He is not known for his battle prowess but rather for a book entitled On War which he described as “nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.” Von Clausewitz also wrote:

“War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.”

and,

“War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce.”

In the early 19th century the wars von Clausewitz participated in were largely clashes of armies and navies. Seldom were entire nations disrupted with thousands of bystanders killed as collateral damage.

It wasn’t until the American Civil War fought between 1861 and 1865 that the world witnessed the nearest thing to total war. That conflict forewarned us about a future of conflagrations we would see unfold in the 20th century where tens of millions of civilians became victims, genocide became an instrument of some governments’ policies, and cities and entire countries were razed to the ground. The end of the Second World War led to MAD, mutually assured destruction because of the invention of the atomic bomb.

In the 20th century, post-colonial wars were fought from Southeast Asia to Africa. Some of these became proxy wars between the two Cold War antagonists, the Western bloc led by the United States, and the Eastern led by Russia and China. We are still living with the seismic geopolitical fault lines of the 20th century exposed and in a world reconciling its European colonial past. Antagonisms continue to divide East and West, Global North and Global South, and Developed and Developing Worlds.

Are the conflicts of the 21st-century policy by other means? Before we answer that question we should note that 21st-century conflicts come in two flavours.

The first is less driven by bullets and bombs than by geoeconomics. These conflicts and confrontations reflect global rivalries between East and West, North and South, Developed and Developing and manifest themselves as trade blocs, tariffs, sanctions and occasional sabre-rattling. The expression of geoeconomic rivalry becomes visible every year at the opening of The United Nations when political leaders make their speeches in front of the General Assembly.

The second is conflicts we read about in today’s newspaper headlines. These are post-colonial wars and include:

• The ongoing wars of post-colonial Africa enveloping the Sahel region and Congo: From Mali to Somalia, wars of ideology and ethnicity fuelled by colonial boundaries that never made sense are spreading. Mali and Burkina Faso face rebel forces that are religious and ideological. In Sudan, a civil war has entered its second year. Millions have been killed and displaced. In The Congo, invading armies from neighbouring countries are vying to control the country’s rich resources and causing massive population displacement.
• The Russian-Ukraine war is a different kind of post-colonial confrontation: The Soviet Union and Imperial Russia, and before that Lithuania and Poland exerted a hold on Ukraine for almost a thousand years. The break up of the Soviet Union, however, created an opportunity for Ukrainians to declare their independence. Russia’s authoritarian regime seeks to dominate the new nation to stop it from realigning itself with Europe.
• The Israel-Hamas war is the ultimate expression of colonial policy failure: When Great Britain’s government during World War One issued the Balfour Declaration, promising a homeland for Jews in Palestine, it was still a province of the Ottoman Empire at the time. After the war, Britain was given authority over Palestine mandated by The League of Nations. Britain instituted the Declaration as a policy while at the same time providing assurances to native resident Palestinians that their rights would be recognized. The Second World War led to The Holocaust where Europe’s Jews were nearly exterminated. Post-war Palestine became a haven for Europe’s Jewish survivors. Confrontation was inevitable. Jews across the Arab World were driven from their homes with the announcement of the new Jewish state of Israel in Palestine. Equally millions of Palestinians who found themselves on the losing side of several wars fought between Israel and its Arab neighbours, lost their homes and continue to be casualties of war and occupation. The Hamas attack in October 2023 and the Israeli response have resonated across the entire Middle East and elsewhere adding fuel to overriding global geoeconomic conflicts.

These three examples described above are not the only conflicts of this century, and von Clausewitz’s invocation of war as policy by other means continues to show its ineffectiveness. Also, I’m uncertain that geoeconomic conflicts can remain nonviolent as we face the uncertainty of climate change.

Why do I say this? Climate change is altering the political and economic landscape, changing weather, causing food and freshwater scarcity, seeing ocean levels inundate island nations, and fuelling fights for increasingly scarce resources. Does this lead to a return to world wars fought for water, food, energy and other resources? Doesn’t that describe Germany and Japan’s wars of the 20th century?

Von Clausewitz saw war as policy, a means to resolve what diplomacy had failed to achieve. Hitler and the Nazis, and the militarist leadership in Japan carried out the von Clausewitz agenda.

In today’s geopolitical conflicts, however, wars have been proven to be policy failures. Wherever and whenever they are unleashed they feed greater conflagrations, like watching the forestry management policy of controlled burns go awry, turning into wildfires that consume entire forests leaving nothing for the initiator or victims.

This region of the planet is currently dealing with the latest El Niño traversing the mid-Pacific Ocean which weakens prevailing trade winds, moves warmer water to the east and clouds to the west causing changes in precipitation and sea levels. Many in the group are threatened by drought when El Niño events occur. Add atmospheric warming from greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) produced elsewhere and the region’s environmental challenges start to add up. Most members of the forum, Australia and New Zealand being the outliers, are seeking the help of richer countries to finance mitigation and adaptation, in addition to receiving loss and damage compensation promised at the time of the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Rising sea levels pose a particular challenge to many of the Pacific island nations. The Pacific is rising faster than other oceans. The rate amounts to 4 millimetres (0.157 inches) annually compared to 3.4 being the average globally. That doesn’t sound like a lot but it translates to 92 millimetres (3.62 inches) since the turn of the 21st century.

Here are a few examples:

• Kiribati, is a nation of 33 small island atolls with a little over 2 metres (6.5 feet) of clearance between current altitude and sea levels. Every high tide and Pacific storm erodes more of the nation away.
• The Solomon Islands include 992 distinct islands and atolls. of which 5 have disappeared since 1947 as Pacific Ocean levels climb and six more have seen erosion remove 20% of their land areas.
• The 274 Torres Strait Islands that lie between Australia and New Guinea have watched rising sea levels invade freshwater aquifers and cause coastal erosion.
• The five Carteret Islands that are part of Papua New Guinea lie at or near sea level. The highest point of land stands 1.5 metres (5 feet) above the encroaching waters of the Pacific Ocean. The inhabitants are already migrating as the waters rise.
• The 1,225 Marshall Islands spread over 29 coral atolls with most less than 2.1 metres (7 feet) above sea level are disappearing at an alarming rate.
• And then there is Tuvalu whose atolls and islands on average stand just under 2 metres (6.5 feet) above sea level. The rising Pacific poses an immediate threat to its citizens who have been putting up a fight building up dunes and coral debris that washes ashore to hold back the ocean.

So what will happen as our warming planet and rising oceans devour these nations? The migration of their inhabitants is inevitable. Will they then cease to be citizens of their respective nations?

Tuvalu has been looking at the nature of its continued existence after the Pacific wipes it out. Current international law defines a nation as having a physical presence and a permanent population. But Tuvalu wants that definition to change by creating a digital version of itself. The digital Tuvalu would preserve its cultural heritage and provide continuing services to its citizens regardless of where they end up.

Tuvalu also wants its patch of the Pacific Ocean to remain an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) even when the islands are no longer there. EEZs were established by the United Nations Law of the Sea, agreed to in 1982. The EEZ gives a nation sovereign rights to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage a physical area of the ocean from below its seabed to the waters above. The current definition of EEZ is measured from a nation’s shoreline to a distance of 321 kilometres (200 miles). But what happens when there no longer is a shoreline from which to measure? Tuvalu is claiming that the EEZ should survive its physical disappearance which means an area of the Pacific Ocean amounting to almost 750,000 square kilometres (almost 290,000 square miles) can remain a source of income for the diaspora. The tuna industry has been a mainstay of the island nation’s economy. worth billions of dollars annually, the earnings from it would continue to provide Tuvalu citizens with healthcare, pensions and other government services regardless of where they end up living.

I grew up at the dawn of nuclear warfare and The Cold War, the latter an ideological conflict between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its satellites. I also was growing up when European colonialism crumbled sometimes peacefully, but often through armed conflict.

The more recent conflicts have included wars on terrorism with the fallout from the 9/11 attacks in the United States leading to the invasions by America and its allies into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

In the 20th century, wars killed more than 160 million. The tally for the 21st century is estimated to be another 20 million to date. But both of these numbers are a significant undercount when you consider the collateral deaths that accompany human conflicts.

The wars of the 20th century featured technological innovation and the restructuring of national economies focused on the mass production of weapons. Two of these wars were global lasting many years. The losers of these 20th-century conflicts saw the emergence of social upheaval, civil war and regime change. A list of 38 of the most notable of these conflicts follows:

1. The Boer War in South Africa, 1899–1902
2. World War One, 1914–1918
3. Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917 – 1922
4. The Irish War of Independence and Civil War, 1919-1923
5. The Turkish War of Independence, 1919 – 1923
6. The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria, 1931
7. Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935 – 1936
8. The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
9. The Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939
10. The Japanese-China War, 1937 – 1945
11. World War 2 in Europe, 1939 – 1945
12. World War 2 in the Pacific, 1941 – 1945
13. The Palestine Conflict, 1944 -1948
14. The Cold War, 1945 – 1991
15. The Chinese Civil War, 1945 – 1949
16. The Partition of India War, 1947
17. Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948 – 1949
18. The British-Malay War, 1948 – 1960
19. The Korean War – 1950 – 1953
20. The Kenyan Mau Mau Rebellion, 1952 – 1960
21. The Algerian War of Independence, 1954 – 1962
22. The Vietnam War, 1955 – 1975
23. The Suez Crisis, 1956
24. The Eritrean War of Independence, 1961 – 1991
25. The War of Malay, Brunei and Indonesian Independence, 1962 – 1966
26. The Six-Day War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, 1967
27. The Nigerian Civil War, 1967 – 1970
28. The Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 – 1998
29. The Yom Kippur War, Israel, Egypt and Syria, 1973
30. The Ogaden Ethiopian-Somali War, 1977 – 1978
31. The Argentine-Falkland Islands War, 1982
32. The Kuwait-Iraq Gulf War, 1990 – 1991
33. Sierra Leone Civil War, 1991–2002
34. The Yugoslav Wars – Slovenia, 1991, Croatia, 1991 – 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina – 1992 – 1995, Kosovo, 1998 – 1999
35. The Somali Civil War, 1992 – ongoing
36. The Rwandan Genocide, 1994
37. The Congo Civil War, 1997 – 1999
38. The Eritrean – Ethiopian War, 1998 – 2000

The legacy of the 20th century has carried on into the 21st. That legacy includes nuclear, planet-killing weapons, ballistic missiles and more. A growing number of militaries have these capabilities in their armaments. And yet there are even more changes to come as technology alters the battlefields in the 21st century.

So what is changing? Cyberwarfare has opened up an entirely new theatre of war taking it to the Internet, making data networks, energy, and civil infrastructure vulnerable to disruptions. Wars for the minds of people, today, include mass dissemination of misinformation using social media and search engines.

Warfare may soon extend to near-Earth space. Anti-satellite weapons have been tested by Russia and China. Others will soon do the same.

Finally, human warfare is likely to be supplemented by machine-to-machine conflicts as remote-guided and autonomous weapon systems, artificial intelligence, and robotics get deployed on 21st-century future battlefields. The age of killer robots is near, something in the past confined to science fiction novels. That’s why, since 2018, the United Nations has been trying to organize an agreement among nations to draft a treaty banning the use of anti-personnel autonomous weapons in conflicts. How effective have UN bans been in deterring war? Unfortunately, not very.

A final note. Have you heard of the Mad Scientist Initiative? Formed by TRADOC, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command in the last decade, among its many pursuits were surrounding human soldiers with better technology that included enhancing combatant protection and awareness using Iron Man armour and neural-link implants, the latter, to create human-computer interfaces. Welcome to a real 6-million-dollar man.

If this subject interests you, I recommend you read a paper entitled, “Technology, war and the state: past, present and future,” published in the journal, International Affairs.

“Without a healthy ocean we put marine life, coastal livelihoods, and global food stability at grave risk.” – Trevor Jones, Only One

“A High Seas Treaty is imperative to meet the collective commitment to conserve 30% of the Earth’s ocean this side of 2030” – Jennifer Morris, CEO of The Nature Conservancy

In 2017, the members of the General Assembly of the United Nations convened to review the existing Convention on the Law of Sea with the idea to look at providing protection for marine biodiversity and ocean waters beyond marine national government boundaries and exclusive economic zones. Subsequently, there have been meetings at the United Nations to work through outstanding issues with the last in August 2022. A revised Intergovernmental conference is now underway and expected to last two weeks to complete a new High Seas Treaty.

The world’s oceans and seas cover more than 70% of the planet’s surface. The ocean contains 1.35 billion cubic kilometres (324 million cubic miles) of water representing 97% of all the water on the planet. The ocean is where life on Earth first came from and is what makes the continuation of life on this planet possible.

A portion of the ocean lies within the jurisdictions of nation-states. In these locales, countries establish the rules regarding the exploitation of ocean resources from below the seabed, through the entire vertical water column, to the surface as above. But beyond these jurisdictions is a collective commons where national laws bear no weight. That, however, hasn’t stopped countries, fishers, fossil fuel companies and even mining ventures from staking claims. In this arena, a mere 1.2% is currently protected from those looking to exploit what the ocean has to give.

A new treaty is needed to address ocean commons by offering game-changing protection and putting in place stronger assessment measures to manage human activities. At the recent COP15 convention held in Montreal, Canada, attendees agreed to conserve and manage by 2030, 30% of coastal and marine areas to protect ocean biodiversity. Included in the commitments were assurances to implement sustainable practices around the harvesting of wild marine species, and preventing overexploitation.

So in convening this week at the United Nations in New York, the pressure is on member nations to ensure that a revised Convention is agreed upon and that is ambitious enough to result in a healthy ocean rather than a degraded one.

Key issues still to be addressed include:

• Measures to ensure the new treaty can deliver effective new marine protected areas rather than “paper parks.”
• Safeguards to avoid harm from human activities affecting the high seas and the deep seabed.
• Creation of a strong institutional framework for implementation and compliance.
• Rules are needed to stop any one country from blocking collective progress.
• The addressing of critical financial and equity issues for capacity building and sharing of the benefits to be accrued from marine genetic resources.

Sara Bevis from the High Seas Alliance described last year’s unfinished business as coming frustratingly close to getting the treaty completed. She notes in a United Nations press release issued today, “With the accelerating climate and biodiversity crises, time is not a luxury we have to put ocean health back on track…This time round we need to seize the moment and get an ambitious treaty over the finish line, so we can roll up our sleeves and work on the crucial tasks of getting the treaty ratified and implemented.”

One issue not mentioned in the press release is the need to address ocean acidification correlated to human activity increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The implications on marine biodiversity of an increasingly acidic ocean impact coral reefs, all types of crustacea and shellfish, and zooplankton.

Let’s hope that these next two weeks don’t go the way of so many international conventions and meetings these days with more hot air than promises kept and delivered. Humanity owes it to all the creatures great and small on the planet to get this done.

This is a relatively new idea for places like Europe and the United States. But for Global South countries, parametric insurance policies resonate. A policy can provide a farmer with crop coverage at a pre-determined price per hectare in case of loss or damage arising from extreme weather events.

The industry today is producing parametric policies not just for individuals but for governments where coverage includes damage payments caused to coastal areas and offshore reefs from hurricanes based on storm category thresholds exceeding agreed levels. The payments from these policies are immediate and can be used for restoration and recovery efforts.

Parametric insurance has been around for about two decades. In Africa, the offering, however, is recent. The World Economic Forum notes that parametric policies work well there because rather than indemnifying actual losses provide predetermined payouts. the advantages include claims getting settled quickly, and policies being customizable and scalable to specific circumstances.

Nidia Martinez, Director of Climate Risk Analytics at WTW, an insurance broker and consultancy, recently told the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine the following about the industry’s challenges in creating new types of insurance:

“One of the biggest challenges is designing insurance products that can be profitably offered by the private sector against potentially catastrophic risks …offered at a price point that people can afford and are willing to pay…that’s a real challenge, especially because we know that the people who need the financial protection of insurance the most are the least able to afford it.”

This is particularly true for the national governments of the Global South. Parametric insurance policies work well in this part of the world because these countries don’t have the deep pockets to pay for climate catastrophes. Policies that use metrics based on historical data to determine index thresholds make climate risk manageable for both the insured and insurer. If thresholds are exceeded payments to the insured are automatic.

To a degree, this removes the burden of climate risk for these national governments and makes extreme weather events and the response to them more manageable. At the same time, for the policy providers, it gives them an opportunity to plan for contingencies should a disaster occur making sure that money can be directed to areas most affected in a timely manner. This pre-approved planning saves lives and speeds up recovery.

It is also an obligatory response by the richer nations of the Global North to accept a majority share and responsibility for climate change which is now causing the atmosphere to warm and seas to rise, inflicting the most damage on those with the least resources and finances to mitigate and adapt. The Industrial Revolution of the last century-and-a-half began in the Global North. The countries on this half of the planet, as a result, have produced most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions we all are now trying to reduce and reverse.

The immediate collateral damage is seen in places like Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific Ocean island nations. Some of the latter are likely to vanish underwater in future decades. Sea level rise will mean most of their citizens will find refuge elsewhere.

For other nations of the Global South, there are:

• Extreme weather events such as droughts (Africa and Central America), floods (Pakistan and Kenya), heat events (India and Iran) and more.
• Vector-borne diseases in more temperate and higher elevation zones.
• Reductions in the nutritional value of crops from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Economists and Politicians Need to Find Common Ground

To economists, tackling climate change now rather than later makes sense. It is politicians who have been the laggards. Why do the former understand and why do the latter fail to act? Because the former see the big picture beyond the four-year election cycle that motivates so many politicians in the Global North.

For economists, it makes sense to tackle climate change immediately because spending money to transition away from fossil fuels now is cheaper than doing it in the future. The more our atmosphere warms, the more damage we need to undo and at increasingly higher costs.

Investing now on a massive scale means we replace the technologies and processes that pollute the air and raise its temperature. That means there is less need to remediate in the future, and less damage to undo. It also means we can create and invent new solutions that add economic value.

What kind of investment is needed by governments and the private sector to do the job?

The Economist report states public sector annual net-zero investments need to be between 0.05% and 0.45% of GDP. That’s a doable number for governments to take action to change processes and lifestyles within their countries. Sometimes the initial cost of a program is small. For example, putting a price on carbon as instituted in Canada has not required a big upfront investment. It uses a carrot (rebates) and stick (consumption tax) to influence consumer behaviour to:

• Get out of cars that use internal combustion engines and replace the means of transportation using alternatives like mass transit, electric vehicles, bicycles or walking.
• Install electric heat pumps to replace gas-fired furnaces where people live and work, to replace windows and insulation to reduce emissions and increase climate resilience.

Grants, subsidies and low to zero-interest loans offered by governments are a path being followed by Canada, the U.S., Australia (a Global North country located in the south), the United Kingdom, and the European Union. The recently passed U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is a good example where hundreds of billions of dollars in programs are available to carbon-emitting industries, businesses and consumers to use government money to find, purchase or develop greener solutions.

The Learning and Implementation Curves Are Steep

There is no doubt that we are on a rapid learning curve in the 2020s to speed up the green transition so that we don’t bankrupt our future by spending increasing amounts of money in the 2030s, 40s and 50s to undo the damage we have wrought.

The sense of urgency to get started now has been present at COP27. In the final draft, it states “that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at the temperature increase of 1.5 Celsius compared with 2 Celsius and resolves to pursue further efforts to limit the temperature increase.” 

The economic, social and environmental cost of that 0.5 Celsius difference measures in tens of trillions of dollars in mitigation and adaptation expenses annually compared to the conclusions coming from COP27 which state the current need to invest 4 trillion annually in renewable energy projects between now and 2030, and $4 to 6 trillion per year to transform the world to a low-carbon economy.

Ignoring the investments to be made now will come with not only an enormous increase in cost but also will mean:

• Dramatic increases in the numbers of climate-change refugees (this has already started).
• The greater likelihood of wars between and within countries in fights over diminishing resources, food and freshwater insecurity.
• An increase in extreme weather, heat events and vector-borne diseases.
• And accelerated sea level rise compromising the majority of places where humans live today, on or near coastlines.

As for the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage agreement which was a major stumbling block causing COP27 to extend its meeting beyond the Friday closing date, all 200 nations (only 100 heads of government showed up) agreed to launch operations beginning next year with funding flows starting after the next COP meeting.

What remains missing is the $100 billion annual fund pledged in 2015 in the Paris Climate Agreement to help countries with limited resources develop mitigation and adaptation programs and projects. Instead, money is coming in drips and drabs. At this COP a number of Global North governments pledged an immediate $230 million to an adaptation fund, a far cry from the dollars needed but still better than nothing.

Canada has an escalating price on carbon pollution and this week announced new tax credits to polluting industries to match those in the IRA. At the same time, Canada is vested in an oil pipeline to increase the capacity of oil sands operators to ship their products offshore and to the U.S.

Then there is Australia with the Labor Party now in power. It has reversed policies from the previous Liberal Party governments and committed to carbon emission reductions in 2030 by 43% compared to 2005 levels. At the same time, it is continuing to back natural gas projects, pipeline development and new coal mines.

All three governments are preaching from the same hymnal. They remain committed to fossil fuels because without them the impact on their countries’ current and near-future economies would be devastating. Their strategies emphasize an orderly transition with predictable outcomes that ensure the democratic nations of the world will be able to buy “democratic” oil, gas and coal. And at home, emission reductions would make each of their countries reduce emissions to achieve interim and 2050 net-zero targets.

None mention that the oil, gas, and coal that they export will end up being burned by their customers. The emissions and their contribution to global warming will not be coming from them.

Does this sound like greenwashing?

Originally, greenwashing was something businesses did to mislead investors and the public about their environmental credentials. But it sounds to me like we can add democratic governments to that definition. Expect more of it as COP27 begins next week in Egypt.

Holding this environmental gab session on the continent of Africa, the canary in the climate change coal mine should be an interesting affair. The promises of the Paris Climate Agreement to provide US $100 billion annually to Global South countries to help mitigate and adapt to climate change has yet to be fulfilled. And Africa more than any other continent is suffering the most because the money isn’t flowing, the projects to mitigate and adapt cannot get going, and the climate is changing.

Just look at Kenya in the last couple of years. The northern half of the country has hardly seen a drop of rain while the southern half is inundated with flooding. Or take Somalia which has experienced three years in a row of little to no rain. That’s three years of crop failures contributing to further political destabilization.

Our atmosphere is a shared commons. It doesn’t matter where emissions are produced. Political boundaries don’t stop greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming doesn’t stop at borders.

If you can encase your country in a glass bubble then you might be on to something. But you can’t. And although we will hear about the progress being made by the United States, Canada and Australia when their representatives speak at COP27, they are all acting like they are already living under glass bubbles.

In Part Two we turn to other Arctic countries and their policies and plans for dealing with CH4 and permafrost.

Consider this. In 2019, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) declared that melting permafrost was one of the top 10 emerging environmental threats to humanity and the planet.

The map featured at the top of Part One tells you why. Southern permafrost boundaries were seen to be moving poleward decade by decade over the 20th and into the 21st century. Projections for 2050 and 2070 showed just how much of the permafrost was likely to melt.

What this means for CH4 and the other released hazards from previously frozen soils as identified in Part One, is that our climate change narrative will change despite efforts to contain industrial-sourced CH4 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

A UNEP-supported rapid response study in 2020 that looked at Canada’s Western Arctic listed several steps to mitigate and adapt to permafrost melt. But so far, little has been achieved in Canada. And the question that arises, therefore, are other state actors in the same boat?

What follows is how other Arctic nations are addressing mitigating and adapting to permafrost loss and CH4 emission increases.

Alaska (United States)

Almost two-thirds of Alaska is underlain by permafrost. As the permafrost melts it is leading to an increase in the number of collapsed homes and roads across the state. Restrictions have been imposed on the use of heavy industrial equipment in permafrost zones, mainly those off-road. And although CH4 emissions are seen as a concern, there is talk of preserving the underlying carbon reservoirs that are the source of the gas, but no practical program or policies to address the challenge.

Both the state and the federal governments recognize more needs to be done but there is nothing in the carbon sequestration and capture provision of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act to direct funds to permafrost CH4 mitigation.

NASA has been funding a University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) ten-year research study looking at arctic vulnerability. Called the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment or ABoVE, it studies CH4 release from thawing permafrost with bubbles like the ones seen in the image forming under the surface ice of thermokarst lakes that characterize much of Alaska’s surface terrain.

Katey Walter Anthony, a lead researcher of the NASA study states, “The mechanism of abrupt thaw…matters a lot for the permafrost-carbon feedback this century. We don’t have to wait 200 or 300 years to get these large releases of permafrost carbon. Within my lifetime, and my children’s lifetime, it should be ramping up. It’s already happening but it’s not happening at a really fast rate right now, but within a few decades, it should peak.”

What happens if the thawing becomes abrupt? It is estimated that CH4 release rates will increase by as much as 125 to 190% compared to what would happen in a gradual melt. The soil layers where the carbon is stored are as deep as 80 metres (260 feet). The sudden thawing causes kettle and thermokarst lakes that cover the Alaskan landscape to suddenly drain producing a feedback loop that causes even more CH4 to be released, which in turn leads to atmospheric temperature spikes which contribute to even more thaw. For the IPCC, in its attempts to develop a CH4 carbon budget to cap and reduce these potent greenhouse gas emissions, the scenario poses a nightmare.

Denmark (Greenland)

Greenland is Denmark’s autonomous dependency. It is uncertain whether permafrost melt is a greater threat to the island than the collapse of its glacial ice sheet. Greenlanders don’t live on the ice sheets. They live where the melting permafrost is shifting the ground beneath their feet. They face the same problems that Alaska and Canada are experiencing with roads, bridges, homes and buildings all built on frozen ground that is turning to mush. The results are Greenland faces significant barriers to long-term habitability with CH4 emissions probably the least of its concerns.

Recent studies point to the destabilization of Greenland’s ice sheet which covers more than 90% of the island. All indicators point to substantial increases in melting throughout this century inevitably increasing global sea levels. The permafrost leaking of CH4 and other greenhouse gasses is, therefore, a lower priority with little appearing in Danish or Greenlander policy planning.

Finland

In 2021 the Finnish government published its Arctic strategy, a document outlining its policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation, the well-being of its northern indigenous people, research initiatives, and the hardening of existing infrastructure and logistics.

As one of the eight founding member states of the Arctic Council, one would think that Finland’s Arctic strategy would include a section focused on dealing with permafrost greenhouse gas emissions. But there is only a brief mention of this area of concern. How brief? Permafrost is mentioned four times in the 73-page policy document. Greenhouse gas emissions are referenced six times. Methane is never mentioned and there is a single paragraph talking about “concrete measures” to reduce emissions and a reference to “low-emission technological solutions.” What those technological solutions are is never spelled out.

So like Canada and the United States in Alaska, it would seem that Finland doesn’t have a handle or solution for permafrost melt and CH4 emission leaks.

Norway and Iceland

In these two oceanside countries permafrost makes up only 8% of the landmass without including Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago. So CH4 emissions don’t get much play in their policy statements. But where the thawing permafrost presents a problem for Norway is on Svalbard with Spitsbergen the largest island in the group the focus. And a second CH4 problem lies off Norway’s continental shelf where frozen methane hydrates can be found on the seafloor near its coasts.

Svalbard lies well to the north of continental Norway and is east of Greenland. It is experiencing a faster rate of warming than almost anywhere else on the planet. Winter temperatures have risen 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the last few decades. The winter ice pack is shrinking by 10% per decade with summer ice loss even greater. By the end of the century, winter temperatures are expected to rise by 10 Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) over current levels.

Needless to say, Svalbard’s 2,300 residents are facing a permafrost melt challenge as is another important project that has its home on Spitsbergen. This is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a long-term storage bank for seeds that have been collected from around the world and are meant to be the last hope for humanity’s future in the event of a global catastrophe. The seed vault lies inside a frozen mountain where temperatures are kept at a constant -18 Celsius (-0.4 Fahrenheit) by the permafrost. In recent years artificial cooling systems have been introduced as Spitsbergen’s temperatures rise.

Methane hydrates are giant ice cubes containing CH4. They form when seeps of CH4 gas make contact with cold water in high-pressure conditions on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates remain stable only when climate conditions are constant. But that’s not the case off Norway’s coast where the Atlantic Ocean is heating not just at the surface but through its entire water column. That means several CH4 eruptions are likely to occur in the coming decades.

The consequences of ignoring methane hydrates are best demonstrated by the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon accident which occurred in 2010. It is believed that the presence of methane hydrates near the site may have contributed to the initial underwater blowout and the eventual fire that destroyed the rig killing 11 and injuring 17.

So Norway needs to address both Svalbard and methane hydrate in its CH4 strategic plan.

Russia

Russia’s CH4 and permafrost climate policies and strategies are not well known but they should be because 60% of the permafrost zone on our planet lies within its borders.

Siberian Russia is seeing permafrost melts that have caused some strange phenomena. In one case, a 30-meter wide (approximately 100 feet in diameter) hole opened up in July 2014 in Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula. The cause of the hole was CH4.  The permafrost 20 metres (66 feet) below the surface saw temperature rises of 2 Celsius (3.8 Fahrenheit) when atmospheric temperatures on the peninsula were rising by 5 Celsius (9 Fahrenheit). The Earth belched and the hole seen below opened up.

A 2020 study by geologists from the University of Bonn measured CH4 levels in another area of Siberia where there were significant signs of permafrost melt. Gas concentrations were significantly higher than the norm. In this part of Siberia, atmospheric temperatures over a two-decade period had risen 6 Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). The geologists reported their findings in an article entitled Methane release from carbonate rock formations in the Siberian permafrost area during and after the 2020 heat wave which appeared in PNAS.

Along with released CH4, Siberia continues to unearth flora and fauna frozen for tens of thousands of years. Whole Mammoths have been unearthed. So have bacteria and viruses that have lain dormant over the same amount of time. These emerging microbes represent a growing health risk.

Whether the CH4 release is slow and steady, or punctuated and abrupt, Russia needs to get a handle on the level of permafrost melt happening within its borders. So far, there haven’t been enough studies done to get a fuller picture of the CH4 problem in that country, and the Ukraine war will not produce any current and future haste in collecting the much-needed data.

Sweden

Of the total permafrost areas in Scandinavia consisting of Finland, Norway and Sweden, the latter’s share of what amounts to about 23,400 square kilometres (just over 9,000 square miles), is only 35%. When the country enacted its 2017 climate strategy, it set a target to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 85% from 1990 levels and to be in negative emissions territory by 2045. But nowhere in the plan is there a mention of getting permafrost greenhouse gas emissions under control.

I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise after reading how all the other Arctic countries are managing to largely ignore CH4 leaks from melting permafrost.

What To Do

Short of dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels in all aspects of the global economy, there seems little at present that we can do to tackle CH4 seeping from melting permafrost.

One initiative, however, can be done. We need to get a better measure of the problem. That could help determine the pace by which we do rapid reductions of greenhouse emissions where we have the means to control the process.

We are fortunate in one respect because CH4 doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere for very long when compared to CO2, the bigger greenhouse gas contributor. CH4, unfortunately, does impact warming in the short term at a rate 80 times greater than CO2 when it is hanging around.

Another unanswered question is just how big could the permafrost melt problem become. Estimates of CH4 volumes embedded in permafrost that could thaw this century are as high as a Gigaton. That’s a billion tons released into the atmosphere.

Can we stop it from happening?

Could refreezing the permafrost using technology keep CH4 in the ground?

The Willow Project is an oil field in Alaska owned by ConocoPhillips. The company has proposed that it could use chillers inserted into the permafrost to keep it frozen. This would be counted as a carbon offset for emission contributions made by the company’s operations.

Is this doable?

Could it be deployed wherever there is permafrost?

Whether a slow ooze or a bomb, the question I ask in the title of this posting has yet to be answered by government policymakers. Is permafrost included in carbon budget calculations? My guess is, it is not and that’s a huge mistake.

Canada’s Answer to the Permafrost Challenge

The northern community of Tuktoyaktuk is built on top of permafrost and located on the Arctic Ocean coastline of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Permafrost is described as being harder than concrete in its frozen state. But when warmed the subsurface thawing causes landscapes to shift. Houses and buildings begin to tilt precariously as concrete and wooden pilings give way. A more ice-free Arctic Ocean is a more active sea with winds driving waves onshore contributing to growing coastal erosion. This in combination with rising sea levels is nibbling away at Tuktoyaktuk.

A September 2021 report noted that the cost to save Tuktoyaktuk was $42 million and rising. This money is budgeted to cover the next thirty years. The plan involves shoring up the Arctic Ocean coastline with a barrier of stone very much the way it is done on Pacific and Atlantic Ocean coastlines further south. Everyone knows this is a temporary fix. No one has a long-term plan that might require a retreat from the coastline and a movement of the town to a more stable inland site where only permafrost melt would be the threat.

What’s wrong with the stone barrier plan? There isn’t a lot of rock to harvest locally near Tuktoyaktuk which means hauling rock in from further inland and south over a road infrastructure that is also threatened by permafrost melt.

Of course, none of these plans speaks to the issue of CH4 release from melting permafrost and the contribution this greenhouse gas (GHG) will make to atmospheric warming in the short term.

Canada has a CH4 leak strategy. Unfortunately, it focuses entirely on CH4 emissions from fossil fuel sites. The following words come directly from a September 23, 2022 government policy statement that notes the country will:

• Implement measures across sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, to reduce the largest sources of methane emissions;
• Strengthen the clean technology sector and provide tools to industry to achieve cost-effective methane emission reductions while creating good-paying jobs;
• Advance scientific knowledge and technical capacity to improve methane detection, measurement, and reporting;
• Meet international climate targets under the Paris Agreement and Global Methane Pledge; and
• Solidify its global leadership and provide funding, tools, and best practices for other countries to achieve emissions reductions.

Notice, there is no mention of permafrost CH4 leaks in this policy statement. Yet another government site discusses the issue of Arctic melting and notes that “Canadian scientists and community members  have long raised concerns about how rapid climate change affects permafrost in Northern Arctic communities.” 

The page comes with a link to a report that raises alarm bells about the amount of GHGs contained within an increasingly destabilizing permafrost zone across the country’s north. It also discusses other issues related to melting permafrost including increasing coastal erosion, ground subsidence, landslides, altered surface water dynamics (kettle lakes vanishing overnight), damage to buildings, roads, power distribution networks and more,  and a growing number of health risks.

This isn’t the first time people have called documents divinely inspired. The Old and New Testaments of the Jewish and Christian faith are referred to in this way. So is the Quran and no doubt the books and words of the founders that define the Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i faiths? But how can these documents relate to the world we live in today. Of these only Baha’i has its origin in a world that approximates the human condition in the 21st century because it was founded in the mid-19th.

When the American Constitution was penned there were less than 800 million on Earth or just more than 10% of the current human population. Go further back to the origins of the Old and New Testaments and world population was no more than a few hundred million at best. Steam engines powered the world of the US Constitution. Water wheels automated biblical times.

The world of the US Constitution considered Africans to be property. Women’s standing was slightly better but still an afterthought in the writing of the document. The covenants of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sanctified slavery just like the US Constitution, and women were chattels of their husbands.

What struck me watching the public proceedings of the January 6th Committee was how the witnesses testifying, and subsequently, the reporters covering the hearings repeatedly referred to the US Constitution’s divine origins.

“Divinely Inspired” Documents Are Written and Interpreted by Humans

Just in case you haven’t heard the latest US Supreme Court ruling to overthrow Roe v. Wade taking away a woman’s right to determine what she can and cannot do with her body, you now know just how flawed the US Constitution is as a divine document, and how equally flawed are those who interpret it.

Who are the latter? They are the lawyers of the land who serve in government and who defend Americans in court. The highest court of the land is the US Supreme Court with nine justices. The majority faith of the Court’s members is Catholic. More are men than women. And the majority appear to be believers in the divine origin of the US Constitution. They appear to see and interpret the document as it was conceived by its founders who lived in the 18th century which bears little resemblance to the conditions in the 21st.

Here are just a few examples of how different the founders’ world was:

• The 1789 world didn’t consider women citizens of the United States. “We the people” apparently didn’t mean women.
• “We the people” didn’t mean slaves or indigenous peoples.
• The 1789 world only counted slaves as 3/5th humans for census purposes.
• The 1789 world that produced the Second Amendment and the right to armed militias used swords, matchlocks and flintlock muskets.
• The 1789 world didn’t include the birth control pill, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, electrical power, automobiles, airplanes, trains, rockets, computers, the Internet, or robots.

Yet those who sit on the US Supreme Court in the majority today look at the US through the eyes of its founding fathers and more often than not interpret what is stated in The Constitution through a legal theory known as “originalism.”

Originalism is akin to studying the words within the document as if it were a grammar lesson. Every word is tested for original intent. Every phrase is parsed with each word dictionary-defined. Every decision becomes a legal construct with no thought or consideration of intent beyond its strict grammatical meaning, and certainly with no thought about the future.

A minority of justices sitting on the Supreme Court, however, see The Constitution as a living document with its meaning changing over time as history unfolds and society evolves.

For example, how can originalists interpret the US Constitution’s intent if tackling legal cases related to the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT)?

How can originalists rule on actions by individuals or groups in virtual worlds and the metaverse?

How can an originalist court rule regarding environmental legislation attempting to deal with anthropogenic climate change?

How can an originalist court correct the social injustices of the past?

Think about all of the technological and social changes that have unfolded since the document was penned and how little the document speaks to any of them.

The US Constitution does have an answer in its amending formula. This is the means through acts of Congress and ratification by a super majority of states to make the document relevant as history unfolds.

But the process by which amendments get passed to become enshrined in this “divinely inspired” document is anything but divine. In fact, it is almost as rancorous as the way Americans vote for their President every four years. That’s why the Equal Rights Amendment has never been enshrined.

And if you are not aware of just how rancorous the American Presidential election can be then you have not been following the news cycle since November 3rd, 2020. Nor are you watching the January 6th committee hearings and what they tell us about how less than divinely inspired The Constitution truly is when interpreted by those with dangerous intent and ideas.