Working title: “Floe”
An American oil cartel knows perfectly well the Arctic Ice is melting away due to AGW. But they see it as a business opportunity, not a global climate catastrophe. Areas where vast oil and gas reserves are suspected will soon be accessible as the navigational season in high latitudes becomes longer and longer, and drilling operations in the Arctic Basin become cheaper and cheaper. Unfortunately, political conditions in the USA are not conducive to more drilling anywhere, and the Liberal US administration is trying to generate world interest in alternative fuels, renewable energy sources and conservation. The environmental movement is making it difficult to develop any new petrochemical resources.
In Russia, the government sees AGW as the fulfillment of a long held Russian dream: ice-free ports in the high Arctic, as well as the opportunity to open up vast stretches of the continental shelves, tundra and Taiga to mineral exploration and extraction. The Northern sea route is much more navigable than the Canadian Archipelago, and Russia has been developing her side for years now, putting in ports, military bases, aids to navigation, and other marine infrastructure.
Siberia could become an economic powerhouse. The area has been known to have enormous mineral and timber reserves, and with warmer weather, an even greater agricultural potential. Longer growing seasons, milder weather favorable to new settlements, roads and rail, all point to a coming Golden Age for Mother Russia. If the new global climate cripples traditional agricultural areas, say in North America, Russia could become the breadbasket and energy center for the whole world, and it would control the maritime routes that delivered this product to the planet. It wold become a polar centered world.
But Russia has neither the technical infrastructure, technical expertise or capital to invest heavily in Arctic resource development. But those American oil companies do. It is inevitable, a deal is struck, one financially beneficial to both the Russian oligarchy and the American oil plutocrats. But one obstacle remains: America is gearing up for a fossil fuel free future. It will become necessary for the anti-oil sentiment in the US to be curbed, and all this AGW activism damped down. And it will become essential for financial, economic and industrial ties with the US to be strengthened. Anti-Russian sentiment must be shut down. Sanctions put in place as political disincentives must be removed.
The Americans are having an election, and the projected winner is perceived as anti-Russian. The Russian Federation sees the opportunity to covertly intervene in the US elections and try to sway them their way. It is not unreasonable, the Russians have long been financing neofascist and nativist groups in Europe, knowing these groups are exploiting racist anti-immigrant sentiments in the Eurozone, which Russia has long attempted to divide and weaken, as well as to cripple NATO. They know how to deal with fascists. They have worked out and tested all the political and propaganda tactics and strategy. Plots within plots. The oil must flow.
Sure, the plot is a little far-fetched, no American businessmen or politicians would conspire with a hostile and unscrupulous foreign power to steal an election and threaten the global climate, would they?
Still, Frank Herbert would have loved it, don’t you think?