The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (46 page)

406
I led a three-year National Science Foundation project to study peatland carbon dynamics in the West Siberian Lowland from 1998 to 2000. Its purpose was to drill cores across the region and involved dozens of Russian and American scientists and graduate students, including Olga Borisova, Konstantine Kremenetski, and Andrei Velichko at the Russian Academy of Sciences and David Beilman, Karen Frey, Glen MacDonald, and Yongwei Sheng at UCLA. For publications and results, see
http://lena.sscnet.ucla.edu
.

407
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is the successor to the Soviet KGB and Russia’s main domestic security agency. Upon arrival, foreign visitors to West Siberian cities must register/interview with local FSB officers and surrender passports at hotels. Some towns are completely closed to foreigners.

408
Including a CAD$1.2 billion bid for the rights to explore an offshore area of 611,000 hectares, p. 77,
AMSA 2009.

409
“Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle,” digital data and USGS Fact Sheet 2008-3049 (2008); D. L. Gautier et al., “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,”
Science
324 (2009): 1175-1179.

410
More specifically, the other promising geological provinces for oil are the Canning-Mackenzie (6.4 BBO), North Barents Basin (5.3 BBO), Yenisei-Khatanga (5.3 BBO), Northwest Greenland Rifted Margin (4.9 BBO), the South Danmarkshavn Basin (4.4 BBO), and the North Danmarkshavn Salt Basin (3.3 BBO). Other promising geological provinces for natural gas are South Barents Basin (184 TCF), North Barents Basin (117 TCF), and again the Alaska Platform (122 TCF). P. 1178, D. L. Gautier et al., Ibid.

411
Interview with Alexei Varlomov, deputy minister for natural resources of the Russian Federation, Tromsø, January 22, 2007.

412
In 2008 Russia produced 602.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas and had 43.3 trillion more in proved reserves, both greater than any other country. Russia produced an average of 9,886,000 barrels of oil per day, second only to Saudi Arabia (10,846,000 barrels per day).
BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2009,
available at
www.bp.com/statisticalreview
.

413
See Chapter 3.

414
J. D. Grace,
Russian Oil Supply: Performance and Prospects
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 288 pp.

415
At peak production West Siberia’s giant Urengoi, Yambur, and Medvezhye gas fields produced almost 500 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year; by 2030 production will decline to 130 billion cubic meters per year. E. N. Andreyeva, V. A. Kryukov, “The Russian Model—Merging Profit and Sustainability,” pp. 240-287 in A. Mikkelsen and O. Lenghelle, eds.,
Arctic Oil and Gas
(New York: Routledge, 2008), 390 pp.

416
Gazprom commenced laying pipeline across the floor of Baydaratskaya Bay in 2009, hoping to open the Bovanenkovo gas field for European markets by 2011. July 24, 2009, “Yamal Pipeline Laying Proceeds,”
www.barentsobserver.com
.

417
Some producers skip the upgrading step to produce lower-grade bitumen. The described process is used by Syncrude, Canada’s largest tar sands producer. B. M. Testa, “Tar on Tap,”
Mechanical Engineering
(December 2008): 30-34.

418
In 2008 a flock of about five hundred mallard ducks died after landing in a Syncrude tailing pond. “Hundreds of Ducks Die after Landing in Oil Sands in Canada,” Fox News, May 8, 2008. See also E. A. Johnson, K. Miyanishi, “Creating New Landscapes and Ecosystems: The Alberta Oil Sands,”
Annals, New York Academy of Sciences
1134 (2008): 120-145; and M. J. Pasqualetti, “The Alberta Oil Sands from Both Sides of the Border,”
The Geographical Review
99, no. 20 (2009): 248-267.

419
T. M. Pavelsky, L. C. Smith, “Remote Sensing of Hydrologic Recharge in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada,”
Geophysical Research Letters
35 (2008):L08403, DOI:10.1029/ 2008GL033268.

420
Oil sands operators self-report that a total of 65 square kilometers have been reclaimed in some form, or about 12% of the total disturbed area. According to the nonprofit Pembina Institute, only 1 square kilometer has been fully restored and certified by the government of Alberta. Regardless of this discrepancy both numbers are small compared with the 530 square kilometers disturbed.

421
E. A. Johnson, K. Miyanishi, “Creating New Landscapes and Ecosystems: The Alberta Oil Sands,”
Annals, New York Academy of Sciences
1134 (2008): 120-145.

422
The Mackenzie Gas Project has been proposed since the early 1970s but was previously suspended pending settlement of aboriginal land claims. This obstacle is now settled and the project pending as is described in Chapter 8.

423
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada pledged to reduce carbon emissions to -6% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Instead by 2009 her emissions grew +27% and will rise again in 2010 if Alberta tar sands development intensifies. “Canada’s northern goal,” in
The World in 2010
, special supplement to
The Economist
(2009): 53-54. Syncrude and Suncor, two of the largest tar sands operators, are the third- and sixth-largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Canada. M. J. Pasqualetti, “The Alberta Oil Sands from Both Sides of the Border,”
The Geographical Review
99, no. 20 (2009): 248-267.

424
The most promising current underground extraction technology is steam-assisted gravity drainage, in which pressurized steam is forced underground in long horizontal injection wells to heat the bitumen. After about six months of heating the bitumen begins to flow and can be pumped from a second, parallel recovery well to the surface.

425
From Alberta Energy, the total area leased for in situ (underground) development as of May 19, 2009, is 79,298 square kilometers. J. Grant, S. Dyer, D. Woynillowicz, “Clearing the Air on Oil Sands Myths” (Drayton Valley, Alberta: The Pembina Institute, June 2009), 32 pp.,
www.pembina.org
. Future projections from B. Söderbergh et al., “A Crash Programme Scenario for the Canadian Oil Sands Industry,”
Energy Policy
35, no. 3 (2007): 1931-1947. As of 2009, oil production from Alaska’s North Slope averaged about seven hundred thousand barrels per day.

426
Government of Canada, Policy Research Initiative, “The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions between Canada and the United States, Final Report” (November 2008), 78 pp.,
www.policyresearch.gc.ca
. See also D. K. Alper, “The Idea of Cascadia: Emergent Regionalisms in the Pacific Northwest-Western Canada,”
Journal of Borderland Studies
11, no. 2 (1996): 1-22; S. E. Clarke, “Regional and Transnational Discourse: The Politics of Ideas and Economic Development in Cascadia,”
International Journal of Economic Development
2, no. 3 (2000): 360-378; H. Nicol, “Resiliency or Change? The Contemporary Canada-U.S. Border,”
Geopolitics
10 (2005): 767-790; V. Conrad, H. N. Nicol,
Beyond Walls: Re-inventing the Canada-United States Borderlands
(Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008), 360 pp.

427
See
www.atlantica.org
.

428
This discovery of common sociocultural values within cross-border superregions is based on survey data, Government of Canada, Policy Research Initiative, “The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions between Canada and the United States,” Final Report (November 2008), 78 pp,
www.policyresearch.gc.ca
.

429
The U.S. State Department recently quelled any hint of a U.S. claim to a half-dozen islands off Russia’s Arctic coast, even though Americans were involved with the discovery and exploration of some of them. “Status of Wrangel and Other Arctic Islands,” U.S. Department of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2003. While Canadian politicians like to fret about protecting Canada’s vast northern territories from the United States and Russia, there is little evidence that either country has designs on them. Indeed, the United States provides tacit military backing of Canadian sovereignty there. For more on the relative success of U.S.-Canada relations, see K. S. Coates et al.,
Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North
(Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2008), 261 pp. However, while the likelihood of conflict between Arctic nation-states is low, there is ongoing domestic tension from aboriginal groups over land title, as is discussed in Chapter 8.

430
Another area of increasing cross-border economic ties is between Russia and the U.S., with Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East increasingly importing fuel and other supplies from Alaska. J. Newell,
The Russian Far East
(Simi Valley, Calif.: Daniel & Daniel Publishers, Inc., 2004), 466 pp.

431
This table was constructed using data from the following sources: 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal (179 countries,
www.heritage.org
); 2008 Economic Freedom of the World Index (141 countries,
http://www.freetheworld.com/2008/EconomicFreedomoftheWorld2008.pdf
); 2009 KOF Index of Globalization (208 countries,
http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch/
); 2009 Global Peace Index (144 countries,
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php
); 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index (167 countries,
http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf
); 2009 Freedom in the World Country Rankings (193 countries,
http://www.freedomhouse.org
). To allow comparison between these indices, numeric index data were converted to percentile country rank. Taking an average of these percentile rankings provides the composite score in the right-most column of the table.

432
Each index has its own agenda, which is why I prefer to look at all of them. Jeffrey Sachs, for example, questions the contention in
Index of Economic Freedom
that trade liberalization necessarily leads to GDP growth, citing examples, like China, which have very strong economic growth despite low scores on the index. J. Sachs,
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
(New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 416 pp.

433
Most oil and gas outfits operating in the northern high latitudes are private multinational companies, except in the Russian Federation, where the industry is increasingly returning to state control.

434
The 2010 Economist Intelligence Unit assessed 140 countries in their global livability index. The four NORC cities making the top ten were Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and Helsinki; the others were Vienna, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, and Auckland. The world’s lowest-ranked cities were Dakar, Colombo, Kathmandu, Douala, Karachi, Lagos, Port Moresby, Algiers, Dhaka, and Harare. EIU Press Release, “Winter Olympics Host, Vancouver, Ranked World’s Most Liveable City,” February 10, 2010,
http://www.eiuresources.com/mediadir/default.asp?PR=2010021001
(accessed February 16, 2010).

435
Indeed, without immigration the populations and labor forces of most European countries will shrink. Germany, for example, now has a total fertility rate of just 1.3 and is in population decline. Western Europe has a total fertility rate of 1.6, which, combined with a growing elderly population, suggests that the European Union must admit 1.1 million immigrants per year just to maintain its current labor force. P. 129, K. B. Newbold,
Six Billion Plus: World Population in the 21st Century
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007), 245 pp.

436
As of 2009 Russia’s total fertility rate was just 1.4 births per woman; the replacement rate is 2.1. Russia’s crude death rate was 16.2 per 1,000 people versus a crude birth rate of 10 per 1,000 people.
The Economist, Pocket World in Figures
(London: Profile Books, 2009), 256 pp.

437
I. Saveliev, “The Transition from Immigration Restriction to the Importation of Labor: Recent Migration Patterns and Chinese Migrants in Russia,”
Forum of International Development Studies
35 (2007): 21-35.

438
G. Kozhevnikova, “Radical Nationalism in Russia in 2008, and Efforts to Counteract It,”
Sova Center Reports and Analyses
(April 15, 2009),
http://xeno.sova-center.ru/
.

439
More precisely, in 2008 the United States granted 1,107,126 people legal permanent resident status, and 1,046,539 were naturalized. There were 175 million visitors, of whom 90% were short-term, e.g., tourists and business travelers, and 10% (3.7 million) were longer-term temporary residents like specialty workers, students, and nurses. Between 2005 and 2008 U.S. border apprehensions ranged from 723,840 to 1,189,031 people per year. Drawn from the following reports by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics: R. Monger, N. Rytina, “U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008,” Annual Flow Report, March 2009; J. Lee, N. Rytina, “Naturalizations in the United States: 2008,” Annual Flow Report, March 2009; R. Monger, M. Barr, “Nonimmigrant Admissions to the United States: 2008,” Annual Flow Report, April 2009; N. Rytina, J. Simanski, “Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol: 2005-2008,” Fact Sheet, June 2009; J. Napolitano et al.,
2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics
, August 2009.