The endless night conceals the passage of time, as though we were remote from time’s effects, too, without Emily Dickinson’s slant of light that heralds death. Where better than this frozen earth, far from the ravages of human conflict and heat, for an international seed vault and the Arctic World Archive, both of which are just outside of Longyearbyen. The former, sometimes described as a doomsday vault, contains 1.2 million seed samples deposited by seed banks around the world for safekeeping. Withdrawals from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — by a gene bank formerly in Aleppo, Syria — have already been conducted. Climate change is likely to be particularly hazardous to bears — lack of sea ice means less access to seals.

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