Why can't we free our doubtful minds and melt our cold, cold war?

You might think that confronting the many calamities apparently proffered by our globally warmed future might provide the nations of the world with a beatific opportunity for cooperation and consultation. Instead the melting of the great white north apparently has only encouraged these not-so-wiseguys to find new ways to heat up the Cold War as an Oklahoma land rush begins to claim the natural gas and oil resources slowly being revealed by melting ice up north. And this one is going to be the coldest of wars as global powers scramble to scratch a chilly toehold in the previously frigidly inhospitable Arctic.

The Russians recently staked their claim during a "research" mission that had about as much to do with real science as Japanese whale-eating experiments. But the Canadians, Americans, Danes, and a motley crew of other wealthy Westerners are worried enough to start building bigger and better-armed ice breakers to make sure that oil gets "fairly" distributed to their national refineries. About the only folks left out are the Inuit people who might actually have a legitimate claim on these icy resources. Don't Eskimoes have 200 words for avarice?

One can only hope really cooler heads prevail before northern politicians get much more hot and bothered by this latest resource rush. Here's Scott Borgerson in the NY Times offering a suggestion on a reasonable way out that is regrettably so rational it is doomed to be ignored.