History's Dependence on Oil
12 April 2007
by Christian McPhate, Contributing writer for AnaiRhoads.org
AnaiRhoads.org - An international race has blasted across the not-so frozen northlands of the Artic.
It is a race that has gone full throttle since the awakening of political minds on global warming.
The United States, Russia, Norway, Denmark and Canada have extended their capitalistic fangs and turned their dollarshot eyes toward the fish-, diamond- and oil-filled region.
Associated Press writer Doug Mellgren reported the defrosting land is in such high demand that Canada and Denmark have both laid their claims to a Frisbee-shaped island in the Artic with flags and warships.
Russia has been squabbling with Norway over the Barents Sea while slapping off the United States claims to the Beaufort Sea.
The United States and Canada have been fighting over rights to the Northwest Passage as well as disputing over the offshore boundary of the Yukon.
Canada said the melting lands of the Northwest Passage belong to them, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to put "military icebreakers" in the frosty waters.
Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark are laying claim to the waters extending from their borders toward the North Pole, stating that the seabed belongs to their continental shelf, according to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
An estimated 25 percent of the Earth's untouched oil and gases lay within the Artic.
In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the sovereignty issue is "a serious, competitive battle that will unfold more and more fiercely."
On March 25, 2007, the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the ice caps are heating up faster than the rest of the planet in part due to the greenhouse gases.
According to the panel's latest report, the accelerated impact of global warming has unveiled riches for the shipping industry in the form of new lanes of navigation for prospective diamond miners and oil mongers.
The first ship to reach the North Pole without icebreaker help was the Akademik Fyodorov of Russia in 2005.
And now with the advancement in technology, the Norwegian shipyard Aker Yards has begun to create "innovative vessels" that can sail through clear waters and then turn around and plow through heavier ice with their sterns.
The Artic Climate Impact Assessment, an intergovernmental group, said the global warming of the Artic would cut sailing time from Germany to Alaska by 60 percent for five months out of the year by allowing ships lanes of navigation through the not-so frozen waters of Russia's artic region instead of the Panama Canal.
And while the rest of the political world turns its focus on the possible promise of trillions of dollars increasing governmental budgets, the indigenous peoples of the Artic, the Inuit and Sami, are being overlooked and pushed down to the bottom of the G8's agenda.
"Everybody is talking about the potential for minerals, diamonds, oil and gas, but we mustn't forget that people live there, all the way across the Artic," the University of Guelph's Global Environmental Change Group in Canada research associate Tristin Pearce said. "They've always been there and they have a major role to play."
And yet the Canadian Inuit communities are suffering overcrowding housing, high rates of unemployment, substance abuse, violence and suicide much like the derelict communities of the Native Americans.
The Sami communities are the largest group of indigenous people in Europe and encompass the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia.
The Sami Parliaments have very weak political influence; the Scandinavian governments rule the political bodies despite democratically elected politicians.
Russia does not recognize the minority of Samis.
So where does the indigenous peoples power exactly lie?
What kind of role are the Inuits and the Samis really going to play?
What has history shown us?
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