This part of the Arctic was once thought to be impassible even by smaller boats because where ships are sail through now used to be miles of solid ice 100’s of feet thick.  All boats from Japan to Rotterdam, the largest port in all of Europe and the 6^th largest metropolitan area in Europe, once had to around China, India, through the Suez canal to get there.

The trip took about 13,000 miles to get from Japan to Rotterdam, with this new route, it will take about 8,400 miles!  It will be interesting to see if this also bring up any national security issues for Russia or the EU.  This canal, while is a few years off from stealing the Suez’s business, is simply the largest leap in shipping in a very very long time.

What is more, is that by 2015, they expect this passage’s ice to have all but disappeared.  Hundreds of miles of thick ice will have melted by then, allowing ships to pass easily.   The question is: where does all that water go?  Read here about how 20 million people have already been displaced by rising seas in China.

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Reprinted: Treehugger 9/2009 Brian Merchant

We’re all plenty familiar with the advertising trend where marketers seek to portray products and services from a ‘green’ angle, regardless of their actual environmental impact. Well, perhaps such greenwashing campaigns have proved so successful (some 98% of ‘eco-labeled’ products were greenwashed last year) that marketers are following its lead to exploit another growing environmental trend–this time, it’s “localwashing.” Here are some pictures of the worst ads by big companies pretending to be local in order to cash in on conscious consumers.

Grist put together an informative/appalling/hilarious slideshow that demonstrates how big corporations–from the Venezuelan oil company Citgo to Starbucks to Lay’s–have launched marketing campaigns attempting to portray their businesses as ‘local’ to cash in on the positive trend of buying and eating local.