Turning Up the Heat on Emerging Arctic Challenges Secretary
Clinton Leads Delegation to Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting
SOURCE: AP/Kike Calvo Today, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will attend
the 7th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting. Clinton will be the
first secretary of state to ever attend an Arctic Council
meeting, underscoring its importance for achieving substantive
agreements on the myriad challenges facing the region. The
Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.
Warming seas mean less ice, which means increased access for
shipping, fishing, and oil and gas extraction in one of the last
unexploited regions of the planet. The council has not kept pace
with the rate of change occurring in the region to date and, as
a result, there is an overwhelming lack of unified, strategic
management structures, particularly on the issues of climate
change and drilling in the Arctic. At the meeting, member
states—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Icelan