Who Owns the Arctic?

Time to negotiate the Northwest Passage with the United States

Michael Byers, Policy Options, October 2011

It has always been difficult for Canada to discuss the Northwest Passage with the United States. A northern route to the Pacific Ocean was the holy grail for explorers from Cabot to Hudson and Franklin, whose discoveries helped define our nation. The Northwest Passage is also at the root of Canada’s most significant and enduring dispute with the United States. As such, it is a source of both pride and anxiety in our close but asymmetrical relationship. 

Nevertheless, we have managed to talk about the Northwest Passage when it has been necessary to do so ...

For the rest of the text, see: Time to Negotiate the Northwest Passage

Lawmakers confronting cold reality for pricey icebreakers

The United States is running short of icebreakers, with its only pair of heavy icebreakers, Polar Sea and Polar Star, sidelined in Seattle, one with broken engines and the other undergoing an overhaul to keep it running a decade past its life span.

Kyung M. Song, Settle Times, October 9, 2011

WASHINGTON — Climate change is melting parts of the ice-locked Northwest Passage. China is building its first modern icebreaker in hopes of staking claims to Arctic waters. Frigid polar regions are opening up to increased shipping traffic, scientific exploration and tourism.

Yet the United States is so short of icebreakers capable of navigating those still-unpredictable waters that since 2007, it has made the annual supply run to McMurdo Station, the American research outpost in Antarctica, with a ship leased from Sweden.

Melting Arctic ice clears the way for supertanker voyages

Scandinavian shipowners say cargo routes through the Arctic, made possible by warmer temperatures, would save money and emissions

John Vidal, The Guardian, 5 October 2011

The image above was made from observations collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer and shows the extent of sea ice melt. The yellow outline shows the median minimum ice extent for 1979/2000. Photograph: Aqua/NASA

Supertankers and giant cargo ships could next year travel regularly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic to save time, money and emissions, say Scandinavian shipowners.