Trump’s Arctic imperialism risks global climate meltdown

President Trump’s obsession with “owning” Greenland has been described as a massive threat to global security that undermines NATO and the trust of our closest allies in Europe, who have responded by sending additional troops to Greenland. Trump’s on-again, off-again intention to impose still higher tariffs on major European Union countries over the issue also reignited a trade war with Europe, putting the global economy and U.S. consumers at risk. 

But lost among these dangers is the most basic one: that Trump’s energy and climate policies, including his heedless preoccupation with exploiting Greenland and the rest of the Arctic for oil and gas resources, risk a far more rapid meltdown of the Arctic, with disastrous consequences for nations and people around the world.

The Arctic region, including Greenland, is already warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and is tremendously vulnerable to even more rapid warming from additional greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting Arctic temperatures by just a few tenths of a degree turns out to be crucial to preventing temperature increases from spinning out of control worldwide. 

More than half of the Arctic’s reflective ice has melted in the last 50 years, and a recent study in the journal Nature found that the Arctic will be free of sea ice entirely for at least a day before 2030. Should Arctic sea ice be allowed to melt, which may happen within just two decades or even sooner, absorption of the sun’s heat by the newly open northern ocean will add the equivalent of 25 years of world-wide carbon dioxide emissions, pushing already dangerous global temperatures of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels toward climatic instability.  

In fact, this loss of Arctic sea ice is just one of more than a dozen temperature-sensitive tipping points scientists have now identified, including in ocean currents and the Amazon rainforest, that risk unleashing super-heating around the globe. Such tipping points will move natural systems from net warming inhibitors, as they are today, toward natural systems actually forcing temperature increases or releasing greenhouse gases themselves.

In this context, preventing further loss of Arctic Sea ice is especially critical, as preventing it can forestall a domino effect of climate change tipping points in many other natural systems.  

For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently issued a study showing that increased warming and wildfires are now causing the Arctic tundra to emit more carbon than it stores, another tipping point already further speeding the cycle of Arctic melting. And new data just this month shows that Arctic sea ice has reached a record low for mid-January this year, with more than 2 million square kilometers less ice today than in the 1980s.  

For all of these reasons, Greenland instituted a moratorium on oil and gas exploitation in 2021. But even more effective actions must be taken to limit Arctic warming, especially the mitigation of super pollutants like methane.  

Reducing methane and other pollutants like hydrofluorocarbons can avoid nearly half a degree Celsius of warming by 2050 — four times more than from reducing carbon dioxide alone. In contrast, reducing carbon dioxide would only limit temperatures by one-tenth of a degree over the next 25 years, although it is still necessary to limit long-term temperatures.

So far, public policy discussions and media coverage have focused almost exclusively on the narrow economic opportunities that an ice-free Arctic might provide for shipping and resource development. But huge new shipping traffic in the Arctic and industrial development of oil and gas in the region will greatly increase the amount of climate pollution, including from carbon dioxide, methane and especially black carbon soot, which is already washing out onto Arctic ice and increasing melting rates tremendously.  

Such policies would turn the Arctic into yet another industrial region with massive new emissions at just at the moment Arctic temperatures desperately need to be contained. 

Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin also has grand plans for Arctic oil and gas, since the Russian Arctic contains large oil and gas reserves. Trump has used Putin’s Arctic ambitions as the supposed reason why the U.S. should illegally occupy Greenland. But hypocritically, the Trump administration and Putin have already begun meeting to discuss joint attempts to develop additional Arctic oil and gas.  

Along with oil and gas, Greenland contains significant mineral resources that can be of value to advanced technologies, such as electric vehicles, renewable energy and battery storage. Yet Trump has eliminated all incentives for the U.S. to take a leadership position in the manufacture of clean energy technologies, going so far as to stop renewable energy projects that have already received tens of billions in private investments. Indeed, Trump’s policies have allowed China to dominate manufacturing of lucrative and strategic clean energy technologies, controlling as much as 70 percent of global production.  

Meanwhile, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which had been falling for more than two decades, are now rising again under Trump, in large part due to him overruling private-sector preference to close coal-fired power plants. Trump has also prevented the implementation of key methane regulations, repealed major carbon dioxide standards, and withdrawn the U.S. from major climate change agreements, even though every other nation supports them.  

Trump’s anti-climate policies have already been damaging to the Arctic and global climate protection. Now his deeply misguided plans for Greenland and the rest of the Arctic, if allowed to occur, would increase the chances of disastrous, runaway climate change, threatening the safety and quality of life not only of the people of the world’s far North, but communities and people around the world. 

Paul Bledsoe is professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy.  He served at the U.S. Interior Department and the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton.