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Navy Blue Arctic Strategy Ignores Elephant (Polar Bear?) in the Room

January 8th, 2021 · No Comments

In the last weeks of the Trump Administration, the Department of Navy and the U.S. Navy have released multiple significant strategy documents and long-term strategies including a decades-long force structure (shipbuilding) plan, a tri-service (Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) strategy, and, earlier this week, A Blue Arctic: A Strategic Blueprint for the Arctic.

Commentators, including some traditional quite conservative naval analysts, have been raising questions of the political timing of these documents and strategies. Putting aside (the m)any strengths (and/or weaknesses) of these documents, a simple question to consider: Does the open publication of strategies and long-term plans amid the most contentious transition of power in (modern?) U.S. history make these dead on arrival (DOA) since they have been done without any coordination with the incoming Administration team?

These “DOA” documents seem to represent part of a purposeful Trump Administration appointee effort (across the ‘Whole of Government’) to box in the incoming Biden Administration’s operating options and spaces, creating issue and issue where Biden appointees will need to spend time and energy ‘cleaning up’ after Trump appointees, and seeking to nail policies and concepts into the ground at odds with the Biden-Harris program. And, with the military services, like the career civil servants around the government, do these actions in the waning (dying) days of the Trump Administration have the potential to stain and strain relations between those who have been closest to Trump appointees and the incoming Biden Administration?

Blue Arctic serves a strong exemplar of this challenge. This document is filled with substantive discussion of Arctic issues and challenges for the Navy in confronting the changing Arctic.

little red flag
Red flags in melting Arctic ice?

While Blue Arctic has much of substance to digest and consider, even the quickest read makes clear red flags that suggest a deeper read looking for potential ticking time bombs might be merited. Here are three “climate change” red flags:

Climate Change absent

If you search the 28 page document of the Arctic for “climate change”, “global warming”, IPCC, and related terms you will get a “No matches were found” result. While the strategy highlights climate change impacts such “melting sea ice” and that “fish stocks are expected to move northward”, there is zero indication as to why.

Climate word search: “No matches were found.”

In line with four years of Trump Administration efforts to wipe discussion of climate change (not actual climate change) from the U.S. government, climate change goes unmentioned in this Department of the Navy strategy document on the Arctic — an already climate-changed region that will be undergoing massive global warming driven change in the years ahead.

Inquiring minds wonder whether it might it be relevant why what was once ‘a white Arctic’ is becoming A Blue Arctic?

Science glossed over

One of the compelling data streams of the reality of global warming impacts comes from U.S. Navy submarine operations in the Arctic, with decades of high-quality data as to the extent and thickness of Arctic ice. With a paragraph on “science and technology”, one might say that the Navy’s role in advancing knowledge about Arctic climate impacts is implicitly covered but, to phrase it somewhat differently from above, failing to name and discuss a relevant (significant) issue is to belittle and deny its import. Both for its own operational requirements and to support broader requirements to understand, the Department of the Navy should explicitly discuss its role in climate science (data collection and analysis) while making explicit what it requires from others.

Arctic Oil and Gas (ONG) can’t be exploited

A Blue Arctic‘s opening paragraph of the “Challenges of a New Era” reads:

The coming decades will witness significant changes to the Arctic Region. Encompassing about six percent of the global surface, a Blue Arctic will have a disproportionate impact on the global economy given its abundance of natural resources and strategic location. The region holds and estimate 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas reserves, 13% of global conventional oil reserves, and one trillion dollars’ worth of rare earth minerals. Fish stocks are expected to continue to shift northward, attracting global fishing fleets and creating potential challenges to the current international prohibition on Arctic fishing.

While the cited facts are true, this is a very troubling paragraph for numerous reasons even putting aside ‘why’ questioning. (Such as: Why are fish stock shifting northward? Why will there be significant changes to the Arctic Region?)

Simply put, a focus on ONG is absurd.

  • All with a robust understanding of climate science and the “carbon budget” to reduce climate crisis risks realize that significant exploitation of Arctic ONG reserves will bust through that budget.
  • Additionally, the growing understanding of peak oil (peak oil demand) and depressed oil prices as alternatives begin to cannibalize demand are leading to oil majors walking away from plans to exploit these resources (as exemplified in recent days by the lack of bidding for new ANWR leases). There just isn’t a plausible business case for significant investment to extract high(er) cost ONG when the alternative energy options are simply beating them on price already and, without question, a decade (plus) from now when A Blue Arctic offshore ONG reserves might otherwise have been exploited.

A Blue Arctic‘s emphasis on ONG is directly in line with the Trump Administration’s devotional promotion of fossil fuels and at odds with climate action necessities and global energy system realities.

Blue Arctic:
at odds with incoming
Biden Administration

Of course, the contrast is night and day in terms of climate science and ONG between the Trump Administration and the incoming Biden-Harris team.

  • Rather than unrealistic planning for unlimited continued fossil fuel usage, clean energy deployment and a transition off fossil fuels are core to the Biden-Harris team’s vision.
  • Rather than Team Trump’s determined climate-science denial and sabotaging of efforts to reduce climate impacts, climate is central to the President-Elect Biden’s plans to Build Back Better and there is clarity that the Biden-Harris Administration will pay attention to and give visibility to climate (science) issues.

It is essentially impossible to consider that the Biden Administration would approve a 28 page Arctic Strategy document that put ONG exploitation as a (the) top-tier issue, failed to mention climate change, and failed to put the strategy within the context of climate change.

Tags: Energy