Ice and Power: Greenland in the New World

Mackerel showed up about fifteen years ago.

Nobody had ever fished mackerel there.

Now it's a major export.

The ecosystem is genuinely rearranging itself.

Nuevos peces.

New fish.

Pero el clima viejo desaparece.

But the old climate disappears.

Es triste.

It is sad.

It is sad.

The traditional hunting grounds, the ice platforms that hunters have used for generations, they're gone in many areas.

That's not an abstraction for the people living there.

It's the end of a way of life that's been continuous for thousands of years.

La gente de Groenlandia vive con el hielo.

The people of Greenland live with the ice.

El hielo es su casa.

The ice is their home.

Their home is melting under them.

And meanwhile the Pentagon is drawing up plans for military installations.

Let's talk about what's actually driving that.

The Arctic is opening.

The Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Canadian Arctic, was essentially impassable for most of history.

Now ships can navigate it several months of the year.

That changes everything about global trade and military projection.

Antes, el mar del norte era hielo.

Before, the northern sea was ice.

Ahora no.

Now it is not.

And a ship going from Rotterdam to Tokyo via the Northwest Passage saves roughly seven thousand kilometers compared to the Suez Canal route.

That is not a small number.

The shipping industry is watching this extremely carefully.

Menos distancia.

Less distance.

Menos tiempo.

Less time.

Menos dinero.

Less money.

Exactly.

But Russia is ahead of everyone here.

They've been investing in Arctic infrastructure for twenty years.

The Northern Sea Route, along the Russian Arctic coast, is already commercially active several months a year.

Russia has icebreakers, a lot of them, nuclear-powered ones.

The U.S.

has two functional icebreakers.

Two.

Rusia tiene muchos barcos en el norte.

Russia has many ships in the north.

Estados Unidos, pocos.

The United States, few.

Which is part of why Greenland is so attractive from a strategic standpoint.

It sits right across the North Atlantic.

Any Russian naval movement between the Arctic and the open Atlantic has to pass through what strategists call the GIUK gap, Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom.

Greenland is the anchor of that entire defensive line.

Groenlandia es muy importante para la seguridad.

Greenland is very important for security.

Está en el mapa.

It is on the map.

It is absolutely on the map.

And China is watching all of this too.

China declared itself a quote near-Arctic state in 2018, which is a remarkable thing to claim when your northernmost point is at the same latitude as Rome.

But they've invested heavily in Arctic research, and they have ambitions around the shipping routes and around the resources.

China quiere los recursos del norte también.

China wants the resources of the north too.

And those resources are substantial.

Greenland sits on rare earth elements, the minerals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones.

There's oil and gas.

There's uranium.

The U.S.

Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds about thirteen percent of the world's undiscovered oil.

And as the ice retreats, that becomes more accessible.

Here's the part that keeps me up: the thing most likely to let us get at those fossil fuels is the damage already done by burning fossil fuels.

El hielo se va.

The ice disappears.

Y debajo hay petróleo.

And underneath there is oil.

Qué ironía.

What an irony.

That sigh says it all.

You burn oil, the ice melts, you can now drill for more oil.

It is a loop with no obvious exit.

And Greenland, for its part, has actually placed a moratorium on oil and gas exploration since 2021.

The current government said the economic benefits don't outweigh the climate risks.

Which is a remarkable thing for a small, relatively poor territory to say when everybody is waving money at them.

Groenlandia dice no al petróleo.

Greenland says no to oil.

Es una decisión valiente.

It is a brave decision.

Genuinely brave.

Though it doesn't resolve the rare earth question, and those minerals are in extremely high demand as the world tries to build out renewable energy infrastructure.

The cruel joke being that the global green transition requires enormous amounts of lithium, cobalt, neodymium, and a lot of that is sitting under Greenland's ice.

Climate policy and climate consequence collide right there.

Los minerales verdes están en el hielo.

The green minerals are in the ice.

El mundo los necesita.

The world needs them.

The world desperately needs them.

And the granting or withholding of access to those minerals could become one of the most powerful diplomatic levers Greenland has ever held.

If they do move toward independence, they would be independent with extraordinary leverage.

Not despite climate change, partly because of it.

Groenlandia tiene poder ahora.

Greenland has power now.

El clima cambia todo.

The climate changes everything.

The climate changes everything.

That might be the most honest summary of this story.

And what I keep coming back to is that the people on the ground there, the Inuit communities, didn't cause any of this.

Greenland's per-capita emissions are negligible.

They are experiencing the consequences of decisions made in industrial cities thousands of miles away, and now those same distant powers want access to what the melting has revealed.

That is not a comfortable set of facts.

La gente de Groenlandia no tiene la culpa.

The people of Greenland are not at fault.

Pero pierde su mundo.

But they are losing their world.

They're losing their world and being told to be grateful for the economic opportunities the losing creates.

I spent time in the Pacific reporting years ago, and this pattern of communities bearing the cost of decisions made elsewhere, it's one of the things that genuinely makes me angry.

The math of climate injustice doesn't balance.

No es justo.

It is not fair.

Pequeñas comunidades pagan por los grandes países.

Small communities pay for the big countries.

Not fair at all.

And yet the geopolitics will continue regardless.

The bases will probably be built.

The shipping routes will continue to open.

The minerals will at some point be extracted.

The only question that really matters is whether any of it ends up benefiting the people who actually live there, or whether Greenland just becomes another place the powerful fight over while the locals watch.

Buena pregunta.

Good question.

Los groenlandeses necesitan poder.

Greenlandic people need power.

No solo dinero.

Not just money.

Power and a seat at the table.

All right.

Something caught my ear earlier.

You said 'la culpa' when you were talking about Greenland not being at fault.

I hear that word a lot and I realize I don't fully understand where it sits.

It's guilt, blame?

Both?

'La culpa' es la responsabilidad de algo malo.

'La culpa' is responsibility for something bad.

Yo tengo la culpa significa 'yo soy responsable.'

'Yo tengo la culpa' means 'I am responsible.'

So it covers both 'guilt' in the moral sense and 'blame' in the practical sense.

In English those can pull in different directions.

You might blame someone without thinking they feel guilty, or feel guilty without anyone blaming you.

Spanish collapses that into one word.

Sí.

Yes.

'Tener la culpa' es tener la responsabilidad.

'Tener la culpa' is to bear the responsibility.

'Sentir culpa' es sentir vergüenza.

'Sentir culpa' is to feel shame or guilt.

Oh, that's actually very clean when you break it down like that.

'Tener la culpa': I bear the blame.

'Sentir culpa': I feel guilty.

Same root, two different constructions.

Though I will note, given my history with this language, that I will probably use both of them wrong in some spectacular way at a future family dinner in Madrid.

Sí, Fletcher.

Yes, Fletcher.

Tú tienes la culpa de muchas cosas en español.

You bear the blame for many things in Spanish.

Muchas cosas.

Many things.