Perhaps not entirely equitorial, but I believe more temperate is the current theory. There has been quite a bit of evidence taken from the geologic record to substantiate it. I remember reading an article somewhere, I can't find it atm, where some paleogeologists took cores from the north polar region and found diatomaceous material that could only have lived in a warmer, more temperate sea...

Depends. Today or in the next few years? 99.99% no. The theory that democratic countries never go to war with each other is the closest thing that we have to a scientific 'law' in international relations. It just doesn't happen. The fallout on the U.S. would be enormous; broken alliances, cancelled treaties, trade embargos, etc. Do you think that the U.S. could occupy Canada and extract Canadian natural resources easily enough to make it worth the trouble? I don't, and I don't think that American policy makers do either. With all the Canadians in the U.S. and Americans in Canada, the continent would seriously turn to hell.

If the U.S. had something else that we wanted enough I'm sure they could wiggle some kind of deal out of us. Softwood lumber got a lot of collars up north of the border and I think if it was something bigger, the government might be willing to start trading dirt cheap oil for it. But that also assumes that the U.S. has enough knowledge and willingness to use 'soft' power forwardly, which I'm afraid it doesn't, at least not to the extent of Canada.

If the U.S. turned into some king of radical authoritarian state in the next several decades, maybe something military could happen. Maybe such a situation is not discountable in the face of a looming energy crisis. It is really a big topic though, with a couple of ways to approach it.

EDIT: What you may be more likely to see in the next few years is the U.S. getting on board in laying claims to the Arctic and the rights to the huge oil reserves up there. The real battle for that will probably be fought in international courts. I am a huge proponent of developing an actual northern policy and getting the lead out in establishing an Arctic presence. I could right another big post about that, though.

Thats exactly whats been burning me lately. The only thing that I even remotely agree with that Stephen Harper has done is promote an Arctic presense for Canada. America has been trying for some time now to dilute our claim to the so called north-west passage by sending in submarines and falunting our borders. The Russians are arguing for control of artic areas with Canada and Denmark is also talking about the extention of the shelf from Greenland. All this of course falls under the perview of the UN Law of the Sea. Whats fascinating about the US's policies right now is that Bush is actually trying to get Congress to ratify the treaty so that they can claim the area since there are believed to be oil reserves there. Says alot about how much oil they think is in there that Bush wants the US to surrender its sovereignty to an international body of nations to decide without the US's abusive input.

2 things face Canada in the arctic. The first is protecting our claim to waters within our borders; the north-west passage. As the artic ice melts these waters will be more and more useful for shipping and if enough traffic goes unchallenged by Canada through these waters for long enough it will be considered international waters and Canada will lose her claim top them. This is something that the US is hoping for obviously with their blatant infringements. The second is the claim to the extention of the shelf (or whatever its called) which extends from the surface of Canadian soil. I believe that if we can prove that it extends into the arctic we have claim to up to 200 miles from the nearest Canadian coast. The hard part is determining this, and our deadline is 2012 I think.

Anyway thats Canada's stake in the future of the Arctic. Economically it could be great for Canada since we are faced with America below us and NAFTA threatens our economic sovereignty more every year. I don't much fancy trade with China neither. The north seems like a good prospect for Canada, and it wouldn't involve us invading a semi-allied middle-eastern oil-rich soon-to-be-terrorist-haven.

Now we just need to get a bunch of planes and ice breakers up there kicking ass to keep our waters ours.

If it gets as bad as whats in these articles then the international courts won't have the last say. [Insert country name here] will not jeopardize their national security and survival on the say so of an international court. Who would that be? It could very well be the U.S., China, Russian federation of states, or the European Union. Not to mention that if something like that was in the foreseeable future you are also looking at a league of Arab nations for self protection or an alignment with a foreign power. The world would never have known such savagery. A little melodramatic but it gives one a picture.

We are getting off-topic but I hoping that somebody upstairs says something soon beyond "let's secure the Arctic!" I attended the first Northern Watch conference this week and although it was really cool (pardon the pun) to hear about all the imaging satellites, X-band radars, and magneto-inductive transmitters being developed and ruggedized for Arctic military use, it's depressing that details on any actual Arctic mandate are still missing. A question was raised about what exactly the policy plan is to secure the Arctic. A girl was on-hand from the DND ADMPOL group and her answer was limited to "umm, err, uhh, we're still working on that one." Right, so we're spending a million bucks building proof-of-concept satellites and ice-mapping forumulas with no present indication that they will have any place in the forthcoming policy. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Everyone is afraid to talk about what will happen if we have all those sensors and warships and we actually discover a Russian or even American submarine cruising through the NWP.

So the tech is there, but the ideas are not. I'm hoping to tackle with my thesis what the heck this 'sovereignty' thing is all about, anyway, and how a state is supposed to convince everyone else that a strip of land or water belongs to it. There are lots of philosophical considerations about what makes a country a country but the practical matters, in my opinion, are seriously foggy at this point.

You're probably right, it's so hard to tell what things would be like that far ahead. The precident does not really exist for a worldwide energy shortage on that kind of magnitude.

Oil Shortage and Canada
 

The situation to which Bradclark is referring (i.e. a future scenario in which desperation for fuel to stave off society's collapse trumps legal and internation relations considerations) is what I was referring to when I originally brought the matter up (as I said earlier, I was worried about the apocalyptic scenario described in Skybird's articles). I never meant the suggest that the United States would casually invade Canada on a whim during normal times - I hope no one here thought I was suggesting that (although the lack of angry American remarks directed at me suggests I was indeed understood). In desperate times, if the national fabric of a nation was about to unravel, who knows what steps its government might take to preserve it. All that really is idle speculation though, as fatty seems to be suggesting, so I guess we can let it go at this point.

As interesting as the debate on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty is, I won't drag this thread off topic by commenting on it too much. However, I do think I read something about the US finally considering ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, although recognition of the Arctic Waters as internal Canadian waters instead of an international waterway probably wouldn't accompany that. I actually wrote a 4th year political science paper on this subject; I received an A, but I don't remember my exact subject.:88)

In regards to the original subject, does anyone know if there has been any success in developing alternate fuel sources? From what I understand, there hasn't been a lot. Also, does anyone know if the expansion of Canadian reserves would help keep prices in check, even if just a little? Canadian resources appear to be one factor (however small) that Skybird's articles did not seem to take into account - the only references to Canada were along the lines of: imports to the US from friendly nations such as Canada and Norway would decrease, although I didn't see any elaboration (I might have missed something like that though).