“From a naval perspective, climate change probably means there will be more open water, so the Arctic Ocean will really emerge as the Arctic Ocean.”
The Toronto Star reports:
The head of the Royal Canadian Navy says Canada needs to bolster its military presence in the Arctic to prepare for a boom in human and economic activity resulting largely from climate change.
Global warming is thought to be occurring faster in the North than anywhere else. The gradual disappearance of sea ice is opening up commercial shipping as well as previously inaccessible areas rich with oil, natural gas and mineral resources…
There’s a lot of beeswax in this article. If Canada needs to monitor Arctic shipping lanes, why do they need military vessels? And submarines and drones? Are the Somali pirates going to move north? Actually, this is far more firepower than the Somalis are facing.
The facts paint a far different picture. True, there are vast oil and mineral deposits beneath the Arctic icecap. The trouble is, the Russians and the Canadians have different opinions on what is in whose territory and they may become belligerent over incursions into each others’ perceived territories. There is lots of precedent involving ships using live fire to enforce water boundaries, generally over fishing rights. Lots more than fishing is at stake this time.
At least this isn’t set to happen until a century from now. Canada can build its new vessels at leisure, which might actually be the sole unspoken purpose.