Who Owns Icebergs?

As climate change intensifies water scarcity around the globe, researchers, entrepreneurs, and governments are looking for new sources of fresh water. One possibility sounds like science fiction: towing icebergs from the polar regions to water-stressed communities. Yet what was dismissed as fantasy only a few decades ago is increasingly technically feasible. This talk explores
the surprising history and possible future of icebergs as a natural resource. Why have Western societies long regarded icebergs as sublime objects rather than sources of fresh water? What happens when we begin to treat them as resources instead? Following iceberg harvesters, scientists, and entrepreneurs from Greenland and Newfoundland to South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, Birkhold shows that the most difficult obstacles to large-scale iceberg harvesting may not be technological at all.

Matthew H. Birkhold is professor of German at The Ohio State University and a faculty affiliate at the Moritz College of Law there. He also directs the program in environmental humanities and the Umwelt Center, a research and public humanities hub where German and environmental studies intersect. Among his publications is the 2023 book Chasing Icebergs, which connects contemporary thoughts and solutions to early ponderings of related questions in German Romanticism.

Open to the public free of charge.

Sponsored by the Breckenridge Fund (Lectures and Concerts), the Arctic Studies and Environmental
Studies Programs, the Departments of German, Government and Legal Studies, and History, the McKeen
Center, the Sustainability Office and Quinby House.