The Arctic is a land of wealth, not only in its beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage, but in the son of the basic products we value more: oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, gold and more.
However, these treasures are not good for us. As our Special Report on Polar Science reveals (seeing “why sea ice at the poles is a crisis for the entire planet”), it is difficult to extract the abundant resources of the Arctic for commercial profits.
Trying to get the oil and gas from the region is a demanding business, even with the doubtful wind of sea ice queue that helps eliminate new ocean patches for drilling. As industry and transport gradually change to electricity and hydrogen, oil demand will fall, which makes it difficult to justify.
It is also a similar story for minerals. Greenland is an access point for demand materials, perhaps a reason why the president of the United States, Donald Trump, pursues it aggressively, is acquisition. But even leaving aside the lack of Greenland infrastructure (roads are difficult to find on this ice island, this is a risky place to invest. The landscape is changing quickly as the glaciers melt, revealing new precarious costs that threaten the landslides and the tsunamis.
For a hard nose business executive, there are easier and less dangerous places to extract
In the terrestrial Arctic, the fusion permafrost is the destabilization of existing roads, buildings and industrial sites. For a hard nose business executive, there are easier and less dangerous places to extract.
Seeing the Arctic as a ticket for abundant economic growth is a silly mandate. Instead of seeing it as a mature region for exploitation, we must treat it as a scientific wonder, while respecting people who live there. After all, as the region of faster change on Earth, it is in the receiver of our climate future. And there is still much to learn: how fast the ice could disappear? How fast will sea level increase? And what happens if the ice is gone?
In a more positive note, researchers are pioneers in increasingly inventive ways to unlock these mysteries, from a new “displacement” laboratory to ultra deep ice drills and avant -garde submmarin. The Arctic is full of exploration and discovery opportunities. We just have to put aside the idea of monetizing them.
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