This is just crazy. U.S. Lawmakers just got back from visiting Greenland last month and the Arctic region is becoming the next front in the presumably dead Cold War. Russia plants its flag in a titanium capsule on the arctic sea shelf, Canada decides to build a military base to protect their sovereignty. All hell breaks loose over who gains control of the northern passage, which will open once the North Pole goes the way of the dodo bird, and of course…who will control all that Arctic oil previously protected by masses of ice. Is it just me, or is this toxic stew of militarism, fossil fuels, and greed what got us into this mess? Please tell me that we are smarter than this. Anything would be better than seeing this as the “global warming sweepstakes” as one article put it.
Canada will build two new military facilities in the Arctic in a move to assert sovereignty over the contested region, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday. Source: Canada announces military installations to bolster claim to Arctic waters
Also, what is up with this messaging. The Cold War heating up as a result of Global Warming. Shoot me now.
“The Cold War has come to the North,” read the headline in the Russian newspaper Kommersant over the weekend, after Canada and other countries with claims to the underwater Arctic mineral wealth stepped up their own preparations. Source: Russian bombers play war games with US
Ok, the onrushing conflict between the circumpolar nations has just reached a new height of ridiculousness. The only good thing about it is that if you run into someone still spouting some retrograde line about how the science of global warming is still up for debate, ask them why then are we on the edge of a international military incident over all the newly melted territory?
Finally, the fate of all this at stake rests on one UN group. No, not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but this one: the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Why do UN commissions seem to only matter when the wrong thing is at stake? Source: Battle for Arctic oil hinges on UN panel
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santa claus is canadian how can the arctic be Russian?
This is a bit ironic, because global warming is the reason that the arctic oil was discovered, and now more carbon dioxide will be released as a result of that discovery. Renewables would make this “cold war” and other campaigns for oil completely unneccessary.