The US and Canada Are Officially Preparing for the Inevitable Oil Spills in the Arctic

For the two North American governments that reside in the Arctic, the prospect of an oil spill in the Bering Strait is no longer a possibility, but an inevitability. The US and Canada coast guards just orchestrated the very first joint offshore oil spill response drill in the famed ice-strewn passage—a passage that was, just a few years ago, so ice-strewn as to prove unnavigable.

But, as global warming melts the remnants of the ice bridge that was once thick enough to allow the earliest North Americans walk across it on foot, oil giants and shipping concerns are licking their chops at the promise of newly accessible oil reserves and a faster, more efficient transcontinental route. That's because climate change is accelerating at such a rate that the so-called Northwest Passage may be ice-free in under 40 years.

As a result, Russia is upping the shipping traffic through its Northern Sea Route—according to the AP, it granted passage to 204 vessels last year.

That route has ships cruise through the Bering Strait and across the northern reaches of Siberia; until recently, it's been used very sparingly, for the obvious reasons, and for just two months of every year.

But now, scores of oil-filled vessels are now pouring the Bering Strait—a passage long considered one of the most treacherous out there—and more are granted approval every year.

As such, the US and Canada are increasingly concerned about having to clean up a major spill from a Russia-bound vessel in one of the hardest-to-navigate bodies of water on the planet. So they staged a cleanup response trial last month—and let's just say it didn't go so smoothly.

"A Coast Guard skimming system was successfully deployed from a Canadian vessel participating in the drill, but bad weather also prevented deployment of a large ship emergency towing system provided by the state of Alaska," Coast Guard spokesman Kip Wadlow told the Alaska Journal of Commerce.

So, in the event of an actual spill they would've got some skimming done, but wouldn't have managed to remove the oil-spewing tanker from the stormy seas. Which isn't a good sign.

Especially because it's not just Russia that's aiming to traffic the Bering strait and other dangerous Arctic seas—Shell famously had a disaster-prone stint in its exploratory Arctic oil hunt last year, and BP, Rosneft, and a number of other oil giants are poised to start forging into the icy north.

And that's just the beginning. With the ice clearing, and one of the planet's most notorious and treacherous passages becoming a good deal friendlier, a wide swath of companies are already beginning to test those melted-glacier-strewn waters. Oil-seekers will be first, as inland reserves dwindle and the commodity grows ever more valuable. But shipping vessels will follow suit. Here's an estimation from the National Academy of Sciences of how shipping lanes may change between now and 2050:

To anyone but logistics fanatics, that map renders a beyond-depressing prognostication: one of the iciest places on the planet will be all clear for boating, likely within your lifetime.

As the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explained in April, "For scientists studying summer sea ice in the Arctic, it’s not a question of 'if' there will be nearly ice-free summers, but 'when.'" And that question has an equally alarming answer, according to two climatologists behind the report: "before 2050 and possibly within the next decade or two."

In fact, as we speak, a four-man crew is maneuvering a rowboat through the passage. Yes, a rowboat. As far as I know, that hasn't been possible at any point throughout the whole of human history.

But this is the Bering Strait in our 400 ppm world: the glaciers and ice are receding, and the rowboats and oil lanes are floating in.