Too blind to see the Arctic in distress

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Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times wrote about the shipping boom on Alaska's remote Arctic coast. (A new route beyond the Last Frontier, October 11, 2009)

Eyes and ears we may have, but we're not seeing or hearing. We're pouncing on the melting Arctic, not because it's such a vast manifestation of the consequences - the early consequences at that - of climate change, but because it's become a new land of opportunity for expansion of business as usual - for tourism, fishing, shipping, and resource extraction. "Trillions of tons of coal" may now be ripe for mining, for crying out loud!

We're insatiable vultures, feeding off the newly exposed bits of a dying Earth. Where are the international voices calling for the Arctic to be a global conservation area? Silent, or blind and deaf - national and corporate greed appears to have already won the newly accessible Arctic, with no discussion at all.