Processes and Costs Imposed by Environmental Stress

Abstract

A useful distinction is made between internal and external costs of human activity in polar environments. Until I very recently, external costs have been reduced as negligible because of low population densities and a narrow spectrum of alternative uses for polar resources. Polar wilderness is now coming to be regarded as an asset to non-polar mankind, but the value of this asset has yet to be specified in a manner that allows it to be used in cost-benefit analysis. We do not know much about the direct, internal costs of economic activity in polar areas, except that they tend to be high. Much of the differential in costs between the Arctic and the temperate zones is not directly related to climate and other physical factors and may reflect these factors at al I only through the influence of low population densities and low levels of economic development. Equipment, materials, and techniques used in the North were typically designed for a different physical environment; high rates of labor turnover and low manpower efficiency in the North probably result largely from the absence of cultural. amenities that people in the United States, Canada or the U.S.S.R. normally expect. In the United States' Subarctic (Southcentral Alaska), cost structures are normalizing rapidly with the growth of population and economic activity. It is possible that settlement and economic development. in the polar regions would bring similar results, but the necessary population and economic densities are not now foreseeable.