It’s not only global warming that is causing the Arctic to melt. It’s also the hot air and goofy pranks that the various combatants are employing to press their claims to the spoils of the ice war. Leading the pack at the moment is the smallest of the players, Denmark, which is using its colonial outpost, Greenland, which will become independent as soon as somebody or other begins drilling off its shore, to demonstrate what it has learned from the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. Apparently not a thing. Instead of sitting down with Canada and the US , even Russia, to work on a common plan that will benefit everyone, Denmark unloads 64 tourists on desolate football field-sized Hans Island, which is disputed by Canada and Denmark, who promptly build a cairn topped by a Danish flag. This is a fete that matches or even surpasses in farce the Russian planting of a flag at the bottom of the North Pole. Knut Rasmussen is rolling in his grave. Not at all comical is the Danish granting of deep-water drilling rights to a Scottish company (no, not BP) to search for oil or gas in an area near the Canadian border where a spill would have terrible consequences on the lives of the Inuit who live along the northern coast. Reports claim that Danish warships and small boats with Danish marines are keeping protesters away.
With friends like this who needs enemies, like the Russian bombers who last month had to be repelled by Canadian jet fighters from flying into Canadian air space. The one good thing that may come out of this is that US and Canadian scientists are actually working together on drawing up their mapping information and that it looks like a compromise will be possible in solving the US-Canadian border dispute in the Beaufort Sea. May the force of co-operation, in place of grotesque posturing, be with them.