North-East Arctic Passage May Open

Have you ever looked at a globe or a map and seen how everything up north is basically ice? Even movies portray everything above a certain point as this kind of endless white cold mass. Nothing could possibly be strong enough to break through it, and when it does crack or melt it is from some major, cataclysmic event. Well, those cracks and those major, cataclysmic events are happening. And they are called global warming.

The UK Guardian today published an article claiming that the fabled northern passage through the arctic will in fact become a reality, though not through deft exploration and discovery, but through the environmental villainy of global warming.

Some would call this the plus side to climate change, or one of the things that will even out the new and coming economic challenges- similar arguments to people who say that warmer temperatures just mean that the growing areas will move slightly north and perhaps even make for a longer growing season- as in, this will be bad for some, yes, but equally good for others. We just need to adapt to it and stop complaining.

"The rise in temperatures across the Arctic is twice the world average. Soon there will be no summer ice – that will open up new routes and new strategic issues…” said Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s foreign minister.

He is calling it the north-east passage, and says that without the summer ice there will be new opportunities for trade between Europe and Japan. And that the melting ice in the Russian Arctic will in fact make a shorter and safer passage for tankers.

Wait, but global warming is not a good thing. And planning to float tankers full of goods from country to country to exploit an environmental catastrophe seems, well, weird. It is a different perspective, and maybe I just don’t know how to think about it from the right angle. Ok, so we will not be stopping trade between Europe and Japan, right? Right. So, if there is a way to use less fuel to do it and to keep the people who do it safer, well those are both good things, right? And we have to adapt to the changing world, no matter what it is that is changing that world, right? Right. So, shorter-safer-northern arctic passage sounds like a good thing- it’s the cause that is the not so good thing.

Hmm.

This is one of those issues I don’t know quite how to think about right away. Sure, we should do all that we can to battle global warming and climate change and keep the Earth in the balance it naturally wants. But if the tankers will be using less fuel, maybe that is the good call, the better call to fight climate change in the window that will see no summer ice in the arctic.

Or, maybe we should take this as a sign that things like gigantic tankers taking stuff from one side of the world to the other is a major part of the problem and probably just not a good idea in general- like maybe we should just stop doing that altogether.

Nah.