Sign Alaska Claim Secure

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ladies and gentlemen good evening my name is duncan brown and i'm a trustee with the baltimore council on foreign affairs i hope this webinar finds all of those who are tuned in safe and well before we introduce meet dred mead treadwell sorry about that sir a quick announcement regarding the logistics for tonight's webinar we are using the zoom webinar platform tonight so everyone is automatically muted and will stay that way additionally the only person you should see or the only persons you should see on your screen will be myself or mr treadwell tonight's webinar will include remarks by mr treadwell followed by a q a session audience questions will be handled through the q a function in zoom the q a button should be located on the bottom of your screen just click on the button type in your question select goes to everyone and then hit submit please note that this webinar is being recorded and it will be available on the baltimore council foreign affairs youtube website within about two weeks and now to tonight's speaker meet treadwell serves as lieutenant governor of alaska from 2010 to 2014. he is currently a member of the board of point capital a private equity firm concentrating on investment opportunities in the arctic including alaska iceland greenland and northern canada mr treadwell is recognized as one of the world's arctic policy experts he was appointed to the u.s arctic research commission by president george w bush and designated as its chair under both presidents bush and obama he also served in the cabinet of alaska governor walter hickle and led alaska's efforts to build circumpolar cooperation through an eight nation arctic environmental protection strategy he has been actively involved in numerous arctic policy organ policy focused organizations including the institute of the north the aspen institute the hoover institution at stanford university the arctic circle the world economic forum's global action council on the arctic as an entrepreneur and investor mr treadwell has also served on numerous boards and in an executive leadership roles in alaskan resource development telecommunications and information technology companies that have created innovative programs like street view for google mr treadwell is a graduate of yale university and the harvard business school please join me in giving a warm albeit virtual welcome to mr mead treadwell and over to you sir thank you uh duncan and uh uh thank you for having me before the baltimore council on foreign affairs uh i'd like to recognize i think one person attending the seminar is my college roommate peter bowie uh who was once on your board and uh was the former ceo of ellicott uh dredge uh and i got to serve on the ellicott board and got to get to baltimore fairly frequently for that and it's nice to be back in baltimore virtually today uh what we have uh in our webinar this evening is after i introduce a few of the things that we're working on right now an introduction to the arctic and uh the uh webinar was titled the battle for the arctic and uh i i guess i'd like to say that the arctic has been a peaceful area uh but it's been a major venue of quiet underwater conflict during the cold war there are very large new security concerns in the arctic not only as russia increases its military capability but as china begins to build a polar capability uh we have uh disputes over several different uh property or sovereign lines which we'll talk about we have a battle essentially to raise uh equity and investment the arctic is a big sponge for capital the 4 million of us who live there do not have enough money stuffed in our mattresses to do the things that we need to do and i'd say there's also a battle for reconciliation with the fact that many of the indigenous populations were displaced but uh self-governance in in the indigenous communities has actually gotten much stronger in the last generation decolonization has been one other battle then i'll also say that the climate battle that we're all facing uh around the world has a special impact on the arctic not only because we're seeing rapid changes in sea ice in what's happening on land but also what's what's happening just in terms of the world's view on fossil fuels which is a primary part of the economy of the arctic so with that let's go to the next slide and i'll just start i'll start with you about 200 miles north of alaska in the arctic ocean this picture was taken 2011 during the sysex you can see we're standing on ice and this is probably taken on st patrick's day it was very nice of the coast guard to drop a parachute with a barrel that included some good beer for us that day uh that's the uss connecticut which had just uh risen through about 10 feet of ice uh and this was annual ice ice that had formed that year we were at a camp that was put on multi-year ice and we'll talk about the two different kinds of ice in a second which is was good for fresh water but the us holds an ice ax ice exercise every two or three years up there a rendezvous of submarines usually includes some other uh countries and uh it is an active area for research and we'll talk about that next slide this book is a study report that i helped author in 2009 which was called why the arctic matters by commonwealth north a public policy organization in alaska we are right now you can go to the next slide redoing this report and we're doing it with a group of thought leader partners including the arctic domain awareness center which is part of the homeland security department based at the university of alaska anchorage the arctic encounter symposium uh which holds the number of symposia around the world arctic today a dailyrx newspaper the institute of the north which i at one point helped former governor hickle form the polar institute at the wilson center in washington dc which i co-chair and the polar research and policy initiative in the uk which does a lot of work around the world and so we've been bringing arctic policy leaders together to talk about what uh what should be the arctic policy of our country and alaska and we'll talk about that the other thing next slide i just wanted to say is a disclaimer i also have a private sector hat duncan mentioned that i'm on the board of pt capital and former president of pt capital the first private equity firm focused on the arctic we own a lot of hotels telecommunications assets uh and other service companies in alaska finland and iceland and we have done quite a bit of work in greenland and northern canada we do not invest in russia uh i'm also chairman of a company called keylak lng which is looking to export liquefied natural gas from the north slope of alaska and i'm vice chair on the board of uh uh uh for alaska for the alaska alberta railway and i chair an advisory board for a virginia-based iridium uh one of the first leo networks that does quite a bit of work in the arctic and on data transfer all over the world but we have a polar advisory board which i help them put together let's go to the next slide and uh this is a quote from shakespeare the arctic ocean it wasn't uh wasn't about that but fred marchettans has illustrated the quote it does suffer a sea change into something rich and strange and let's talk about the change that's happening in the arctic uh first thing to do in our introduction to the arctic is there are six things that we do in alaska that the canadians do that the greenlanders do that the icelanders do that the russians and the nordic countries do uh that that are fairly common to the economies of of this northern part of the world we help feed the world and we have uh the richest fisheries in the north pacific ocean the bering sea and the barren sea off norway really some of the richest natural fisheries in the world we help fuel the world and uh you know energy production in canada and alaska is core to our economies the energy prospects i was just on the phone with the premier of the northwest territory earlier this afternoon at a commonwealth north meeting and over 30 percent of canada's traditional oil and gas could be found in the northwest territories you've got large prospects there but we also are a test bed for renewable energies you're seeing a lot of proposed hydro projects and dc cable shipping icelandic hydro power production into europe uh is a possibility you're seeing that from norway greenland is talking about it with north america and of course we know that canada brings quite a bit of power into the northeastern part of the united states so we feed the world we fuel the world we help provision the world you'll find the world's largest lead zinc mine in alaska you'll find the world's largest iron ore mine on baffin island in canada you'll find the world's largest nickel mine in uh in the russian arctic and we have quite a bit of mineral prospects the russian fable is that god got tired making the arctic last and dropped a lot of minerals there we do quite a bit to protect the world and uh whether it's a missile defense with radars based at thule greenland uh or clear alaska a missile defense battery based at fort greeley alaska radars at chemia uh the world's largest of the us largest collection of fighter jets at two air force bases in alaska we have certainly played a large role in the defense of the country for the last 60 years we help connect the world and we'll talk a little bit about their traffic uh and what may be happening with shipping and what is happening with telecommunications and finally the arctic residents help inspire the world it's not only our tremendous beauty but also you have resilient cultures that have been living in this area for 10 000 years it was alaskans who actually colonized greenland after after leif erikson but you have indigenous cultures that are just amazing and made significant contributions to the world we wouldn't have had sunglasses uh kayaks trampolines i could name a number of other things that basically were alaska native inventions that are used worldwide let's go to the next slide um what is dr uh what is going on in the arctic right now we when we talk about policy i just want to uh duncan mentioned the arctic environmental protection strategy that morphed into being something called the arctic council on a canadian initiative in 1996 eight arctic nations are members also there are permanent participants who are indigenous groups and then we have observer states and ngos and a large number of working groups that have done quite a bit to bring data together on arctic environment on the floor and fauna uh sustainable development work and uh i'll mention some things that we've done specifically on shipping we do not discuss military security and so there are separate arctic forums there's an art coast guard forum and you're seeing a lot of work right now happening to develop a more security cooperation discussion in the arctic next slide uh what is driving change cooperation and conflict in the arctic today and i'm going to give you four big titles one is climate change the fact that an area which has been generally inaccessible to people to commerce is now making is now becoming much more accessible with that global resource demand you're looking at very large uh pools of natural gas the usgs did a study that said 13 percent of the world's conventional oil to be found is in the arctic 30 percent of the world's conventional natural gas is to be found there and i've already mentioned the large mineral production that happens technological innovation many of the the accessibility in the arctic is coming not just from an opening ocean but also from new technology such as icebreaker design which we'll talk about in a moment which has opened up areas of the ocean that might not otherwise have been navigable and then finally major power competition in the same way that you had many nations before the antarctic treaty kind of put their marker down in in antarctica with science you're seeing as we develop the uh land ownership issues in on the arctic ocean bottom uh and a major power competition generally you're seeing nations kind of flex their muscles and strengthen their uh presence in the arctic whether they are the five arctic nations around the arctic ocean or uh nations like china which call themselves a near arctic nation and uh have built uh probably more powerful icebreakers than we have generally available to us in the united states right now uh so that's that's our thesis that you've got these four things driving change cooperation and conflict and with that i'm going to put bottom line in the next slide which is as we put together this commonwealth north policy our recommendation generally is that we have to protect people people's needs and nature uh as we as we go forward with an arctic policy you can't just pretend that it's an area uninhabited by anybody with uh without resources that people need it's very much a part of the global economy and being real about the role of the arctic in the u.s economy is very important and enhancing that role it's very easy to kind of sell a vote to to not do something in alaska but it's very important for the people who live there and for uh our trade balance and other alliances we feel we need to leverage civil and military needs to fill infrastructure gaps in the arctic and what's fascinating is you've got the u.s you've got pretty much every branch of our armed services now that have done new arctic strategies somewhat trying to figure out how to pay for things themselves and the things they need whether it's ports ice breakers telecom power uh fuel sources these are things we need in the civil sector as well so we are arguing for greater leverage and cooperation there i think it's very important that we keep russia from establishing a monopoly on arctic sea routes and shipping we'll talk about that it's very important that we contain china's efforts to expand its geo political influence in the region and that's a difficult uh that's a difficult thing to say when very much of the arctic depends on china as a market for its resources whether it's natural gas or or minerals as one example eric cargo is another example and then finally and this is not a recommendation that we buy greenland greenland is not for sale but it was very good news the united states opened up a consulate in greenland and we have lots to do to develop a close and lasting relationship with the people of greenland because that very large piece of real estate is is getting more and more local power vis-a-vis denmark and it's very important that we have a good relationship let's go to the next slide and we're just going to go very quickly through a few snapshots of activity in the arctic uh in a pre-coveted time and i can't tell you what the numbers are today uh but in a pre-coveted time almost 10 000 people crossed the arctic ocean every day with major air routes from both the united states to asia uh alaska to europe uh europe to to to the united states billy mitchell the founder of the us air force basically said he who holds alaska pretty much holds a key to any sort of entry into the united states into north america and uh my friend einer pederson was the first the late einer pederson was the first sas navigator to figure out that you could get from europe to asia by stopping in anchorage and refueling going transpolar and anchorage will not uh believe it or not is the fifth largest air cargo port in the world uh just when you look at the polar projection you can understand why take that to shipping in the next slide and you've got a a situation coming on you know that a large part of the push for exploration dating back to the 1500s 1600s was finding northern sea routes to uh uh to asia uh from europe and uh it does turn out the northern sea route is about a 40 distance savings and the question of how that's going to affect the world economy is one of the unsolved mysteries of the arctic let's go to the next slide uh we have uh changing uh sovereign claims in the arctic this uh this picture which made the cover i think of newsweek uh in 2006 was the russians planting a flag on the north pole on the sea bottom and a lot of people said well we don't plant flags anymore this was actually uh the su marines were paid for by my friend frederick paulson who lives in switzerland and he wanted to be the first human to be at the bottom of the north pole uh not just on the sea ice and had chartered the submarines to do it but you can go to the next slide our church healing garof who's holding that picture also a friend is probably the leading russian explorer has been for a generation and you can see and we'll go into better parts on the next slide you've got competing claims here for what happens in the arctic ocean essentially under law of the sea each of the five coastal states have the right to claim land that is uh coastal or that is a continental shelf going out beyond the 200 mile limit and so there's a bit of a competition going on the united states actually uh when i was chair of the arctic research commission we got the 80 million dollars to do the mapping there we've got a bit of a disputed border with canada a seaward of the uh the parallel there we do not have a disputed border with russia though russia's douma has never has never ratified what we did ratify as a treaty with russia in the early 1990s and the big question where you see loman also of ridge is whether or not that ridge is uh is land that kind of originated it's part of eurasia or is part of north america but for that reason canada denmark for greenland and norway have all made conflicting claims to the north pole area so the question who owns that subsurface is very very important for a couple of reasons one to the extent that there are natural resources there it's that kind that area that that country that wins the claim in the international tribunal would would have that the second the second reason why it's important is because if you do own the ocean bottom you can pretty much close off that ocean bottom to science to others and that's been a concern that i had and that we've been pushing uh at the us arctic research commission let's go to the next slide for a second you're seeing at the same time that territorial dispute is happening you're seeing russia build up its uh its military areas you can see that the large new military base uh built in in the western siberia part you can see that a large number of uh russian communities now are not just border guard bases but also military bases i would say that their land and sea forces are much better prepared for any sort of activity in the arctic than we are the norwegians are there's been some some drills but i had a long conversation yesterday with former head of the alaska command who's strategizing on ways to make sure that we're paying more attention to this uh vladimir putin likes to say that all of these bases are benign search and rescue bases and that the missile defense base in alaska is the one that is the concern in the arctic but i do have to say that uh i i've been to mishmita i've been to pivec i've been to nadir i've been to providence and all those are small towns that have been basically built up now by the military let's go to the next slide one of the security questions is does this new ocean destabilize the cooperative geopolitical framework that did develop in the coast cold war period is there a power imbalance in the arctic does it affect regional stability and can we remain de-linked on disputes between the arctic nations such as russia and the united states elsewhere around the globe and to address those uh questions i can't answer what number one uh the the first question is at this point right now it hasn't but it could uh second the power imbalance in the arctic i'm going to say is very much like you know for for you marylanders if you had a family cabin uh west of you in the mountains and uh one member your family lived there and one member your family lived in the big city in baltimore uh who who decides what happens at the cabin and where we are absent in our presence in the arctic uh the russians set the rules set their procedures and they're already doing that with shipping and that to me is a power imbalance that the united states has finally agreed and i have to say i've worked with three different presidents on this going going back to george w bush through president obama's term through president's trump term they've all been basically finding ways to to support having more icebreakers in the arctic more ports in the american arctic and a greater presence in terms of de-linking i'll just say this we have developed remarkable neighborly cooperation with the russians that quite when when the two uh when the ties on that cooperation uh kind of revert back to washington uh during a time of chill between the united states and russia uh it hurts us locally and uh the best example is last summer the russians began a live fire exercise within our 200 mile limit but in the open seas they fully have the right to do it and had we had better local communications we wouldn't have had to send a large number of fishing boats skittering south uh and it was quite economically destructive for us nobody was hurt but there's quite a bit that we need to do to improve neighborly relations so let me move on there from the security snapshot to the greenland snapshot real fast greenland as you know is a very big piece of land it's officially danish territory with home rule by the greenlanders about 60 65 000 people live there mostly indigenous they're they've done a number of economic analyses to see what they can do to be more self-sufficient they have an agreement with denmark that says if they can replace what is about five or six hundred million dollars of subsidy from denmark that they can become an independent country so here's a question for us as americans is it our interest to help the locals become an independent country and upset denmark with whom we have very important defense agreements uh or is it just simply our our interest in helping these these people develop their economy before covid tourism was rising uh it turns out that greenland has gotten the short end of the stick when american airlines fly across the atlantic iceland and canada collect most of the money and the greenlanders trying to get a little bit more of that the greenlanders have been trying to find investors to build up their airports and when i was speaking at an investment conference there a few years ago sitting just to my right was was somebody from the chinese uh one of the chinese investment groups they stepped forward when we did not and that caused a bunch of alarm bells to ring in washington and nato and you got greenland instead to move to get danish money to move forward with the airport so financial autonomy is a widely held goal there it's a very small population but a very large and important geo geopolitical piece of real estate and just uh move on now in the snapshot and just a few things happening in russia as a kid who grew up in the cold war i always worried about russian leaders pressing buttons this is vladimir putin pressing a button to open up the yamal uh natural gas project and let's uh just go to the next slide this is what the port of sebetta looked like in the spring of 2011. that's not very long ago that was just around the time japan had its large earthquake and all of a sudden demand for liquefied natural gas grew tremendously in asia that's spring 2011. go to the next slide this picture was taken in the summer of 2016. you can see that airports went in major ports went in production let's go to the next slide 2019 you see now the natural gas complex at yamal most of those uh uh most of the hardware that you're seeing there was assembled in korea floated up through the bering straits over to yamal and russia is today shipping 14.5 million tons of lng using a new icebreaker technology next slide which is a kind of a double acting tanker you can see in the right hand this is the christophe de marjorie the first one built there have been now been over 14 of them built you've got a v-shaped bow for ocean going times and a spoon-shaped stern uh for movement through heavy ice and next slide the power is by three independent 45 15 megawatt as a pods that can spin 360 degrees so they can push or pull and they can also help mill through the ice it means that icebreakers today are not your grandfather's icebreakers icebreakers are now 35 to 40 percent more efficient in heavy ice and it is this technology that has allowed uh russia and i would say hopefully soon the united states to expand its uh resource production the arctic can ship directly offshore next slide these yamamax arctic lng carriers were designed in finland built in south korea operating in russia there have been 15 built and next slide the russians have now committed to the arctic lng2 project they got to a final investment decision in september 2019. uh they there's a 2.7 2.17 terminal cost to add to the terminals but they've decided to move from a large onshore complex to these large modules being built again probably in korea korean shipyards floated up there and they will be shipping close to 30 million tons a year of lng which is about 10 percent a little bit less about eight percent of uh global lng demand last year it's a very significant source of cash flow for russia being able to ship through the arctic in both directions and there are right now today the middle of winter these icebreaking tankers are heading next slide all the way across the top of siberia to the bering straits 2600 miles and i said to my counterpart when i was lieutenant governor i met fairly frequently with the with my counterparts in yamal because we had a number of sports and other cooperation things going on i said as your tankers go by i hope you wave but if you thumb your nose at us because you beat us to the market i don't blame you we've been trying to figure out a way to commercialize north-slope gas which is only 600 miles from the ice edge and they're doing it 2600 miles from the from the ice edge we've been trying to do that for some time and last year we can go to the next slide we announced keylac lng we have a gas supply commitment from a heads of agreement reservation of gas from exxon with the point thompson field i happen to be here in houston this week negotiating some off-take with some with some folks and uh we expect to be able to uh be america's closest lng exporter to asia today out of the gulf of mexico we export about as much gas as umall hopes to export into the world market about 27 million tons the last time i checked uh we'll start with a small 4 million ton project and be able to expand potentially with north slope gas to close to 30 million tons and uh for those of you like me who are very concerned about carbon footprint uh the one thing i can say is that most of this gas has replaced coal burning power plants in asia and that 60 percent of the greenhouse gas savings that we've experienced since we started trying to reduce greenhouse gases come from converting power from coal to to natural gas so it is very much a bridge fuel next next slide let me uh just again on the snapshot of what's happening in the arctic go to uh uh climate change the new normal in the arctic is that uh temperatures are rising uh sea ice is diminishing we'll talk about that we've now seen several uh cases where the september sea ice extent uh is at a level that's likely unprecedented for la for the last thousand years we're seeing less snow coverage we're seeing melting permafrost and we're seeing major ice sheet mass loss from greenland and why why should you care about this let's go to the next slide um what what i'm going to do is ask duncan to to move forward in this video to show you what's been happening this is a nasa video that that takes uh has taken satellite imagery from the north and you can see the beaufort sea go from a nursery to a graveyard for older ice as we get towards the more recent years much of that oldest ice the ice that's older than five years old and the bright white has almost virtually disappeared from the arctic ocean and the arctic is now dominated by younger and thinner ice [Music] so what what does this mean uh i think i think what it means for us is several different things to be very much concerned on and we can go back uh to this slide first off all that sea ice is bright and it reflects quite a bit of radiation back into space and so that's that's important the second is you notice that most of the multi-year ice that was disappearing from the ocean was flowing out through the fram strait on the east side of greenland and uh it it does mean that it is uh the area is more accessible to shipping but it also means that the ice is less stable in terms of uh being able to to regenerate every year uh and that we're seeing a much less coverage uh and go you can see that the jet stream position is affected by sea ice cover and maybe actually being mean more snow in the northeast and more snow in northern europe but it is just changing weather patterns because of that next slide uh we're seeing impacts on wildlife where you have marine mammals that are very much dependent on ice as a platform for feeding and that includes seals polar bears walrus it's very important uh caribou which uh which have generally been tundra animals as the forest moves north you're seeing changing habitat there uh fisheries we're seeing salmon and uh uh steelhead and some of the other uh traditional species that are not seen in the arctic moving forth in the arctic uh next slide uh here's a slide from the uh university of alaska showing the establishment of beaver ponds in northwest arctic you're seeing changes in the hydrology not only are you seeing uh as permafrost melts you're seeing more fresh water run off into the arctic ocean but you're also seeing creation of more lakes and so all these things that i think the earth can put up with but there will be changes and there are changes to the habitat of wildlife and the question of can this be reversed is a very big question uh let's go to the next slide whether it's the changes in plant productivity species shifting northward a marine mammal species forced to adapt or interactions between animals and humans that are increasing because of tourism shipping oil and gas and mining these are all things to contend with and when i was chair of the us arctic research commission i asked the nation's top climate modelers to try to show us all right let's suppose we took our foot off the gas uh considerably and addressed all the other sources of climate change whether it was methane release or cows or or concrete production and you know there are many other sources of greenhouse gases and the fact is is that we did not come up with a scenario that showed large multi-year ice returning to the arctic no matter what we do in meeting our paris uh greenhouse goals so i think we're set for something like this and for a council on foreign affairs there's obviously a large global constituency for the certainly the charismatic species of the arctic but there's also just a concern that if you lose the refrigeration that the arctic gives the rest of the earth it means that the dark water absorbs more radiation it helps it helps speed the warming process so we're very very concerned about this let's go to the next slide i was chairman of the us arctic research commission under presidents bush and obama there's quite a bit of work that we do we spend about 400 million dollars a year as the us in supporting arctic research looking at these linkages between the natural and biological and human systems in the arctic we also have done a lot to facilitate transnational uh science research and cooperation actually one of the things i was pretty proud of is that the u.s arctic climate change program and the u.s global climate change program really didn't have scientists who talked to each other quite quite a bit we kind of put that together and we work very closely on this i'm very proud of the japanese investment we've gotten into into the university of alaska in the arctic i can tell you that duncan works at the apl at johns hopkins and apl at the university of washington ohio state which had a football team that tried to try to beat alabama the other night has got the largest library of ice cores arctic research is it happens in a most every major university in the country and we have to keep it going it has been very key to understanding what's happening with climate let's go to the next slide real fast one of the things that i mentioned is that as we divvy up who owns the bottom of the arctic ocean it gives russia the chance to say no when we want to come in and do things that we were able to do before just as one example off the coast of an nadir in the bering sea region we had a global uh geological drilling project that was basically looking at the geology of the earth that none of it was economically related the russians said no to that and so we pushed within the arctic council we got an arctic science agreement where the arctic research commission is kind of the window with russia and the other nations here who are trying to get reciprocity and to keep keep access to this ocean but this is not an easy drill and the russians the russian foreign ministry specifically asked that it be a treaty or an agreement because that helps them uh you know kind of have the internal fights with the other ministries in russia to to get us access so i'm hopeful that it will help but uh we may need more there and the people who wrote the law of the sea realized that we made kind of a mistake and not not addressing access to science as we divvied up the ocean bottom around the world uh one hopeful thing in the next slide was there was recently a wintering over of the polar stern uh a german vessel which had scientists from many nations doing quite a bit of work in the arctic in the winter next slide and you can see that the impact in alaska on climate change is already significant and significant in moving some of the whaling subsistence whaling activities offshore its subsistence it's it's significant in seeing crew large cruise ships show up in small villages that hadn't hadn't been there before you see coastline erosion where you've got that situation so we're dealing with this can't always mitigate it but we can adapt and that's that's what we're working to do so i'm going to move from science and climate now to kind of finish with technology and economics and people uh just a refresh four million people live in the arctic about ten percent are indigenous many of whom depend on traditional subsistence diets in western alaska i'll just say that close to eighty percent of what people eat is something they've harpooned something they've netted something they've gathered in terms of berries from the tundra something they've shot uh the premier of the northwest territories told us in alaska this afternoon that uh in in her region more than half of everybody's food is what she calls country food whether it's fish or or wildlife that has been taken uh many arctic communities have had to fight to acquire self-determination in local affairs iceland after hitler took over denmark iceland became an independent country recognized by churchill and roosevelt 1944. greenland got home ruled in 1979 and 2008. none of it became the first indigenous governed territory in canada and uh none of it uh yukon and northwest territories have all gotten control of their crown land alaska became a state in 1959 the united states no longer had to report on whether or not it was giving self-determination to the alaska people at the united nations trustee council after that in 1971 the alaska native land claims settlement was what's going on and the russian far east i'll just say that before putin under yeltsin there was quite a bit of autonomy given to the regional governments i had a seminar where the last dinner was in my living room uh just before 2000 before yeltsin left and putin took over and a russian governor told me he was going back to moscow to see if he could get control of the fisheries and the sival cults and that was the last i saw of him he'd been a friend for almost 10 years and and mafia people took them out and said no we want to keep the fish you're seeing new colonial practices now where nike has said we will ship no sneakers across the arctic ocean and where a number of global financial institutions have said we'll invest no no uh no money in the arctic uh as if that's going to solve climate change it's actually hurting the people who depend on on resource development to legal resource development i would say to to build their economy so anyway that's a snapshot on people let's go to the next slide i've mentioned glow global demand for natural resources is growing and natural gas is probably the leading source of development in the arctic right now you're still seeing uh you're still seeing uh exploration for crude in alaska some in canada again i heard the premier of the northwest territories which is canada's probably most likely arctic oil prospect greenland and iceland had had big hopes that they would find some oil offshore they weren't able to do that and there's an increasing dependence on rare earth elements and you're seeing quite a bit of activity uh there let's go to the next slide real fast this resource potential this is the usgs map that shows that 13 of the world's oil potential conventional potential and 30 percent of the world's gas potential is to be found in the arctic region and uh i used to joke with the head of usgs that when he published that study he actually helped greenlandic independence uh in their negotiations next slide uh the arctic is a test bed for technologies and we're seeing we're probably one of the first places in the world when we come up with ways to make high-speed broadband work in large rural areas africa benefits when we launch new satellite telecommunications networks the entire world benefits but we may be the anchor customer new techniques for mapping remote sensing with artificial intelligence that we're using for tracking sea ice and tracking wildlife again has global implications i mentioned the breakthrough in icebreaker design cold weather drilling techniques and renewable energy systems uh we are very proud of the fact that we've been a test bed for technologies for some time let's go to the next slide in terms of what's what's happening in the north you are seeing offshore oil production and shipping in russia that's the port of varande in the upper right hand corner you're seeing uh offshore uh gas production you're seeing a large amount we uh in alaska where the world's leader in backing down diesel in rural communities and the 200 microgrids that we have and uh having wind diesel with diesel as a backup when the wind's not blowing but we're adding battery battery storage capability and that's quite significant we're very proud of what we're doing in pushing the technology envelopes in this part of the world at the wilson center next slide we have a new inventory of arctic infrastructure uh it was funded by the guggenheim partners i'd like to thank scott minerd the cio of guggenheim who was also an investor with us at pt capital where what we've done is we've identified potential arctic infrastructure and this includes sanitation basic sanitation power roads railroads and so forth and as i mentioned before we are sponge we're looking for close to a trillion dollars for different projects in the north uh and we have to we know we have to be competitive in global markets another initiative that we have going on next slide is developing a business plan for the new ocean i led this effort for the arctic circle and as we go to the next slide opening seaways the real question is is russia going to have a monopoly on those red lines where they claim that this is all domestic waters and that any use of that seaway between europe and asia has to pay them about five hundred thousand dollars will the central arctic ocean be used without the russians or will the old northwest passage be used and i uh next slide uh i'm proud to announce that uh the original seal act did not pass but a federal advisory committee saying should we set up uh something like the saint lawrence seaway in the arctic and bring the five arctic coastal states together to offer a joint icebreaker service has now passed congress and it's up to the secretary of transportation the new secretary to get that study going next slide this follows on uh quite a bit of work we've done with the eight arctic nations to set up a blueprint for safety in the arctic ocean next slide um after that uh study that set of studies that i paid for as chair of the arctic research commission uh we have done more mapping under the law of the sea there's been russian canadian u.s legislation national policies the search and rescue agreement in 2011 an oil spill agreement in 2013 making the polar code mandatory so that if you go to the arctic on a cruise ship you'll have heated lifeboats good idea uh and there's current arctic council work by paying that has been sponsored by the world's insurance industry and then finally the coast guard forum so let me leave it at that let's go to the next slide in terms of infrastructure this is just how we've divvied up the area for the search and rescue agreement uh next slide you've seen the united states now has made a commitment to build six new icebreakers first one is awarded to halter marine in mississippi 746 million dollars and congress has put poorer than money for the next one and uh design work for the ones that follow uh that's very important that the u.s emplaces that next slide i mentioned that i'm chair uh or vice chair of the a2a railroad president trump recently issued a presidential finding allowing this railroad like 21 other railroads which crossed the u.s canada border to be built it will be a joint project between alberta northwest territories yukon and alaska to essentially bring commodities in and out next slide of uh of pacific ports and it will help reduce shipping times say for just-in-time delivery american goods going into asian factories or vice versa or what my daughter has taught me is called fast fashion to get in and out of north america by by a closer rail connection because the ports in alaska are about halfway across the pacific that's about a 17 billion dollar project and it's it's moving forward now with design and permitting next slide we recently also signed a uh an agreement to not fish in the central arctic ocean so that we don't have a race for resources there and we try to coordinate our fish policies between the arctic nations as we do in the north pacific and that's one thing we have done to reduce conflict so let's just go to the next slide the question that was brought up by the title of the seminar is are we on the brink of a hot conflict in the arctic we know there are potential triggers the rand corporation's done a study a territorial dispute could be a trigger resource conflict could be a trigger a denial of access could be a trigger and frankly any sort of even a conflict in the south china sea would see the possibility of moving people and materiel across the arctic uh the arctic is a pathway for uh uh if you had any sort of closure the indian ocean uh uh the arctic would be uh probably expedited as a transportation corridor so that's all things to that need to be considered on the idea of a conflict there are established pathways to de-escalate and deter uh conflict that the law of the sea is one but the united states has not ratified it uh uh i think there are some changes that need to be made before it could be ratified but uh almost all parties who oppose law see believe it would be very important to get it going in the arctic the arctic council is there and then six of the eight arctic states are nato members and uh i'd say the about the only cooperation between nato and russia has been uh in the arctic and then what used don rumsfeld's terms are there known unknowns and unknown unknowns uh but the fact is is that uh china as a player could could force some discussion and uh all i know is that i don't think any of us want our country to be caught without an arctic presence if if any of the potential triggers were to happen so with that i'm going to leave you with three pictures the top of the world or just sorry the summary on on policy we think we have to protect people people's needs and nature and be real about the role of the arctic in the u.s economy we have to bring the military and the civil authorities together to fill infrastructure gaps together especially for ports icebreakers telecom power and fuel i think it's very important that we activate this new commission created by congress to keep russia from establishing a monopoly on our c roots i have to say that you're senator from maryland senator wicker others are part of the helsinki commission which has been watching very closely russia's economic power over over the former uh soviet states and uh uh that commission has actually been very supportive of making sure that we internationalize rfc ways we need to contain china's efforts which means attract investment but don't attract a negative geopolitical influence and then finally i'm not going to forget our friends in greenland so with that i'm going to leave you with three pictures the next one is just that polar projection and once you've seen that map of the world keep thinking of it because the world's much closer when you go north than you would than you would believe i can leave my house in anchorage and the time it takes me to get to seattle i can be in russia i can be in the time it takes me to get to minneapolis i can be in iceland and uh it's it's a very close part of the world next thing next slide just remember that it's people who live there and it's people who are living a lifestyle that needs to be protected and yet i'm not going to tell any kid born in an alaska village that he can't be president of ibm uh you know gail schubert who headed our 30 billion dollar arms board you know grew up in unicleat and uh uh you know worked on wall street before she returned ahead one of the large native corporations it's an amazing place and amazing people and last slide also amazing critters so with that uh duncan i'm going to hand you back the con i hope i didn't talk too long a little longer than i expected but there's a lot going on we've um we've got some questions first one is why hasn't the united states gates really engaged in the arctic to either limit china or russia's expansion efforts to the waterways the natural resources in the land well first off we don't want to limit any nation's access to the water because if we do that then other nations will limit our access say through the straits of gibraltar or as china is trying to do in the south china sea and so we're very much a freedom of the seas nation compared to canada which has made these domestic waters in the northwest passage in russia which has made the northern sea route domestic waters so it would be most of the nations of the world want the ocean to be open and so we've done that we have reacted very severely to chinese investment when a large amount of icelandic real estate was being purchased uh iceland said nope that's not gonna happen when the uh chinese said we're happy to build your airport in greenland the military authorities and nato and so forth said nope let's figure out a way to get that airport built without chinese money so i have to say that we have been responsive uh there but uh uh secretary pompeo's comments at the last arctic council meeting where he criticized russia for calling or china for calling itself a near arctic nation was you know we have an ambulancy we on the one hand don't want chinese control and on the other hand we do want chinese markets and investment and uh i think you could say the same thing about pretty much any place in america so that's the answer should the u.s be doing anything specifically to deter deter any actions up there i mean i i know you just talked about the balance there of commerce versus um not angering folks that you want to conduct commerce with sure i i think we have to fill the infrastructure gap in the arctic i think that railroad that i talked about will make the arctic very much uh an easier place to defend over the long term i think building the six icebreakers and actually the white house asked the agencies to come back and the document that came back is not public but i i believe the answer is now more than nine icebreakers i believe the the canadians have figured out a way to pay for their icebreakers by charging the commerce that uses it we don't do that in the united states but if we're doing it for international traffic is that seal act proposed that would help it would help pay for some of the larger ports you require close to 500 million dollars worth of dredging i know my dredging friends would love that for the port of gnome but there's a natural port called port clarence just north of that and i think the military and the civil authorities need to get together and come up with a construction agenda and make it happen and see what we can do to generate revenue and let me just put it this way you know the kind of traffic you see in the port of baltimore if a hundred ships a year paid five hundred thousand dollars apiece to traverse the arctic ocean with icebreaker escort that's 50 million dollars uh 200 ships that's 100 million dollars uh a hundred million dollars is more than the entire u.s ice breaking operations budget in other words i believe that global shipping even in very small amounts eighteen thousand ships use the suez canal uh even eighteen hundred ships one you know uh ten percent of that could help pay for the major arctic infrastructure we need to establish a presence okay there was a copenhagen business school report from 2016 arctic shipping it's entitled arctic shipping commercial opportunities and challenges again it's from the copenhagen copenhagen business school and it basically the long and the short of it is is it basically said that they didn't think that um arctic liner shipping would become economically feasible till about 2040 and that's if the ice cover continues to diminish at its present rate so with that as a backdrop the question becomes should two parts to the question should the u.s ignore the arctic in terms of shipping lanes uh for the next decade or so because in the opinion of this this paper it really won't be viable till then and what would happen if we did if we if we ignored say the arctic until say 2040 or 2050 thanks duncan and thank you for the question i i may not have been articulate about that cabin in the western mountains of maryland but you know the fact is if we're not there somebody else makes the rules we may have every right to make the rules but you know it's the it's the brother who lives near the cabin who figures out how you're going to paint the walls and whether or not you're going to dig a well and and you know what the rules are for users and we are not there enough in the arctic thinking about arctic shipping as an opportunity and i'll i'll just give you a different thing 50 000 jobs in anchorage alaska come from our airport because we're the fifth largest air cargo port in the world uh most everything that goes between europe and asia stops there for gas most everything between asia and north america stops there for gas why did we get that nova sabirsk in the middle of siberia could as easily have been that that port for eurasian traffic we got there because we were reliable russia is not considered to be a reliable partner for a number of different reasons and the united states is and right there again in maryland we when we had a new ocean called space we put up a company called comsat developed the world's telecommunications satellites ultimately privatized it and i think that's what we have to plan for it's a chicken and egg situation i've read the copenhagen report i will find you you know marist which is one of the world's largest shipping lines had someone had a former admiral who'd go to conferences with us and say the same thing there wouldn't give me any shipping until 2040 and guess who just tested a container ship across the arctic ocean china's costco cosco biggest shipping company is now doing regular container shipping and with 30 40 lng tankers the ones i described this will be a year-round ocean for commerce so so building off of that um are there any major changes that are needed in the in the law of the sea convention so here's what's held up law of the sea convention uh and it's it's a long story dating back to the time i was in college but uh the oceans were declared by the un to be the common heritage of mankind and and they definitely are it was a big battle in the un law of the sea of who owned the resources in the oceans and uh there was a group that wanted the entire set of ocean resources from say three miles offshore to be owned by the un in essence be a tax for global government uh we instead recognize the rights of nations for that 200 mile limit and the rights of nations where the coastal where where the uh continental shelf goes out further for a wider economic zone and but in the high seas there is an international seabed authority to collect taxes on our royalties on any use of that ocean and that that has a huge amount of opposition a majority of uh republicans in the senate enough to prevent a ratification signed a letter back during the obama administration and frankly i think we ought to say okay we're not going to collect attacks on americans we're going to contribute by way of science or some other thing that would probably resolve the big problem i can tell i've been lectured personally by john kerry and joe biden several times on this issue when i was a bush administration official saying why don't you get this done and uh i haven't had a chance to go back to either one of them to say why didn't you get it done when you were in power but it it to me it's not going to get done until we call a convention again and resolve that one issue kind of building off of that then how would you suggest building a closer relationship with the people of greenland i think it was very good that we uh opened a consulate there i think we should look at very carefully the three of the largest external cash flows two greenlands 65 000 people come from the united states example number one is is we spend uh oh i don't know 60 or 80 million dollars a year on there on science uh number two we buy a lot of their fish uh tourism uh uh comes primarily from the united states or could come primarily from the united states and uh i think looking at the infrastructure needs and figuring out a way to help them foster investments they need would make sense the inequity that i mentioned in air traffic control is one that's really up to them and denmark to figure out together but that's one the united states can support so i would say all of those things and just know that the thule air base where we have that giant radar is a a free contribution from the government of denmark to the to our alliance so the local greenlanders get no rent for that uh when the united states said okay we're going to use an american shipping company to supply that rather than a greenlandic shipping company it doubled the cost or i don't know if it doubled it but it dramatically raised the cost of living for everybody else in greenland and we figured that out fast enough to subcontract it back to the greenlanders but i think we just have to be sensitive to their needs as we do in any uh dealing with any small country uh when we spend lots of money in a place at what level is arctic policy handled by the us government how high up i mean is it a is it a state department thing does it go right to the office of the presidency where you know who at what level is it discussed and handled so that's that's a good question in the current administration there's a couple of guys at the national security council who helped draft the requirement on icebreakers under the obama administration it was basically handled out of john holdren's office of the office of science and tech policy in the bush administration before that i sat for many years on a state department coordinating committee that looked at these issues there has been a legislative attempt by the alaskans to take that white house interagency council that the uh obama administration had informally or under an executive order and make it make it uh something under law and i'd say that is one of the things that we're looking at in our recommendations going forward okay um the next one the next two and i'm going to combine these because they're related to each other is what would you consider the top five approaches to reducing climate change in the arctic which obviously is a global climate change question um and then kind of a an ancillary question to that is you know you talked about a bridge fuel and some of the folks don't know what that is so if you could explain what a bridge fuel is so let me just answer that part of the question first if uh you know i believe cole still has got dan jurgen's book and you may have had dan as a speaker uh i i think coal still provides something like 40 percent of the world's power uh source uh if you're in an area where you can't rely on solar or wind uh uh for example a shift to natural gas from coal would make sense and i'll just give you an example uh the los angeles uh power district has now said it's going to shut down its coal plants use natural gas try to feed more hydrogen into that natural gas turbines made with solar and wind over time and ultimately go to hydrogen for power production and so growth of lng actually can probably help us even though it is putting carbon in the atmosphere it can probably help us so that's that's number one i would say don't you know in in people who want to shut down fossil fuels recognize that some of them are are helping us wean our way from being carbon emitters the second thing is natural gas and this is one of the five things i'd say not just for the arctic but for the entire world there are some very neat new catalyst technologies that will help you remove the carbon from natural gas and and just make hydrogen and hydrogen right now is usually made with steam reforming from natural gas and there's uh uh and there's there's there's uh some an iron or catalyst a tin catalyst that are actually headed toward industrial production i will give voice to the debate and i'm not saying that the answer is right but the geo engineering debate is one to be considered there's an ngo now pushing for glass beads on the arctic ocean to keep up the albedo effect and help help return more sea ice not sure i agree with it either glass beads can be benign but we all thought plastic was somewhat benign and uh we've got to be very careful there uh i think it's very important that we uh that we understand the hydrology the one of the big research gaps that we found was changes there uh and find ways to capture methane uh we're we're working on capturing methane in the in the oil production world in the permian basin and and uh in the dakotas but uh we're not really have a way to help capture the methane that comes out of the tundra i don't know that there really is a way but there may be and there's a big piece of u.s japan cooperation on that right now going on on the north slope so i would say everything we can do to reduce carbon uh carbon our footprint in in oil and gas production while we maintain our market share with that pulling back unilaterally tends to tends to send investment elsewhere uh but at the same time do everything we can on other mitigation there's a bill kind of a you know i'm not a fan of the green new deal but i am a fan of large parts of the blue new deal which is a bill pending a series of bills pending to improve aquaculture kelp aquaculture alone has a great possibility of sequestering huge amounts of carbon and creating an economic product okay recently there was um there was a recent auction for access to mineral rights in the public lands of alaska and yet there was a very low amount of bidding on those on those rights what happened i think two things happened one uh it happened at the end of an administration where anybody who bought those bids knew that they would find an administration that would probably not want to buy them back but maybe uh may be interested in making the permitting for use of those licenses very very long and slow and we saw that frankly the bush administration at least land in the chukchi sea offshore to shell shell had paid more for that than anybody had ever paid for an oil lease a couple of billion dollars they spent close to nine billion dollars and it was death by a thousand cuts when at the end of the whole permitting process under eight years of obama they were allowed to drill one well their their well didn't hit what they wanted to and they pulled out and uh uh you know i i can say you know you you had people in the obama administration hillary clinton applauding that that had happened it's not good for america when you when somebody spends 9 billion down a rat hole and we've got to figure out how to you know where we do agree to have oil drilling how to have it done right and safely and i can tell you several arbitrary decisions that were made on that so i think people got afraid that they wouldn't be able to follow through i think the current low oil price environment was won and uh i i'll also say that uh some of the announcements by global banks that they wouldn't finance uh things in that area may have had an effect as well okay should the u.s military be operating up in the open ranges of the arctic um yes no what are what are some of what are some us options there well for example alaska has some of the best training areas without encroachment on communities area there and so uh abs absolutely we do need to be defending our homeland i'm the former honorary chair of the dew line i've been to a lot of the radar stations along the route those those are very very important with a new cruise missile threat it's very very important that we understand that we have looked down radar and have have the ability to understand that threats to the entire united states could come by crew fast cruise missiles and hypersonics that that are not treated with the same sort of missile defense and radar systems that we have today um and i believe we should have a deterrent potential where we can have all weather access for for the ships uh not just for military activity but for search and rescue as you see more cruise ships up there so that's a long answer to say yes the um final two questions and and uh what role is sarah palin playing in this and somebody wants to know what you're drinking and if you're drinking whiskey while you're doing this talk yeah i hope so i wish i were i i've got one more presentation to make in korea today uh so i'm not i'm drinking tea not whiskey unfortunately um governor palin is is back in alaska she uh she made some statements uh after the capital attacks the other day that i i i don't know where she got her information so i'll leave that to her to defend um i will tell you when she was governor and we i went to her to talk about ways to kind of improve cooperation with the russians to push for more icebreakers and uh that sort of thing she was very supportive as governor and while i do talk to her from time to time it's usually not about arctic issues okay that's all the questions we have for tonight um sir thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for doing this i appreciate it very much and to all of those folks online thank you for attending tonight and we'll see you next time at our next webinar um which we'll be getting an announcement an announcement about in the next few days so again sir thank you and to everyone online have a good night thank you