “I’m drinking oil as I sip coffee from my cup.” How so? “Oil fuels 99 per cent of our transportation and is an essential ingredient of nearly everything we make. Our food is grown with it, our plastics, lubricants, pharmaceuticals and millions of other products derive from it. Without oil, this coffee wouldn’t exist.”

OK, that’s cute. What else? “I see water,” he says mysteriously. “Or, to put it another way, I see virtual water. Virtual water looks like coffee, or cardboard, or cotton, or cookies. It is embedded in almost everything. Water is in this coffee and this cup. It was vital to produce the floorboards beneath our feet; it made the electricity that powers the lights, and the shirt I am wearing.

“Entire oceans, such as the Aral sea in Central Asia, have been sucked dry to grow our cotton. Water is one of the reasons why the northernmost countries are in the ascendence.”

Thus we have arrived at Smith’s big prophetic idea: the “Northern Rim Countries” or “NORCs” — Canada, the state of Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Russia — will be the dominant powers of tomorrow. And the professor has seen this first-hand. “When I first started visiting the Inuit and Aboriginal communities in the extreme north,” he says, “I was expecting to hear tales of climate change-related woe. No seals left to hunt, melting ice caps, that sort of thing. Instead, I found something else. The indigenous peoples sense that an economic boom is coming and they want a piece of the pie.”

Remember the question at the beginning about population growth rate? Smith has the answer. “People think that the populations of China and Brazil are expanding the fastest,” he says, “but it’s Canada, Iceland and Norway. Their populations are expected to grow by 30 per cent by 2050, whereas China will grow by just 5 per cent. People are moving north in pursuit of a better life. This is symptomatic of the rise of the NORCs.”

The reason for this global shift is embodied in Smith’s coffee cup. “Basically, it’s down to oil and water,” he says. “The world is becoming more overpopulated and more urbanised. As standards of living go up and the population grows, oil is put in greater demand. We can already see oil prices spiralling. But now that the planet is warming and the sea-ice melts across the Northern Rim, fresh fossil fuels become exposed in the north. The NORCs are sitting on a black gold mine. Climate change will reveal those riches.”

A similar story can be told about the world’s water. In Smith’s book, there is a scary map depicting the water supply of 2050. Most of the world is coloured red, indicating that because of the stress of population expansion, climate change, or both, there will be widespread water shortages. The northern parts are all coloured a luscious, watery blue. The message is clear. Come 2050, we will all be going cap-in-hand to the NORCs for our “virtual water” and oil. The north will be the breadbasket of the world.

“Scientists have reached a consensus: climate change is already happening all around us,” Smith says. “I met my wife when I was on a field trip in Finland. We had two weddings: one during the peak of the Finnish winter, when a snowy wonderland was all but guaranteed, and another in California at the height of the sunny season. Both were washed out by unseasonable rain.” We all have similar stories. Although anecdotal evidence such as this does not prove anything, according to Smith the weight of such anomalies is an effective indicator that the world is changing around us.

“Imagine your lawn crawling north, away from your house, at a speed of 5.6ft each day,” Smith says. “Or that your birthday arrived ten hours sooner each year. That’s how fast these biological shifts are happening. Life forms are migrating northwards — and it’s going on right outside your window.”

And as these changes place the planet under more pressure, the NORCs are set to benefit. As you’d expect, the world’s dominant powers have recognised this global trend and are ahead of the curve. A new US military command centre is being set up in the Arctic, recognising the Northern Rim as a region of huge strategic importance. In recent years, corporations have invested $2.6 billion in Northern Rim countries, snapping up offshore leases and land that, as climate change progresses, will become available for plunder. Within 40 years NORCs will be synonymous with prosperity and security; the main players on the world stage are vying to take advantage.

So what about the UK? How should we react to these global currents? Smith sighs. “I’m not at all advocating a mass migration northwards,” he says. “The UK will decline, but it is not going to fade into total obscurity. Instead, I would suggest doing what I am doing.” And what is that? Buying mutual funds in Canadian stocks. Investing in the North, Smith says, is the most effective retirement plan around.