The Defense Department quietly released a new Arctic strategy on Thursday that omits any mention of climate change in the region and casts the Far North as increasingly slipping into a zone of great power competition.
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| A lone iceberg amid sea ice along the coast near Sermilik Fjord, Greenland. |
Why it matters: The Arctic has long been a region where the eight Arctic nations have collaborated on governance challenges as well as environmental and scientific concerns. However, with a buildup in Russia's military presence in the region, and China's increasingly assertive role as a "near-Arctic" nation, the U.S. is taking a more aggressive posture.
Details: The new strategy, which replaces one the Pentagon issued in 2016, makes mention of melting sea ice and increasing temperatures in the Arctic, but does not cite human-caused climate change as the driver of these trends.
- In fact, it omits the term "climate change" altogether, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are pushing the Arctic climate into a new and perilous era.
Read the story from Axios by Andrew Freedman - “New U.S. Arctic strategy omits climate change, takes aim at China, Russia.”
