Temporal clashes in the Anthropocene: time and decline in Arctic tourim

Tourism in the Anthropocene thrives on temporal asymmetry: as environmental futures contract, the sector continues to expand. Building on work in temporal politics and climate governance, the paper draws from a typology of closed futures (irreversible environmental trajectories), open futures (emergent possibilities), and empty futures (projected horizons appropriated in the present). In the Arctic, the futures tourism opens are typically empty, rich in anticipation yet reliant on environmental decline. Two temporal operations underpin this. Separation distributes benefits and costs across registers, realising economic gains now while deferring environmental burdens. Compression pulls slow decline into a heightened present, turning disappearance into urgent experience. These dynamics are explored through coolcation and last-chance tourism in the Arctic, where the temporalities of environmental change and market expansion clash most visibly. Tourism thus shows how time functions as governance infrastructure in the Anthropocene, sustaining asymmetries that keep economic expansion and environmental decline proceeding side by side. This is temporal arbitrage: the movement of value across time, exploiting the misalignment between market time and environmental time to convert future decline into present gain.