Climate change is not a joke.
Some people may doubt it, but more and more people are beginning to see what the melting
sea ice will do to our planet, with many speaking out in protest, like with the Global Climate
Strike, a school strike organized by and for young students who have grown frustrated with
their governments’ lack of action.
However, perhaps the biggest influence of climate change won’t the on the planet (the
planet will still be a blue ball floating through space, nothing we can currently do
will change that), nor will it kill off all life (we’re just causing a huge mass extinction,
which is still bad though), but perhaps the greatest threat, or at least the greatest
change, is to ourselves, us humans.
By now I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it all about what will happen if we let the climate’s
average temperature raise by as little 2 degrees Celsius (that’s average temperature by the
way, which is different from the temperature merely going up by 2 degrees.
It’s like if Berlin suddenly became comparable to Budapest, or New York like Baltimore, just
thought I’d make that clear).
That’s on the lower end of what is likely to happen, but basically we’ll let all the
polar ice caps melt, which will flood the world, and we’ll lose places from New York
to Bangladesh to Denmark to…
Florida (I don’t want to live in a future without Florida Man!), and the ecosystems
will be thrown out of wack, some places will get too dry, some too wet, some too hot, and
we’re all gonna die… and that’s gonna cost us something like a trillion dollars.
Although there are currently low-lying places like Kiribati, Tuvalu, New Orleans, and the
Maldives which are already starting to sink due to climate change, one of the places perhaps
being most transformed is a place I can’t even properly show on my stock world map,
the Arctic.
You see, the Arctic generally spends its time covered in ice, so the ice up there suddenly
going away is of course already having big impacts for the geopolitics of the surrounding
area.
Seven countries border the Arctic Ocean: the US, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Iceland,
Norway, and Russia, and all want a slice of the Arctic pie.
One of the main points of interest within the Arctic is its untapped natural resources.
According to a 2008 assessment by the US Geological Survey, there are about 90 billion barrels
of oil, 47 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas
liquids, with many multinational energy companies already fighting for permits to extract from
these areas.
However, this is where the borders come in (and no, I‘m not going to be talking about
visa policies in this video), as the Arctic Ocean is, well… an ocean (good going, genius).
This means that the Arctic Ocean is governed by UN maritime law, which states that nations
have an Exclusive Economic Zone going out a certain distance from their shores (usually
200 nautical miles, or 370 kilometers), from which they are allowed to do things like extract
resources, even outside their territorial waters.
Drawing the normal lines out, we would get borders that look something like this.
Very neat and tidy lines, but there’s a lot of Arctic Ocean left unaccounted for,
and the UN actually allows countries to extend their EEZ’s to 650 km (350 nautical miles)
off shore, provided they can prove that the continental shelf extends far enough for them
to do so.
You see, a continental shelf is essentially an extension to its respective landmass that
happens to be underwater.
As such, the water in these areas is much shallower than the rest of the ocean, meaning
the continental shelf (which is also made from continental, not oceanic, crust) is essentially
a part of the continent that just happens to be underwater right now, much like the
underwater bit of mighty Zealandia, or like the protrusion that was once US’ former
state of Florida (sorry, just future-proofing my video, just in case).
All seven Arctic Ocean-touching nations have submitted their claims of their continental
shelves to the UN, but wouldn’t you know it, they all overlap with each-other, what
a big surprise.
Russia has shown a vested interest in gaining influence in the Arctic, and has been said
to not exactly view climate change the same way as much of the rest of the world would
view it.
After all, a warmer climate would likely result in Russia’s permafrost wasteland to turn
into vast swathes of arable land.
In the Arctic Ocean though, Russia is also building up its presence, both militarily
and politically.
This is both in the obvious ways (as in, putting more troops up there and placing a Russian
flag on the part of the sea floor that touches the north pole [kind of]), but also with presences
in places like Barentsburg, a Russian mining settlement on the Norwegian island of Svalbard.
It’s no secret that Barentsburg is vastly unprofitable for Russia, but in this case
it’s not the money Russia’s after, but its strategic location for the potential new
resources in the area, as any country who signed the 1920 Svalbard Treaty is allowed
to do this as long as there’s no military stuff going on up there.
However, it’s not just oil and natural gas that will make the Arctic more important on
the world stage in the coming decades, it’s also shipping.
We all know that long haul flights like New York to Hong Kong or London to Los Angeles
will go directly over the north pole, as that’s the actual shortest distance, but ships obviously
haven’t been getting this chance, at least not until recently.
For ships, this is a shortcut known as the Northwest Passage, which will likely cut the
journeys of cargo chips by thousands of kilometers, compared to going through the Panama Canal.
This means that a ship can go through with less fuels, which means more cargo and (interestingly
enough) fewer emissions.
Even this though could also be a potential geopolitical advantage for countries like
Canada, see this Wendover Productions video for more info on this specific topic, I would
just be repeating it if I dove further into it here.
But despite all the extra natural resources and potentially reduced shipping costs, there
are still huge prices to pay.
All this isn’t necessarily a positive, just the most not horrible aspects of climate change.
Sea levels will rise and inundate major population centers, weather all across the board will
become much more severe, and on top of that these natural resources are not going to last
forever.
It’s been predicted time and time again when we’ll run out of oil for the last 100
years, often getting the dates wildly wrong, but the Earth only has so much for us to go
around.
If the environment isn‘t enough to get us to switch to renewables, perhaps we should
keep in mind some of the perils climate change will have for our civilization, even with
its perceived upsides.
Thank you as always for watching.
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