A warmer Arctic means change for all.

horrific end, foiling yet another search for a Northwest Passage. Despite dozens of rescue missions in the following years, none of Franklin’s crew was seen alive again. Yet it was those missions that finally led to the mapping of a water route to the Orient— albeit an ice-clogged one. The centuries-long quest for the fabled Northwest Passage proved quixotic for generations of explorers, but what eluded those brave if sometimes foolhardy adventurers will come to pass, probably in this century. By simply staying home and burning billions of tons of fossil fuels, humans will melt an icefree path through the Arctic seas, at least in summer, that will finally link Europe and eastern North America to the Orient by the shortest possible seaway. Shipping will pass freely, and petroleum and mineral riches of the high Arctic will flow out. For oil exploration alone, the Arctic “is the frontier in the world,” says geologist Thomas Ahlbrandt of the U.S. Geological Survey. And the polar frontier might well set the stage for conflict, as naval powers stake out competing claims in the newly open waters of a new “global commons.” But a frustrating barrier to navigators is an essential platform for life. As the summer’s ice retreats farther and farther northward, the open water so alluring to commercial interests will confound polar bears looking for solid footing in their hunt for seals. Inuits and other indigenous peoples likewise depend on the ice for access to whales and walruses. And algae at the base of the food pyramid cling to the underside of the ice. A hundred years from now, life around the Arctic Ocean will go on— but it will not be the same.