h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lately, Global Warming has been threatening to thaw out the North Polar ice-cap. This has led to heightened interest by many nations in claiming a stake of this quite possibly oil-rich territory.

Now it strikes me as just plain barmy that an environmental disaster (melting polar ice-caps) caused by burning oil (increasing atmospheric CO2 and so causing the Greenhouse Effect) should be taken as an opportunity to burn yet more oil!

We do that and Antarctica will be next - and that's a sea level rise of 70 metres! yes, that's 70m - goodbye civilisation!!

Wouldn't it be a little bit more prudent to declare the whole of the Arctic a World Heritage Site, off limits to any commercial exploitation, leave it as a fertile breeding ground for the basis of much of the world's marine life (ie krill and plankton blooms) and try and clean up the large chunk of the earth we've already overexploited?

Wouldn't it?

sorry this should be in another place, i'l try and repeat i somewhere more sensible