Coming War for the Arctic?

The Arctic region of the world has been in the news a lot of late, and is drawing more and more attention as time goes on. Already it has been the center of several major news stories this year, including missions to its depths by American and Russian interests, and the saddening news that for the first time in recorded history the Northwest Passage was ice-free.

The polar regions of our planet have indeed suffered heavily due to the global warming crisis, with the Arctic ice at an all time record low, well in to September, and it is only now beginning to spread back over the Arctic Ocean as the colder months step in to reclaim what is theirs.

Sadly, it is that global warming that has made the Arctic even more appealing to powers such as the United States and Russia, who see the potential oil reserves as worth any damage done.

Russia has recently been studying the depths of the Arctic, even sending down a triplet of undersea unmanned submarines to collect rock samples and plant their flag. In fact, the rock samples that they collected down underneath the North Pole, according to the Russian government, prove that the Arctic is indeed part of Mother Russia.

But Canada and Denmark aren’t letting go so easily, and all three are hoping to one day claim the Arctic ice as their own. The Lomonosov Ridge, named for an 18th century Russian polymath born near the northern coastal city of Arkhangel'sk, is a geological formation that runs from Canada's Ellesmere Island and Denmark's Greenland to the New Siberian Islands of Russia, underneath the North Pole.

Until recently, it has been largely unchartered, but renewed interest in the region has sent many a survey crew and submarine to the northern depths to identify who owns what.

This race has been a hot one, and we’ve even seen Russian parliamentary men aboard ice-breakers, to shed scientific light on the situation.

Norway is also part of the Arctic race, but they're looking less for geological claim and more for energy production. The end of August saw Norway’s Snohvit (Snow White in Norwegian) gas field become operational, some 90 miles offshore. The fields are expected to bring an estimated $1.4 billion worth of liquefied gas each year, every year, for the next 25 years.

The biggest confrontation though is likely to include the United States. For a long time the Canadians have claimed much of the Arctic as their own, and they’re beginning to assert some of that control that comes from being of the cold and hardy folk.

With the virtual disappearance of the Northwest Passage over summer, America'€™s claim that the passage is international water has never been more ironic, and Canada is out to keep a claim on it.

"I'll jump up and down and say it — the passage is Canadian," says Josh Hunter, Resolute's senior administrative officer. "If the Americans try to come through unwanted, we'll be out there on our snowmobiles blocking their passage."

Though it isn'€™t a military conflict that the Canadians are trying to avert, but rather the ecological damage caused by cruise ships ferrying ecotourists across the Arctic.

So it all comes down to who is willing to shout the loudest, because, unless some major scientific find helps prove definitively who the Arctic belongs too, there's just going to be more and more squabbling.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Related Galaxy post:

Hunt for the Red October: The Arctic Sequel -An Update

Story links:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1663445,00.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-arctic-russia.html

Comments

[Ed]

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http://www.eredux.com/states/

[Ray Cherry]

Could not the Canadians agree to the Artic being treated as the Antartic, as International ... and controlled by the United Nations as a non-nation.

Then, under U.N. resolutions, declared a protected reserve?

The northwest passage protected from shipping and the oil technology below the sea agreed and controlled by the U.N. for a consortium of ALL U.N. countries?

Part of the profits from the oil being used to assure the correct use of technology to protect what is left of our northern ice cap?

Utopian? :-)

Sensible?

[Tim]

And, of course, the U.N. controlled region would have to include Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen,Franz Josef Land, etc...

[Tim]

And, of course, the U.N. controlled region would have to include Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen,Franz Josef Land, etc...

[Tim]

And, of course, the U.N. controlled region would have to include Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen,Franz Josef Land, etc...

[wendy salter]

You can bet your bottom dollar that when dollars and the fear-driven greed of those fuel-hungry countries of the world get to raise their hackles, it will be another bloody battle. We have sucked most of the globe dry, so why stop at the Arctic?
"When the last tree has been cut down and the last river has been polluted and the last part of the Earth has been destroyed, we will realise that money and oil cannot be eaten." [Chief Seattle and me]
Come on! let's kill the world, and ourselves, off properly, now that we are on a roll. Let's not change ourselves or go without any of the false oil/plastic world we have created. That would be far too enlightened.
The insanity of those who think they have power is in thinking that they can buy their future, with a few more dollars. This isn't about providing what the people of the world need, it is about who can get the richest quickest doing it. If we need the resources, let us do it carefully, cautiously, with integrity and for the whole, not the few. Let us work together, for each other. Think! not squabble like children.

[E. Shackleton]

Well, low commodity prices solved the problem for now. Perhaps they could avert the problem with world price controls on oil. ;-)