The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoreline erosion from pounding by the waves and storms of the open ocean. The Alaskan village of Shishmaref has lost this battle and will need to be relocated farther inland. But even in coastal towns, nearly everyone I meet bristles at the notion of being cast as a hapless climate-change refugee.
    Even as they express frustration at having their lives damaged by people living thousands of miles away—and think it only fair that those damages be repatriated—they also point to their long history of adaptation and resilience in one of the world’s most extreme environments. They are not sitting around idly in despair, or gazing forlornly out at the unfamiliar sea. They are buying boats, and organizing workshops, and setting about catching the fat salmon that are increasingly moving into their seas.
    There is more to this story than climate change. Later, we will discuss some profound demographic, political, and economic trends now under way that promise to be just as important to northerners’ lives in the coming decades.

Dream On
    So by 2050 will global trade flows be pouring through the Arctic Ocean, as they do today through the Suez and Panama canals?
    Impossible. Those operate 365 days per year with no ice whatsoever. At best the Arctic Ocean will become ice-free for a few days to a few weeks in summer and even then, there is no such thing as a truly “ice-free” Arctic Ocean. From autumn through spring, there will be expanding first-year ice cover, slowing ships down even with icebreaker escort. In summer, there will always be lingering bits of sea ice floating around, as well as thick icebergs calved from land-based glaciers into the sea (a glacier iceberg sank the Titanic, not sea ice). The Arctic Ocean will always freeze in winter—or at least we’d better hope so. If it doesn’t, that means our planet has become 40°F hotter and a lifeless scorched rock. Superimposed over all of this is ever-present natural variability, making the start and end dates of a part-time shipping season impossible to know with certitude.
    The global maritime industry cares about many other things besides geographic shipping distance. It also cares about shipping time, cost, and reliability. To be sure, routes are shorter across the Arctic Ocean, but the travel speeds, owing to the danger of ice, are lower. 368 If the region’s emerging regulatory framework demands that only polar-class ships be allowed in, then those vessels will cost considerably more than ordinary single-hulled ships. And how attractive will a short, unpredictable shipping season really be for today’s tightly scheduled global supply chains? What about the relative lack of emergency and port services, environmental liability for oil spills, or fees charged by Russia and Canada should they reaffirm their positions that the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route are not international straits? 369 Might the Suez and Panama canals lower their prices in response to the new competition? There are many other factors controlling the profitability of transnational shipping lanes besides a shorter geographic route, available for an uncertain few weeks to a few months out of the year.
    In imagining 2050, I do see many thousands of boats in the Arctic, but not humming through global trade routes as dreamed of in the fifteenth and early twenty-first centuries. Doubtless some international trade will be diverted through the region as the summer sea-ice retreats northward. It is happening now through the Aleutian Islands, Murmansk, Kirkenes, and Churchill. But few of the vessels I envision are giant container ships carrying goods between East and West. 370 The thousands of ships I see are smaller, with diverse shapes, sizes, and functions. They are not using the Arctic as a shortcut from point A in the East to point B in the West. Instead, they are buzzing all around the Arctic itself.
    Look again at the maps of what actually happened in 2004. The action was not through