News from a Changing Planet -- This Week on Earth #10
What Russia is doing in the Arctic, another clean energy bottleneck, and other news to know.
GETTING IN POSITION: Russia is getting ready for a warmer Arctic with military bases, shipping routes, and more. (The Guardian)
As Arctic sea ice melts and the war in Ukraine further isolates its government from most of the international community, Russia is taking an aggressive posture in the far north. Over the last six years, Russia has built 475 new military bases along its northern coastlines, and has expanded its ice breaking fleet — Russia has several dozen ice breaking ships, including nuclear-powered ones. (The United States, also an Arctic country, only has one.)
Along with the scary prospect of a militarized Arctic, this build-up increases the likelihood of vast amounts of toxic pollution in the Arctic, from spilling, drilling, shipping, weapons testing and more. Navigating through the Arctic is dangerous, and accidents are a matter of when, not if.
Add to that the fact that this is one of the last remaining refuges for all kinds of wild animals, particularly the deep waters of the Barents Sea, one of the most biodiverse parts of the region. And lands belonging to the Indigenous Sami people are being opened up for mining, newly possible as the permafrost melts.
Though the Arctic may feel far away, almost abstracted by the blankness of the landscape, its effect on much of our weather and the connectedness of our oceans means that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there.
As a result of the war in Ukraine, many collaborative research and monitoring projects, already stymied by the pandemic, between Russian scientists and those from the U.S., E.U., or other Ukrainian allied countries have been put on hold or canceled at a precarious moment. We are losing precious time to understand what is happening in the Arctic, and by consequence, on the rest of the planet.
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