I am already unhappy and depressed at the irrational attacks in BC on green power projects, the rising tide of racism among the left, and abandonment of global sound macro-economic policies. Now the Russians have announced that they plan on dramatically militarizing the arctic.
The Russians are looking to access resources in the region, including a lot of oil. 90 000 000 000 barrels is the conservative estimate for the Russian claim area. This would add 150% to the Russian reserves.
What I see the Conservatives and the Liberals doing is dramatically beefing up the Canadian presence in the Arctic. The government has already put things in motion to build a northern deepwater port at Nanasivik, and an army training base at Resolute. Nanasivik is a ghost town at the moment. Resolute is a hamlet of 229 people which was built for arctic soveriegnty purposes in the late 1940s and had Inuit forcibly moved there in the 1960s like was done with Grise Fiord.
The Russian push into the arctic will politically push Canada to go into the arctic. The past attempts to do this in Canada have been expensive and pointless. I am still amazed that the Canadian goverment thought that forcing people to move there was in any way shape or form acceptable. I figure that if you are going to do something like that, start with retired MPs and their families.
The deepwater port at Nanasivik would make the lead zinc deposit there economical. Actually, there are numerous interesting deposits in Nunavut that would be feasible if there was better infrastructure, there is a conference on this in Iqaluit next week.
What depresses me about this is not the resource development, but the responses of government. The government will start to spend even more money in the north. Over the next 20 years we could see a Canadian military presence that included at least one major naval base and then several smaller naval stations. Realistically I see there being a fulltime army presence in the north in the future.
To further improve soveriegnty I can see the government offering financial incentives to have people and businesses to locate in the north. In the 1970's billions were spent by Canada looking for oil in the north. Oil was found, but the cost to develop and transport a generation ago made it uneconomical. With $100 oil and more government support, I can see development of oil going ahead in the Canadian arctic.
2 comments:
Global Warming melts the arctic, so we develop the hell out of it, release 90 billion barrels worth of added carbon emissions and proceed to create droughts which stop convection in the oceans which leads to brutal irreversible climate change. (more ice in some areas desertification of others).
Sounds like a great idea... if we want to destroy our planet.
Yes, it is an idiotic thing to do in many ways, but it is also unavoidable. Russia and the US are already jockeying for position in the Arctic, and Canada is in their way. Unless if we strongly support Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, particularly over the waterways, we run a real risk of losing control there. I really do not think that Russia or the US will do a better job of environmental stewardship in the North than Canada will. In a perfect world the Arctic would be an international park, but that is not going to happen, and I would rather see Canada controlling the Arctic archipelago than some of the other players in the area.
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