GIRDWOOD -- Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity was the word uttered over and over again as international leaders, global financiers, national dignitaries, state officials and small-town Alaskans met here to discuss the economic and social future of Alaska's Arctic and near-Arctic north.

Everyone attending The Arctic Imperative Summit seemed to agree on the opportunity for oil and gas, the opportunity for rare-earth minerals, the opportunity for new shipping, the opportunity for jobs, the opportunity for almost everything. David Rubenstein, co-founder of a $107 billion global asset management company called the Carlyle Group -- and the husband of Alaska Dispatch publisher Alice Rogoff -- on Monday described the entire Arctic region as "the last (and final) emerging market."

Emerging markets are the "hot play," as it is called in today's investment climate. Emerging markets are riskier for investors than well-established ones; but with bigger risks come potentially bigger returns. And the Arctic is attractive now because of a wealth of undeveloped minerals and hydrocarbons, not to mention its potential as a new shipping route between Europe and Asia as the polar ice cap slowly but steadily succumbs to global warming.

U.S. isn't in the Arctic game

Once, Arctic Alaska was the really icy part of "Seward's Icebox" back in the 1860s, when Secretary of State William H. Seward talked President Abraham Lincoln into buying the massive, frozen territory from the Russians for 2 cents an acre. Rubenstein suggested that approval of that purchase might now rank right up there with the unification of the states in the litany of Lincoln's great achievements. 

To date, Alaska has delivered America billions of dollars in gold, billions in seafood and trillions in crude oil. And there is a lot more in resource wealth just waiting to be developed if the state and the U.S. government are willing to engage development.

Whether they are or aren't is hard to tell.

"Right now, Russia is ahead of the United States," Rubenstein said. "Right now, we're not in the game. Russia is in the the game," along with the Scandinavian countries. Canada is moving to to get into the game. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Alaska are mainly (still) just talking.

Movers and shakers -- from retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, the former commander of NATO to Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell to local community leaders -- question whether there is the collective, political will to move forward. Arctic communities hugging the northern seas, far from Alaska's limited road system, have for decades watched port projects languish, trapped in the realm of ideas, with actual construction elusive.

It has been the same story for most state infrastructure. The state's limited highway system hasn't seen major growth since the Dalton Highway was built in the 1970s to provide access to the North Slope for construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Port development has largely focused on a handful of communities with significant populations and connected to the road system, communities like Anchorage and Seward.

Important projects, Gen. Ralston noted, have often fallen victim to urgent projects. Both the state and federal governments have focused efforts on bringing clean water and sewer to rural Alaska villages sometimes lacking both -- with little thought to what sort of economy might be created in those places to support the new utilities.

The state of Alaska has spent a lot of money building vital, local schools while ignoring competing and important needs for roads and other facilities that might grow the economy. Oil revenues that might have funded much-needed infrastructure have instead been frittered away on agriculture projects doomed to failure. Or it's been tied up in the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend program, the annual socialist handout from the state that rewards residents simply for living here.

The PFD program has been good for Alaskans. It has bought a lot of flat-screen televisions and plenty of trips to Hawaii. It has financed snowmachines, four-wheelers and boats.