The race for the Arctic's natural resources, set out in our special series, is best explained by a tale of two countries. The first country is as near to nirvana as we have on Earth. It is rich and comfortable, with the highest standard of living in the world and the lowest murder rate. Its workers are the most productive in the world; its goods are consumed in every part of the globe; and its $550bn nest egg is currently the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.

This country is also very friendly to the environment. At home, 95% of its electricity is zero carbon. Its huge fisheries are the most sustainably managed in all the oceans. Abroad is it spending more on rainforest protection than any other nation.

The second country is very different. It is one of the biggest oil and gas exporters in the world and is pushing exploration into risky new areas against the advice of its own environmental research institutes. It is mining coal and iron ore in one of the most fragile habitats on Earth. This country's wealth is invested in dirty tar sands projects and it is a major arms exporter. It is miserably failing to meet its own targets to cut the carbon emissions that are fuelling climate change, while in the seas, its fish farms vastly outnumber the wild populations and spread disease.

The first nation is Norway. And so is the second. Norway's world-leading green ambition contrasts stunningly with its lust for the black gold that delivers its world-leading wealth. The contradiction is acknowledged even at the highest levels. "Yes, it is a dilemma," Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway's foreign minister, told me last month when I visited the Arctic. "But it is not for Norway alone, it is the world's dilemma."

Yet the world is not deciding the fate of the Arctic. The five Arctic nations, under whose national jurisdiction about 80% of the oil, gas and mineral rights will fall, control the region. And if Norway, the most favoured nation on Earth, cannot resist the lure of the buried treasure, whatever the environmental cost, who can? The other core members of the Arctic council - the US, Canada, Denmark and Russia - are scarcely paupers either.

The Arctic is irresistible for three simple reasons. First, a global economy addicted to fossil fuels at almost any price will always find a dealer willing to find and sell them their fix at almost any cost. Second, the strong demand for iron, uranium, gold and other metals shows little sign of ending, and won't until new goods are refashioned from old.

Third, and most telling, the most precious properties of the Arctic are economically worthless. The ice cap reflects sunlight and cools the planet, for free, while tundras trap vast volumes of the potent greenhouse gas methane. The Arctic oceans shelter some of the richest fisheries on Earth, without billing the fishing fleets who harvest them. And the fragile wilderness that stands as a last testament to a pre-human planet is of no more than philosophical worth.

Taking advantage of the melting ice to unearth oil and gas that will fuel yet further melting is a grotesque irony. But the race into the Arctic is inevitable in a world that prizes mineral wealth but takes the natural world for granted. Until resistance to transformative action on climate change and environmental degradation thaws, the true value of the Arctic will run through our hands like meltwater.

• This article was amended at 14:52 on 7 July to remove a statement that Norway's environment minister is a member of the Green party. Erik Solheim is in fact a member of the Socialist left party.