What Trump May Want From Greenland Beyond Minerals

Trump maintains that the United States needs Greenland for national security and securing maritime routes, but many suspect it’s more about extracting the island’s vast mineral resources, including rare earth elements (REE)—or at least blocking China or Russia from grabbing them. But harvesting the metals, which experts say could take years and be technically and environmentally challenging, could be just the tip of the iceberg. The real treasure, according to some analysts, is Greenland’s water.

The island holds about ten percent of the world's freshwater reserves—roughly 2.85 million cubic kilometers locked away in ice that would raise sea levels by 24 feet if fully melted by global warming. Gaining control of “water capital” could be hugely strategic. Last week, the UN proclaimed that the world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy,” where many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water “income” from rivers, soils, and snowpack, but have also depleted long-term “savings” in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs.

Denmark and Greenland have acknowledged the vast potential to collect and exploit Greenland’s ice and water, which in many locations is clean enough to drink from the source. Together, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) have conducted numerous studies on behalf of the Government of Greenland and have identified locations to harvest it.

Back in 2018, Ronald Lauder, heir to Estée Lauder fortune, was allegedly the first to put a bug in Trump’s ear to buy Greenland. Since then, Lauder has acquired commercial holdings in the territory, including a venture to export spring water from the island and another to generate hydropower from Greenland's biggest lake to fuel an aluminum smelter. According to CNBC, a former official in Donald Trump’s first administration is already planning a multi-billion-dollar data center project in a remote corner of Greenland. 

Given that two water intensive industries—mining for minerals and data centers for AI—animate Trump, controlling a gigantic freshwater reservoir might be too tantalizing to ignore.

A recent study from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa showed that there could be significant consequences from seabed mining to tiny animals that are at the bottom of the food chain, which would then affect fisheries and food for humans. However, Neil Jacobs, the administrator of NOAA said in a statement that deep seabed mining for minerals like copper, zinc, and more, is important to enable U. S. companies to access these resources quickly. Nevertheless, 37 countries have called for a moratorium or ban on the practice including, France, Canada, and Germany.  

On Thursday, last week, during a House of Representatives oversight hearing on seabed mining, Republican representatives from American Samoa and the Marianas spoke up in opposition to the Trump administration’s plans.

A Republican delegate from Samoa, Aumua Amata, said, "To the indigenous people of American Samoa, the ocean is not just the backbone of our local economy, it is sacred." And Kimberly King-Hinds, a Republican delegate said, "In places like the Marianas, American Samoa, and Guam, we don’t get the luxury of being wrong. Any decision impacting our ocean is permanent."

The administration’s new permitting process would allow companies to mine deep sea areas even outside the continental boundaries of the U.S., a position that will likely be opposed by other countries that are members of the International Seabed Authority, which has been working on rules for mining in international waters for many years.

Sabine Gollner, who is a marine biologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research told Eos in 2024 that once nodules are removed by mining, all the biodiversity and processes that depend on the minerals will be lost for millions of years.

It had been thought that sunlight and photosynthesis were required to produce oxygen on a large scale, but there’s no sunlight on the deep seabed, so how does it happen?

Scientists led by the Scottish Association for Marine Science propose that the so-called “dark oxygen” may be generated by the metals in the nodules that break down seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. The nodules have been measured to produce nearly a volt of power, a bit less than an AA battery. Now, the scientists have designed two crafts that will dive down to areas of the ocean where the pressure is about 1,200 times that on Earth’s surface. These so-called “landers” will help determine if the nodules interact with saltwater, causing electricity that then creates the “dark oxygen.”

The research could clarify how biological life occurs thousands of meters below the sea surface and challenge the view that oxygen production is linked to sunlight. New Scientist magazine points out that the research shows our knowledge of what’s going on at the bottom of the sea is still developing, and no mining should take place until we understand it better.

Eating real food means including fewer processed products and consuming less sugar, but the new guidelines also promote nearly doubling the amount of meat and dairy on our plates (than recommended by the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine) to increase protein uptake, flipping the iconic food pyramid upside down to be a high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate diet. The guidelines also promote cooking with beef tallow, butter, and lard, instead of plant-based oils despite decades of scientific evidence showing the health benefits of the latter. 

That advice is not only a hard pill to swallow for nutrition experts who say saturated fats from beef and full-fat dairy are linked to cardiovascular disease and some cancers but also environmental groups and climate scientists who say it’s not healthy for our planet. 

According to the World Resources Institute, an independent research organization, beef and lamb have high environmental footprints, requiring more land and generating more water pollution per ounce of protein than most alternatives. For example, producing one kilogram of beef protein requires 20 times more land than a kilogram of protein from chickpeas, beans, or lentils. 

The group warns that a surge in meat-eating by Americans could drive habitat and biodiversity loss through the conversion of forest lands into pastures. Ruminant animals like cows and sheep also emit a lot of the planet warming gas methane by belching. According to research from Stanford University, livestock production accounts for 14-18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 32 percent of methane emissions worldwide.

Plant-based foods like beans, lentils, soy, nuts, and seeds—although great sources of protein and other important nutrients such as fiber and iron—were not emphasized in the new guidelines as much as beef, even though they’re typically more affordable. While many Americans will just ignore the guidelines, the new framework will have implications for federal nutrition and education programs as well as offerings at military and federal cafeterias.

Meanwhile, across the pond, a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) says the environmental impacts of meat consumption could be reduced by three to six percent if governments applied a full value added tax (VAT) on products such as beef, pork, and lamb, costing around 26 euros per year per household.