Why Climate Change Is Making Greenland More Desirable to Trump

On Thursday, Second Lady Usha Vance will be visiting Greenland along with a U.S. delegation. The trip, the White House says, is meant to “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity” with Vance scheduled to visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage, and attend Greenland’s national dogsled race. Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are also expected to make a visit.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But the visit has been condemned by Greenland’s leaders, especially as the Trump Administration has continued its brazen push for control of the region. In a speech at the joint session of Congress on March 4, President Donald Trump spoke of the importance of letting the people of Greenland determine their own future before admitting, “We need it really for international world security, and I think we’re going to get it one way or the other.”

The trip also comes as Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is facing a new future in the face of climate change. Rising temperatures are accelerating the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. The impact, coupled with warming oceans, has altered the area’s ecosystems and food security. 

On the surface, it seems these changes may be opening up new economic and strategic opportunities—ones the U.S. and others may want to tap. But the reality is more complicated than that.

“There’s a perceived military benefit and there’s a perceived economic benefit,” says Paul Bierman, professor of natural resources at the University of Vermont. Greenland is strategically located in the Atlantic Ocean between the U.S., Russia, and China, and contains a trove of natural resources—minerals, oil, and natural gas—that is largely untapped. But Bierman adds: “I actually think both of these [ideas] are false.”

Natural Resources

There are 31 million barrels of undiscovered oil in East Greenland, according to a 2007 U.S. Geological Survey study. And Greenland is home to minerals like lithium, niobium, and zirconium, all of which are useful for the production of batteries, electronics, and electric cars. But experts say that accessing these resources is not as easy as it sounds. 

The reason much of the resources remain untapped is in part because they are not easily accessible. Greenland has a limited road network and a population of less than 60,000—and a large portion of the region is built on permafrost, which presents building challenges. “It’s a tricky ground to create infrastructure on,” says Asa Rennermalm, professor at the Department of Geography at Rutgers.

Climate change has spurred hopes of a mineral gold rush—as the receding ice could make accessing these natural resources easier. Many areas of Greenland, however, are currently closed off to extraction. In 2021, the territory’s parliament voted to stop oil and gas exploration due to environmental concerns, and also banned uranium mining that same year.

Greenland’s changing climate also holds potential for the U.S.’s artificial intelligence ambitions. During a Feb. 12 Senate hearing on the acquisition of Greenland, Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center, spoke of the potential for the melting ice sheet to provide the energy for hydropower-fueled AI data centers.

A New Trade Route

Melting sea ice could open up a new trade route—one which President Trump seems to be vying for control over. “What we’re seeing globally in the Arctic is a dramatic decrease in the coverage of sea ice,” says Bierman. “And so as the Arctic Ocean has less and less sea ice, it potentially is open to vessels that are not icebreakers to get through.” 

Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has said that Greenland’s location is critical not only in its relation to China and Russia, but also as an alternative shipping route as climate change makes the Panama Canal more unreliable. Prolonged drought, exacerbated by climate change, has lowered water levels in the canal, making it harder for ships to pass through.

“[Greenland is] strategically very important to the Arctic, which is going to be the critical battleground of the future, because as the climate gets warmer, the Arctic is going to be a pathway that maybe cuts down on the usage of the Panama Canal,” O’Brien said in an interview with Sunday Morning Futures in December. 

China and Russia launched a joint shipping corridor along the Arctic Sea in 2023—that year alone, 80 voyages reached Chinese ports through the route. “We have a lot of our favorite players cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful,” Trump told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte earlier this month, referring to the potential security risk that open Arctic waters might pose.

Climate Risks

Experts say that the Trump Administration’s focus is nearsighted—and ignoring a much bigger issue. The Arctic is warming at a rate three to four times faster than the rest of the world—and Greenland’s ice sheet lost 2.5 million liters (over 660,000 gallons) of fresh water per second last year. 

The melting ice sheets are not going to make resource extraction any easier. “There’s this fantasy that the ice sheets are going to melt away overnight, and all these new exotic minerals are going to appear where they used to be a thousand feet of ice,” says Bierman. “That’s not going to happen.”

Ice melt caused by climate change can trigger landslides, which can damage mining infrastructure in seconds. “It’s going to destroy the port infrastructure, or, if you’re unlucky enough, destroy your mine,” says Bierman. 

What’s more, if Greenland’s ice sheet were to melt completely, it would raise global sea levels by 23 ft. “Even just a fraction of that is going to have huge impacts on global sea level rise,” says Rennermalm. 

It will radically change the rest of the world—coasts from Mumbai to Mar-a-Lago could be underwater. “If we don’t take care of that ice sheet. There are estimates in the many trillion dollars of economic losses if that happens, and that’s going to eclipse any critical minerals,” says Bierman. “That to me is the piece that doesn’t fit in the four year political cycle.”