- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@quokk.au
Summary
Trump stated the U.S. will “go as far as we have to go” to gain control of Greenland, citing national and international security needs.
JD Vance will visit Greenland’s Pituffik military base, scaling back a broader visit amid backlash from Greenland and Denmark.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede condemned the move as “aggressive pressure” and insisted that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, asserting that U.S. control is essential for security.
Honest answer?
Trump himself couldn’t care less about Greenland. I will bet the left body part of your choice that Trump couldn’t point out Greenland on a map or knows a single thing about the long-term importance of Greenland. He is going after Greenland because someone is telling him to go after Greenland. And no, it’s not Putin. It’s his corporate donors. Granted, this also benefits Putin as it would lead to the dissolution of NATO in the process, but that’s just a side effect.
Corporate donors, privately, aren’t stupid people. They damn well know that climate change is real and their companies are fucking up the planet. They’ll never, ever say that publicly for obvious reasons, but they know it. But they’ll be damned if they’re not going to make a shitload of money along the way. And they also know that what is currently largely uninhabitable tundra right now is going to become prime real estate as climate change worsens everywhere else. Much of that uninhabitable tundra will become land that will allow people to live relatively as comfortably as they’re living now.
Grab a large, largely uninhabited island now, and you’ll have prime real estate for a whole bunch of rich people to escape to while the rest of the world is forced to deal with the escalating effects of climate change. As a bonus, since it’s an island in the Arctic, mass immigration is nigh-on impossible which means they get all the bonuses of living comfortably without even having to worry about an invasion of undesirables. You know…poor people. Or brown people. And they’ll have the backing of the US military to sink any ships that even try.
Yeah, even Greenland will eventually succumb to the effects of climate change. But for a short while, that’s going to become some absolutely pristine land compared to much of the rest of the world, and as far as the rich are concerned, that 30-40 years is 30-40 years that they can continue to live comfortably while the rest of the world gets to choke to death on the environment that they created. And by the time Greenland starts feeling the effects, they’ll be long since dead so they have no reason to care.
Disagree on the Putin part. Putin is one of the richest and is the most powerful man in Russia, so he’s included in your rich cabal, but he’s also signaled for years that he’s a geopolitical colonizer and wants to reunite Soviet Union states. His main opposition is NATO which he’s able to dismantle with the help of Trump, thus opening up the door to further fracture resistance to his actions.
There’s a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence pointing to Trump being a Russian asset, his latest policies only further confirm that.
The rich cabal you’re talking about absolutely hitched their wagon to Trump to make money in the instability to come, but they don’t give a shit about Greenland. It’s a pawn that they don’t care about, but their friend Putin does.
Putin is mostly interested in the former USSR. Greenland wasn’t part of that. Putin will gladly let Trump do whatever he wants with Greenland because if Trump takes action that automatically dissolves NATO as we know it and basically forces a war between the US and the rest of NATO which allows him to basically recreate the USSR by force while NATO trips over its own feet. Granted, Putin (just like any other world leader) would gladly take whatever he can get. But he doesn’t need Greenland. There’s enough Russian territory that Putin already controls that will also become prime real estate at the same time, making a Greenland annexation largely pointless. He wouldn’t need to worry about sharing Greenland with the others in the cabal when he’s got enough of his own to make Greenland seem like Gilligan’s Island by comparison.
And yeah, we all know Trump’s a russian asset. That’s been known for years.
And I disagree about the cabals not caring about Greenland. They know where there’s money to be made. Right now, much of Greenland is uninhabitable. Which means it’s also cheap. So if they get in on the ground floor now, what will that land be worth in 10 years, when more people start feeling more effects of climate change and there’s more of an eye on Greenland as a possible refuge? 20 years? Whenever that land becomes viable. That’s a lot of land, and therefore a lot of money. Whether for short term profits, long-term hedging of bets against the very climate change they’re fueling, or a combination of both, I can guarantee you there are a lot of people interested.
With that said, I think we both ultimately agree on who will benefit the most; we are merely disagreeing over how much each of them will benefit. And I think we can both agree that no matter which one of them win, we lose.
It’s still really far north and you’ll never be able to grow as much since the season is so short. Also have the never ending darkness and sunlight. Not to mention lots of it is muskeg that has been frozen for centuries. And it’s not as good as you make it sound.
Some crops do very well under the extra long days in summer and basically catch up despite the short season. People already grow grain near Edmonton, which is actually really far north.
You are correct that the soils will be the most limiting, as these can take millenia to adapt to changes.
Just as an example of how productive plant growth can be at high latitudes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
Definitely not a side-effect. This is the main effect. The dissolution of NATO is his main goal. Besides personal grifting, Trump’s strict allegiance to Putin has been his one consistency since 2016.