One of the U.S. Coast Guard's two icecutters. Click on the image to read the Politics Daily article.
As huge swaths of once inaccessible polar region open, few Americans realize how woefully behind the U.S. government has lagged in addressing security and commerce issues. For instance, tourist ships have already started sailing through the once legendary Northwest Passage, graveyard for explorers in times past. This formerly iced-over link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is melting so fast it could very well be completely ice-free in summers as soon as 2020. That would make commercial shipping viable, meaning that a single Chinese container ship using the Northwest Passage instead of the Panama Canal could save $2 million each way between Shanghai and New York. Up to 25 percent of the Earth’s shipping may, in our lifetime, be sailing the polar route.