The View from the North: Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Appears Increasingly Unlikely

Rosneft, a Russian petroleum company, completed drilling the northernmost well in the world – the Universitetskaya-1 well in the Arctic — this past September. (Source: Rosneft) In 2010, representatives of 193 governments agreed to limit global warming to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The goal is to avoid 'dangerous interference with the climate system.' Four years later, a widely publicized study concluded that if we are to keep to that goal, all Arctic fossil fuel resources "should be classified as unburnable." Moreover, there can be no increase in production of unconventional oil, including oil shale and tar sands. Now, while attending the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, I've learned a few things that make me highly skeptical that those Arctic oil and gas reserves will be left unburned, and that global warming will be held to under 2 degrees C. For evidence, you need go no further than ...