Seabed scramble: putting it all under ice

Seabed scramble: putting it all under ice

15th August 2007

"This will probably be the last big shift in ownership of territory in the history of the earth."

That's one recent comment on what many will regard as an unseemly race for seabed minerals, in which the most powerful nations will come out on top - as they have done during centuries of plunder of the earth's crust.

The Bush regime has said that it's not competing with Russia and Canada to lay claim to the riches beneath the melting Arctic ice cap, but it's clearly now trying to extend the definition of its continental shelf in order to do precisely that.