Witness History - Saving Antarctica - BBC Sounds

Another rewrite of history. Resources had nothing to do with it initially. Coming off the Korean Conflict and Suez War, it was an opportunity to decide there would be no reason to fight over it. There was unlimited oil in the deserts and US. The Soviets had all sorts of resources. It was hugely expensive just to be there, let alone go for resources. That and there was no idea that resources existed in the first place. The technology at the time made chasing resources a non starter. The Soviets knew that a second Cold War magnitude effort over Antarctica would bankrupt them as it eventually did later on without Antarctica. The notion of protection and non commercial use can be found in the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. The Madrid stuff just bulked it out a bit because big oil and others were starting to mealy mouth reasons why it would be OK to go after resources even with the prior treaties. The reason for this one was the technology was getting to a point wherein resource exploration was certainly doable and the numbers were starting to agree on development and production maybe. The Ecofreaks claim it was all their doing. Actually, the bigger story again was fighting over it from in a commercial sense could lead to uncontrolled escalations and military interventions. Best to keep kicking the can down the road on this one. Antarctica will be subjected to resource use at some point. It's just a matter of time and we'll probably not be smart enough to avoid the conflict thing.