Canada must lead by example in claiming Arctic

The title of the article in Harper’s Magazine was unusually sprightly for that rather staid journal. First, in bold letters, COLD RUSH, and below the subtitle, The Coming Fight for the Melting North.

The Economist magazine was less inventive. Its article was titled “Drawing Lines in Melting Ice,” with a teaser below about “the ungainly scramble for a slice of the Arctic’s tantalizing riches.”
Most times the Arctic commands attention because of its beauty, its solitariness, the inventiveness of its native Inuit, its fragility.

Suddenly, the reasons for its appeal, demonstrated by these simultaneous articles in major American and British magazines, have become practical and opportunistic. The stakes are now those of politics and national pride, and of economics and finance. In Harper’s, journalist McKenzie Funk puts it bluntly: The U.S.’s interest in the north “was to see how much money it could make.”

The motives of the other nations involved are much the same: Russia, predictably, but also the “good guys”