Thursday, September 21, 2006

Arctic Ice Thinning Provides Route

Original link for the story

>>>>> It also threatens animals such as polar bears and seals that depend on ice.

>>>>> There are geopolitical implications, too, as Canada, Russia and the United States jockey to claim rights over transpolar passages that open up within their newly ice-free waters.

As usual, I would expect greed to score much here.

I remember a Lanao lake in Northern Mindanao, south of the Philippines that dried up many feet away from its usual stretch. It sank lower and lower and lower, laying bare some tracks of soft ground all around the lake.

Soon, the people thought the water level would not come up again; they began claiming portions and piled up rock upon rock to demarcate their boundaries. In claiming these properties, they began quarreling, leading to an accounting of who owns what from the history of that place as their ancestors had settled then.

Then one night, the waters roared in anger and the lake claimed its usual level, inundating the piles of rocks and erasing whatever demarcations were in place.

In the morning, when the people returned to the lake, they found their newfound “properties” gone.

This impending fight for Arctic routes is not any different.

It would be interesting to see who would claim to own nature.

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