The frozen Arctic used to be a remote, harsh playing field for a few submarines, scientists and indigenous Innuit, according to dpa. But US military and science officials warned Tuesday of coming military and strategic conflicts as commercial, transport and energy interests eye the rapid Arctic melt for exploitation. "It's past time" to face the economic and geopolitical "consequences of global climate change," said Rear Admiral Timothy McGee, commander of the US Navy's meteorology and oceanography command. He was speaking to reporters before the opening of a conference of US military officials and government scientists on the impact of an ice-diminishing Arctic, billed as the first broad-based meeting on government policy on the issue in the US. The US Navy and Coast Guard have been considering the implications of Arctic melt for years, but Washington has not even yet signed a new Law of the Sea treaty, putting the US in a "weakened position" when it comes to claiming a 320-kilometre exclusive economic zone, said Rear Admiral Brian Salerno, assistant commandant in the US Coast Guard. Yet scientists believe the melting of the mythical North-West passage from Atlantic to Pacific through Arctic ice to be on the horizon - an event that would nearly halve the sea route from Tokyo to London to about 9,600 kilometres, McGee said. In addition, an estimated 25 per cent of the planet's oil and gas reserves are in the Arctic region, the officials said. All of that adds up to a huge push on the Arctic's ecological, strategic and commercial potential. "We have to have our heads screwed on right," Navy commander McGee said. The rapid melt could also have positive strategic and diplomatic results, and generate more cooperation among the countries bordering the Arctic who are expected to meet in 2009 on the issue. Russia and the US, for example, share the Bering Straits, a "choke point for transportation we see coming," said Mead Treadwell, chair of the US Arctic Research Commission that helped convene the conference. The melt could create an "opportunity for partnerships" and be a chance to "reach across and bring Russia into a meaningful alliance with the West," McGee said. Without such cooperation, and with each country having different standards for shipping and ecology, the increasingly accessible Arctic could produce a "train wreck," Treadwell said. McGee warned that the United States must secure its interests in the Arctic region, and compared the vast unexplored regions of the Arctic to the unexplored Middle East of 100 years ago, when western armies were just beginning to venture into the region. "They didn't get it right," he said. "This time (with the Arctic), we have to get it right," he said.
