This is the second in a two-part series about Arctic exploration in the 1970s and 1980s. Read part one, which describes Alaska’s oil rush, here. By Frank Geisel In the late 1970s, a projection of an oil boom offshore Alaska pointed toward unprecedented commercial marine traffic. Envisioned fleets of massive icebreaking tankers would transit to

By Frank Geisel In an era of big growth (commonly observed as massive corporate exploitation of natural resources without much thought about the intended or unintended consequences), decisions and gambles were made based on the available data and the risk tolerance of high-rollers in the oil and gas industry. Today, we have “big data” and

By Erica Dingman In a very broad sense the Arctic is predictably unpredictable. Temperatures in Anchorage, Alaska rose to a high of 86 F in June 2015 on a day with a historical average of 65 F. And the highly cited U.S. Geological Survey oil and gas report states that the Arctic region accounts for

By Lou Del Bello Tikigaq is one of the longest continuously inhabited communities on the North American continent. Its people are so ancient that their local language has a word for the woolly mammoth, which shared their small peninsula in northwestern Alaska before it went extinct over 11,000 years ago. In the not-so-distant future, some

By Laurel Jarombek President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Alaska may be historic in that he is the first sitting president to make a trip to the Arctic Circle, but whether his words and actions there will change the course of history is far less certain. His visit coincided with the Conference on Global Leadership

By Heather Nicol In the spring of 2015, the United States assumed chairmanship of the Arctic Council for a two-year term. The chair was handed over by Canada, who in turn had assumed it from the Swedish chairmanship in 2013. Canada’s chairmanship had been quite different from that of its Swedish predecessor, focusing its efforts

This article was originally published by Cryopolitics. By Mia Bennett At the Arctic Council ministerial in Iqaluit, Canada on April 25, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waxed poetic about the prospects for clean energy in the Arctic. He remarked: My friends, clean energy is the solution to climate change. If we got the whole

By Erica Dingman “Climate change is a key pillar of the United States chairmanship program just as it is, in fact, a key part of the United States foreign policy writ large today.” —John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, April 24, 2015 Tackling the causes of climate change leading to the unprecedented melting of the

By Heather Exner-Pirot The United States will assume the chairmanship of the Arctic Council this coming April for a two-year term. In the run-up to this transition, the Obama Administration has been making significant efforts to beef up its Arctic policies and objectives. It launched a new National Strategy for the Arctic Region in May

By Michael Byers How many Americans realize that one of their country’s most pristine maritime areas is threatened by the unregulated passage of more than 5,000 tankers and cargo ships each year? Since the Earth is a sphere, the shortest shipping route from the Northwest United States and Western Canada to China, Japan, and South