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The Land of the Midnight Sun provided spectacular video for both NBC and CBS. CBS' Daniel Sieberg kicked of his Journey to the Top of the World with a trip to sapphire-blue glaciers of Devon Island in Canada's Nunavut Territory. Sieberg cited that statistic that ice is melting this summer at its fastest rate in 30 years and he explained the impact of the warming of the Arctic Ocean on the rest of us: "Think of arctic ice as a mirror reflecting some of the sun's power back into space and helping to keep Earth cool. As ice disappears, temperatures go up and more ice melts."
The disappearing ice offers the opportunity that Kerry Sanders covered from the North Pole for NBC's In Depth. The Arctic, he explained, is home "to polar bears, walruses--and then there is the oil and gas." After Russia staked its territorial claim to submarine mineral rights last month, Canada has announced plans to build two new Arctic military bases and Denmark launched an expedition to map its claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain chain stretching from Greenland to the pole. The United States has mobilized a Coast Guard cutter and Norway, too, has made a claim. Sanders concluded with multilateral optimism: "All this political maneuvering may not matter in the end. Right now, a United Nations treaty has the final word on who owns the Arctic Sea's riches."
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