Cold Hard Cash

There are winners and losers in the slow and steady rise in global temperatures. The planet may have passed the tipping point – that fragile moment when the climate change is on autopilot no matter what we do – and governments are lining up to take advantage of the changes. “The apparent low point for 2012 was reached Sunday, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said that sea ice that day covered about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 percent, of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The previous low, set in 2007, was 29 percent… The sea ice is declining much faster than had been predicted in the last big United Nations reporton the state of the climate, published in 2007. The most sophisticated computer analyses for that report suggested that the ice would not disappear before the middle of this century, if then.

“Now, some scientists think the Arctic Ocean could be largely free of summer ice as soon as 2020. But governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions. To the contrary, their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including drilling for more oil.” New York Times, September 19^th.

So far in my blogs, I’ve focused mainly on those changes that impair the lives of unfortunate residents where seas rise, storms rage, droughts extend, fresh water supplies and navigable waterways recede, crops fail, insects carry disease to new and unprepared peoples, species die off and temperatures soar. But there are nations where barren tundra and sheets of ice melt away to add vast stretches of farmland to a hungry planet, a Northwest Passage through the Arctic becomes a reality, and new exposed and accessible land open vast potential for new resources, from oil to mineral wealth.

Canada and Russia are the most obvious beneficiaries, even as climate change may challenge some of their productivity, because so much of that frozen world lies within their borders. We have Alaska, which will be easier to explore with ice removed and tundra gone. Economies in once hopeless lands, sparsely populated and often with only indigenous peoples used to life in a harsh environment, now offer riches and alternative lifestyles that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Make no mistake, the balance of planetary harm from global warming vastly outweighs these benefits – riches relegated to a very small segment of the world – but in an assessment of climate change, it is necessary to identify all of the likely trends.

And of course, pockets of newly found resources bring out economic predators in search of the wealth such discoveries might generate, and competition for the newly opened areas foments nationalist competition. As a Russian submarine planted a Russian flag on an underwater outcropping the Russians claim as an extension of their above-water territory (claiming much of the Arctic as their own), Canada has accelerated the construction of new ice-compatible military sea craft to protect what they believe is theirs. A loose affiliation of eight nations with border interests in the Arctic – known as the Arctic Council – is becoming a forum for dispute resolution and regional policy-making.

“Ownership of the Arctic is governed by the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea [which despite support from both the Bush and Obama administrations has never passed Congress], which gives Arctic nations an exclusive economic zone that extends 200 nautical miles from land, and to undersea resources farther away so long as they are on a continental shelf. The far northern Arctic Ocean belongs to no country, and conditions there are severe. In a place where exact boundaries were never much of a concern, haggling over borders has begun among the primary nations — between Canada and Denmark, and the United States and Canada, for example.” New York Times, September 18^th.

One country with no direct connection to that frozen northland – China – has taken the position that this Arctic region is the “inherited wealth of all of humanity” and not just the province of the border nations. She has voiced a strong demand for inclusion in that Arctic Council, seeking at least observer status at the table. China has particularly eyed the vast wealth opening up in Sweden, Denmark, and most importantly, the massive Danish territory of Greenland. Chinese trade missions have visited these countries and are offering lucrative deals to lock up the expected vast mineral resources for years to come, where Chinese work crews would set up both exploratory missions and operating mines where resources are found. Greenland’s resources are very promising.

And indeed ice is melting across Greenland (showing a 97% ice-free surface in August) with glaciers sending massive walls of ice crashing to the sea as never before. NASA’s website describes the satellite photo above, particularly that white mass in the middle of the picture. “In mid-July 2012, a massive iceberg calved off the Petermann Glacier of northwestern Greenland. Named PII-2012, the ice island drifted slowly away from the glacier and into Nares Strait. Still intact on August 31, the iceberg had started to fragment by September 4.” While winter ice returns, glaciers are not restored and the general surface temperatures are irretrievably rising. This is what makes this massive island so interesting to nations seeking its wealth.

“Western nations have been particularly anxious about Chinese overtures to this poor and sparsely populated island, a self-governing state within the Kingdom of Denmark, because the retreat of its ice cap has unveiled coveted mineral deposits, including rare earth metals that are crucial for new technologies like cellphones and military guidance systems. A European Union vice president, Antonio Tajani, rushed here to Greenland’s capital in June, offering hundreds of millions in development aid in exchange for guarantees that Greenland would not give China exclusive access to its rare earth metals, calling his trip ‘raw mineral diplomacy.’ … Greenland is close to North America, and home to the United States Air Force’s northernmost base in Thule. At a conference last month, Thomas R. Nides, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said the Arctic was becoming ‘a new frontier in our foreign policy.’

“In the past 18 months, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea have made debut visits here, and Greenland’s prime minister, Kuupik Kleist, was welcomed by President José Manuel Barroso of the European Commission in Brussels… ‘We are treated so differently than just a few years ago,’ said Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s vice premier, in his simple office here. ‘We are aware that is because we now have something to offer, not because they’ve suddenly discovered that Inuit are nice people.’” Aside from the rare earths noted above, there seem to be massive stores of iron ore, and experts believe that as much as 20% of the earth’s oil and gas reserves rest in these Arctic lands.

Will this area provide resources to the entire planet or just the early movers? Will this extraction of such resources inflict additional environmental damage destroying yet another part of global existence or will we avoid the Exxon Valdez and other environmental debacles and do it right this time? Will mining and oil drilling disrupt the ecosystem no matter how careful we are? Will this process be productive and peaceful or will armed conflicts further mar the process? Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for anyone expecting a future void of excruciating complexity, it is time to move to another planet.