Fifteen years ago, Russian geophysicist Sergey Zimov published an article in the journal Science showing that frozen arctic soils contain twice as much carbon as the earth’s atmosphere. These soils are now starting to melt.

Seeking no one’s help and asking nobody’s permission, Sergey and his son Nikita are gathering any large wooly beast they can get their hands on and transporting them, by whatever low budget means they can contrive, to the most remote corner of Siberia. They call their project Pleistocene Park. The goal: restore the Ice Age “mammoth steppe” ecosystem, thereby preventing Arctic permafrost melt and slowing its release of sequestered carbon, and avoid a catastrophic climate feedback loop leading to runaway global warming.

On a global scale, progress addressing the root cause of climate change – anthropogenic carbon emissions – is as elusive as ever. Impacts of climate change – hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and floods – are being felt sooner than anticipated. Can these two Russian scientists stave off a global environmental catastrophe and reshape humanity’s relationship with the natural world?

The clock is ticking.