"This Melt Is Unprecedented"

The war for the Arctic can now begin.

A warm summer has produced a record melt of the polar ice cap, leaving the Northwest Passage clear enough for a sailboat to pass and prompting nations of the far north to assert claims over the Arctic Ocean seabed.

"The entire length of the Northwest Passage is navigable," said Trudy Wohlleben, senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service, a government agency.

Ice usually blocks at least some parts of the passage, she said. "This melt is unprecedented, and it"s speeding up."

The development threatens to accelerate long-frozen conflicts over security, sovereignty, environmental and economic conflicts among four powers with claims over the Arctic: the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Russia.

Russia said yesterday that 12 of its strategic bomber planes had begun a two-day exercise over the north of the country that was to include the firing of cruise missiles, the air force said.

All four Arctic powers have publicized their presence in the region this summer, the most dramatic being the planting of the Russian flag under the North Pole by a miniature submarine.

The resources in that region are so rich that we could easily see a shooting war. And yet drilling in the polar region would be a continuation of the very same policies that caused the cap to melt in the first place. And while the cap melt will cause sea levels to rise uncomfortably, inland the water and snowpacks are melting away, which will lead to more resource wars (the nature of man is at least in part a conflict for resources, going back some million years. Just look at Darfur, where the Arabs are now turning on each other because resources are scarce).

We need major policy change that goes beyond encouraging fluorescent light bulbs or making sure the Capitol fleet is green (although that's not a bad start).