Melting Arctic boosts tensions

Opinion

June 7, 2012

Melting Arctic boosts tensions

By Bill Crawford/Meridian Star columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Thu Jun 07, 2012, 09:48 AM CDT

MERIDIAN, Miss. — Global warming may be nonsense but is heating up a new cold war.

The Arctic ice pack is melting. As major oil companies step up Arctic exploration and border nations push territorial and commercial interests, military activities have increased.

According to CNN, “One of the coldest places on Earth is heating up as nuclear submarines, Aegis-class frigates, strategic bombers and a new generation of icebreakers are resuming operations there.” CNN said the rush to establish national interests in the area “has brought in its wake a host of naval and military activities that the Arctic hasn’t seen since the end of the Cold War.”

NASA used satellite data in 2003 to document the shrinking ice pack, saying “sea ice in the Arctic is declining at a rate of nine percent per decade.” A just released NASA study found the rate of sea ice melt much higher at 17.2% per decade. Some scientists now suggest the entire polar ice cap may be gone by 2040.

Shell is the current kingpin among Arctic oil companies. It has development projects with Canada, Russia, Norway, and Greenland as well as the USA. Exxon just joined the hunt, signing a major exploratory deal with Russia.

Geologists say oil and gas reserves in the Arctic region are huge. Which countries own what rights to what areas will put in play a whole new set of international tensions in an area known for longstanding territorial disputes.

Russia is the dominant player with the most coastline, four million residents, numerous military bases, a huge fleet of icebreakers, and vast commercial activities. Russia has asserted huge continental shelf claims and is growing its military presence.

Canada is the next dominant player and is also asserting continental shelf claims. In 2007, Canada noted climate change impacts on its northern ways of life, infrastructure, and economic activities and adopted plans in response. Calling sovereignty over northern regions a “non-negotiable priority,” Canada’s prime minister began re-equipping Arctic forces and increased military operations.

Norway’s prime minister in 2010 said, “The Arctic is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate changes on earth, and even greater changes are projected,” adding that “High North issues” are at the top of Norway’s foreign policy agenda. Norway has held joint military operations with Russia, re-equipped its Arctic forces, and recently moved its military headquarters into the Arctic region.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently toured countries in the region, ostensibly to assert U.S. interests. The U.S. largely withdrew most of its forces from the region in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Iceland, Denmark, Greenland, Sweden, and Finland are other Arctic countries with China and Germany reaching out to them to secure access.

A new cold war over oil? Get ready.

(Bill Crawford (crawfolk@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist from Meridian.)

Text Only

Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Melting Arctic boosts tensions

Site Map

Contact Us