May 13, 2011
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I'd like to comment on something besides global warming but...
The Arctic could become the next great international battleground for resources, with melting icecaps opening new shipping routes, fishing grounds and, most significantly, some of the world's richest and as yet unexplored oil and gas deposits. So far, the United States, Russia and other nations near the North Pole are trying to work together. They'll take a baby step in that direction this week by agreeing to the first international treaty covering the Arctic Sea, a coordinated search-and-rescue pact that will grow in importance as more cargo and cruise ships start navigating the cold waters.
This is so rich. Every scientific organization on the planet has been screaming about this problem for decades, all the while Conservative think tanks and Republican officials (Democrats aren't exactly winning any prizes either) flatly deny the problem, ignore the evidence, and do everything in their power to delay action. Our privileged 4% of the global population - a) is responsible for 25% of Earth's greenhouse gas emissions, b) uses over 25% of the world's natural resources, and c) has become so accustomed to a wasteful and consuming lifestyle found nowhere else on the planet (although, that's quickly changing which only stands to compound the problem - see India, China) that any request to sacrifice anything is met with boos and hisses. Now after lighting the fuse on climatic catastrophes that will haunt us for generations to come, we Americans want to step in and gain access to natural resources that are only available because of a scientific process to which we were the primary contributors, yet most of our citizens deny is even happening?! We want to reap the "positive" effects while refusing to acknowledge or curb the deleterious ones. How must this look to the rest of the world? And how about the irony of wanting to use the Arctic to drill for a substance that the use of which will lead to further destruction of the Arctic?
