The recent discoveries of natural resources in the arctic have set the entire world on alert. Every nation with a body of land that borders the arctic is submitting some sort of claim on this underwater portion of continental rock shelf. Russia contends that the Kremlin has the most substantial claim to this resource rich strip of continent. This is due to the fact that Siberia and the Russian mainland are both part of the same continental shelf that also goes through the contested region of arctic land.

The only reason this arctic shelf is accessible now is because of global warming. The climate and average temperature in the arctic is increasing. Therefore, areas of the arctic that were unreachable or inconceivable to run large underwater mining operations in, are now accessible by modern equipment. It would still be very expensive to extract the resources, but with enough infrastructure set into place, the price of extraction would drop.

It is extremely ironic that global warming (caused by the extraction and usage of natural resources) has allowed for the possible extraction and usage of approximately 25% of the world’s natural resources. In a sense, this is a bit like feeding cow brains to other cows and then being surprised when the cows get mad cow disease. If we use up all 25% of these natural resources, it might be hard to gauge the increase in global warming trends.