The plan would replace the $600 million in subsidies Denmark gives the island each year
The Donald Trump administration is reportedly considering giving about $10,000 to each Greenland resident as part of its plan to annex the island.
The possibility would seek to replace the $600 million Denmark gives the territory in subsidies every year, and has stopped being mere rhetoric to become official U.S. policy, according to The New York Times.
The outlet detailed that the plan already includes several cabinet departments and that the White House’s National Security Council has met several times to advance on it, recently sending specific instructions to different offices.
Whatever the actual net value is, it’s not that. There isn’t just a 17 trillion pile of minerals sitting somewhere on the surface.
Yeah Greenland is actually in a tough spot. It has a lot of economic potential, but it can’t unlock it without completely upending its own society. There are only 56,000 Greenlanders. If they wanted to expand mining enough to be economically self sufficient, they would need to bring in so many people that the existing population would become a minority. They would have to become an Arctic Dubai.
This is also why they don’t want to be annexed by the US. (Even if the US still had sane leadership.) Once you’re part of the US, any American that wishes can move there. Any American company can set up shop there. The existing society would be completely overrun.
And it would be an ecological disaster.
Not that the Trump administration nor mining corporations care about that, but it would suck for the Greenlanders and our planet.