Oil Rush At World's End

Untold oil and natural gas reserves sit trapped beneath ice at the top of the world, and northern nations are angling for their respective slices of the pie. But America is hampered in making its claim because Congress hasn't ratified an international treaty that governs ocean territory disputes. Russia, in the power void, is making a grab at large tracts of ocean, land and ice, and the potentially lucrative natural resources hidden beneath them. The international joust highlights another facet of global warming: certain countries will benefit from access to new lands and resources, at the same time that other countries and their people lose land to encroaching seas, increasingly frequent natural disasters or other climate-driven changes, according to a story in the June 10 Chicago Tribune.