This is a big question that we haven't really asked in this country: what do we want to have, and what is our judgment, and when you think about it, what cargoes are likely to go through the Northwest Passage as opposed to the Panama Canal? To the lower eastern seaboard of the United States, it may be that cargoes will go via Panama. They won't want to go all the way around the top and then all the way back down to wherever it is. Some have suggested that cargoes destined to points south of Boston will go from Asia through the Panama Canal. Anything for north of Boston may want to use the Northwest Passage.
There are economics that have to be considered. I believe Canada is not going to charge a fee for anybody going through the passage. If we do, then we're going to make the passage less competitive compared with Panama, and so on. In the past we have not charged fees. The Russians are the ones who will charge a fee.
There is, in other words, a great deal of economics to be worked out, and that's part of deciding what we want. The thought of a joint administration for the Northwest Passage is a little ahead of its time. A joint seaway authority, for instance, is ahead of its time because we haven't really decided what we want, what the economics are, and what we want to make happen. We're expecting that somehow it will happen, but I don't believe it will. Maybe we could make it happen.
Again, northerners are not going to benefit greatly from this, and they will probably have a slightly higher risk and maybe a substantially higher risk of rain pollution from all of it. Do we want it, or would we like the Arctic to be a kind of go-slow zone?