The crisis under the ice

Global warming enabled Russia’s Arctic land grab, and now it could get worse.

Any lingering doubts about how ill-prepared we are to face up to the reality of climate change should have been laid to rest this month when two Russian mini-submarines dove two miles under the Arctic ice to plant a Russian flag made of titanium on the seabed. The government of Vladimir V. Putin claims that the seabed under the North Pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is an extension of Russia’s continental shelf and therefore Russian territory that will be open for oil exploration.

Russia is not alone in making such a claim. Geologists think that 25% of Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas may be embedded in the rock under the Arctic Ocean. No wonder Norway, Canada and Denmark (through its possession of Greenland) are all using the continental-shelf argument to claim the Arctic seabed as an extension of their own sovereign territories. The sudden interest in Arctic oil and gas has put a fire under U.S. lawmakers to ratify the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty, which allows signatory nations to claim exclusive commercial exploitation zones up to 200 miles out from their coastlines.
What makes this development so depressing is that the interest in prospecting the Arctic seabed, and subsoil, is only now becoming possible because climate change is melting away Arctic ice.

For thousands of years, the fossil fuel deposits lay locked under the ice and inaccessible. Ironically, the very process of burning fossil fuels releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, or CO2, and forces an increase in the Earth’s temperature, which in turn melts the Arctic ice, making available even more oil and gas for energy. Burning these potential oil and gas finds would further increase CO2 emissions in coming decades, depleting the Arctic ice even more quickly.

But there is an even more dangerous aspect to the unfolding drama in the Arctic. While governments and oil giants are hoping the melting ice will allow them access to the world’s last treasure trove of oil and gas, climatologists are deeply worried about something else buried under the ice that, if unearthed, could wreak havoc on the biosphere, with dire consequences for human life.

The Los Angeles Times