Canada, Russia and America Fighting for Arctic Oil?

There's definitely a lot of merit behind the idea of tapping the vast, harsh and barren landscape of the Sahara Desert for European energy production. As we reported last week, it would require a solar power plant roughly the size of Wales to power all of Europe!

But now, several countries are looking another vast, barren and harsh landscape to meet energy demands. And this, it turns out, is a heck of a lot scarrier.

Not content with trashing Alaska, news just in from the Financial Times that US scientists are already eyeing up the crude reserves that the Arctic holds. Ironically enough the retreat of the ice-sheets due to climate change is opening up the doors for much more oil exploration. The USGS estimates that 13% of the world's oil reserves lie beneath the Arctic, with the figure for gas even greater at 30%. The potential for profit is only overshadowed by the potential for environmental damage.

This is bad news for EcoGeeks, and possible for Canada as well. Miltary strategists have already predicted the possibility of armed conflict between the US, Russia and Canada for arctic oil.

Let's hope sincerely, that by the time they work out how to extract the oil from such a hostile location, the world will be running on renewables, and we'll only use the resource for making pharmaceuticals, plastics, and other applications where the carbon is nicely locked away.

The battle for the arctic begins - my pound is on a remake of Ice Station Zebra sometime soon...