Bush Administration and Oil Companies Want Arctic Meltdown

by
Wayne Madsen

[Petroleum elites are benefiting from oil scarcity, because it raises
prices. But they also fear oil scarcity, because it raises costs and
eventually makes business impossible. And since the oil industry is also
impeding the large-scale development of alternatives while continuing to
encourage rampant consumption, scarcity of fossil fuels may eventually kill
them. They don't seem to mind. Maybe the pursuit of world-destroying
policies is some kind of compensation for their own mortality --- you know,
if I can't live forever, I think I'll take the rest of you down with me.
Such a policy is neither government nor business; it's the melodrama of a
big dysfunctional family whose patriarchs are finally going crazy - just
when their power is at its height.

Here's another metaphor: the Petro-Administration of Cheney-Rice-Bush is
like a psychotic who tries to play chess: indifferent to the rules, he
simply steals the opponent's king off the board, claims victory, and burns
the whole chess-set in the fireplace.

In the following shocker by Wayne Madsen, we learn that there are people
high up in Washington who regard the apocalyptic melting of the polar ice
caps as a good thing. Why? It will clear new shipping lanes for the
exploitation of Arctic oil and gas.

About six years ago I published an essay in the Massachusetts Review called
"Scarcity and Compensation in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick." I learned that
the American whaling industry did not end because petroleum replaced whale
oil; whaling stopped because the animals had been "harvested" almost to
extinction, and the only place left to catch them was in the perilous ice
floes of the Arctic Ocean. In 1873 thirty-three out of forty whaling ships
cruising in the Arctic were destroyed by ice. 1

Today the American oil industry finds itself back up in the Arctic, chasing
petroleum (not whale blubber). But this time, pollutants from its own
product have warmed the globe, and instead of destroying our ships, the ice
is just melting out of the way! What a wonderful way to settle an old score.
- JAH]

November 11, 2004 0900 PDT (FTW) -- Washington, DC. Speaking off the record,
scientists studying the current warming of the Arctic region intimated that
some officials in the Bush administration saw the loss of Arctic ice and the
resultant opening of sea channels such as the Northwest Passage of Canada as
a good thing for the exploration and retrieval of oil and natural gas from
the endangered region.

Over 300 international scientists have just completed an extensive 1200-page
report documenting their exhaustive 4-year Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
study on the rapid warming of the Arctic. The study was commissioned by the
Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee at a
ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Point Barrow, Alaska in 2000.
On November 8, the scientists released a 144-page summary of their findings
at a press conference in Washington, DC.

As if out of a scene from the Roland Emmerich's climate disaster movie, "The
Day After Tomorrow," the U.S. State Department is criticizing the
international panel's call to slow down Arctic warming by curbing greenhouse
emissions into the atmosphere. The State Department, according to some
scientists, is echoing the positions of oil companies and
anti-environmentalist pressure groups like the Cato Institute and Heritage
Foundation, in dismissing the recent report on Arctic warming. In fact,
President Bush has repeatedly referred to previous scientific studies
pointing to the effects of global warming as "silly science" based on "fuzzy
math."