Never give an environmental story even-handed treatment. At least, such seems to be the template of mainstream media. Everything is a disaster-- and if there is any hint of "profiteering", the subtext is that evil capitalists gleefully want the disaster to occur.
The latest example of this template can be found in "Profiteering from the Arctic Thaw", an article published on Friday, March 10, on the English-language version of Spiegel Online (the website of the German magazine der Spiegel). Here are some choice tidbits:
Global warming isn't necessarily the catastrophe it's made out to be -- at least not for multinational oil companies. Shrinking ice caps would reveal the Arctic's massive energy sources and shorten tanker routes by thousands of miles.
Ice-cap melting may be bad news for the polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, but it is great news for Pat Broe of Denver [who owns the port of Churchill in northern Canada; pictured above]. When the ice melts in the Arctic, the polar predators have to search for new hunting grounds or starve -- but Broe doesn't mind. He figures global warming will make him around $100 million a year.
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Via Arctic waterways, an oil tanker only needs a week to make it from the Russian port city Murmansk on the Barents Sea to the east coast of Canada. That's only half the time it takes from Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf to Galveston, Texas. And from Churchill to Chicago on the Hudson Bay Railway, it's not much further than from Texas to the Windy City. Tankers from Venezuela to Japan can even save some 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) by traveling over the pole.
Of course, with rising ocean temperatures comes an increased danger of icebergs, but at least the Arctic oil fields aren't in a region plagued by political instability. No suicide bombers, no kidnappings, no explosions. What risk there is up north, is nothing big oil companies aren't happy to take on.
The Arctic is a giant treasure trove for energy multinationals. A quarter of the world's oil and gas reserves are estimated to be hidden underneath its rapidly shrinking ice. At current market values they would be worth $1.5 to $2 trillion. There are even proven oil deposits at the North Pole itself.
Ok, now if der Spiegel had a different agenda, how might the article read?
"Silver Lining Emerges in Arctic Thaw"
Global warming isn't necessarily the catastrophe it's made out to be -- at least not for entrepreneurs willing to take risk. Shrinking ice caps would reveal the Arctic's massive energy sources and shorten tanker routes by thousands of miles.
Ice-cap melting may be bad news for the polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, but it has a silver lining for Pat Broe of Denver. When the ice melts in the Arctic, the polar predators have to search for new hunting grounds or starve -- but Broe (and the potentially hundreds to thousands of people he will employ) at least provide something to smile about. He owns the port of Churchill in northern Canada and figures global warming, which will make the port easily accessible to oil tankers, will make him around $100 million a year and enable him to employ hundreds and even thousands of presently-unemployed workers.
***
Via Arctic waterways, an oil tanker only needs a week to make it from the Russian port city Murmansk on the Barents Sea to the east coast of Canada. That's only half the time it takes from Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf to Galveston, Texas. And from Churchill to Chicago on the Hudson Bay Railway, it's not much further than from Texas to the Windy City. Tankers from Venezuela to Japan can even save some 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) by traveling over the pole.
Of course, with rising ocean temperatures comes an increased danger of icebergs, but at least the Arctic oil fields aren't in a region plagued by political instability. No suicide bombers, no kidnappings, no explosions. What risk there is up north, is nothing compared to the risks to world oil supplies from Middle East instability.
In addition to providing entrepreneurs like Broe with economic opportunity, the Arctic is a giant treasure trove for energy multinationals upon whom the industrialized world depends for fuel. A quarter of the world's oil and gas reserves are estimated to be hidden underneath its rapidly shrinking ice. At current market values they would be worth $1.5 to $2 trillion. There are even proven oil deposits at the North Pole itself.
Sort of puts a different spin on things, doesn't it? This is not to claim that the latter spin is necessarily better than the former spin-that's a matter of subjective judgment, of course. The point is that the mainstream media has a spin-- something, sad to say, that many readers don't even recognize.
The good news is that, with the advent of, among other things, the Internet, an alternative media (in which Blogs like this play a role) has taken shape to point out the mainstream media's bias. A classic example of why such point needs to be made is found in the der Spiegel article discussed above.
