PunkAssBlog.com

Global warming is melting Arctic ice and opening the Northwest Passage.

This is one of these stories that should get everyone freaked out, regardless of political affiliation. Of course, there’s a plus side:

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

“Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions,” he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

“It won’t be ice-free all year around and it won’t be a stable route all year,” Ragner said. “The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes.”

To Ragner’s credit, he goes on to say that the melting of the ice—no matter how much money it brings in—is a Very Bad Thing. But it makes me wonder how many business leaders are watching climate chaos and seeing dollar signs. Conservatives’ denial of global warming is disingenuous—we can see the evidence for ourselves—but I’m sure there are a few ways that climate change can bring about short-term profit for someone.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Which brings me to a link that’s a year old but worth reading: It’s capitalism or a habitable planet - you can’t have both. Sure, I’m biased in this regard, being no fan of wars, homelessness, sweatshops, and other products of the Great Invisible Hand of the Free Market. But Newman gives a concise environmental analysis of why things gotta change:

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

I’ll leave you with Stan Rogers’ beautiful tribute to the “land so wild and savage.” I’ve always thought it was a terribly sad song. I think it’s about to become even sadder.