There has been quite a bit of speculation about why Donald Trump keeps talking about acquiring Greenland and Canada becoming the 51st state. Most are just baffled. I think I can offer an explanation. There is a consistency among several of his policies and pursuits that suggests a tactic, a strategy, that I think deserves to be talked about more.
At the intersection of my interest in religion and my love of science fiction falls my interest in dystopian fiction. I recently taught novels with a specifically climate dystopian focus. As I was preparing for the course, I also read or listened to several others, including Stephen Markley’s The Deluge, Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock (currently at a ridiculously low price for Kindle), and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. All of these are at least somewhat optimistic about the future even if they are quite grim about the path out of our crisis. We should definitely not be paralyzed by pessimism, despair, or fatalism. If that is how you feel, read Hannah Ritchie’s book Not the End of the World. Better still, listen to the audiobook read by the author in her lovely Scottish accent. I ended the semester, after the bleakness of the novels we read, with Ritchie’s data that provides a reason to believe that we have turned a corner. (Check out her blog as well.)
That was before Donald Trump was elected. Fortunately the United States on its own is unlikely to be able to single-handedly ruin the climate if all other nations make efforts in the other direction. We can, however, slow down progress.
But what if Donald Trump is being advised by someone who believes that global warming is inevitable and that the best course of action is to prepare for that future?
If that were my conviction, what would I want to do? I’d want to be Canada and Greenland, and to have a good relationship with Russia.
Articles about global warming talk about the melting of arctic ice. Most of us have focused on how coastal areas will be devastated if sea levels rise.
Whether you are persuaded that is inevitable or a businessperson seeking to make a profit, then when you read an article about how the Arctic Ocean will radically change due to global warming, you might see an opportunity.
If the polar ice melts, the Arctic Ocean will become the shortest and most convenient trade route between Asia, Europe, and North America.
(You might still want to claim the Panama Canal just to be safe.)
I can’t help but think that Donald Trump may be literally banking on this scenario. It connects his policy about the environment, rolling back EPA protections and withdrawing from climate agreements, his statements about Greenland and Canada, and his eagerness to be allied with Russia even if it costs him longstanding alliances in Europe.
If Russia, Canada, and Greenland rule the Arctic and control trade there, they will dominate the future – if that future features the catastrophic melting of the polar ice caps.
I am sure I am not the only person who has noticed this, but I have been known to notice possibilities that others overlook. I’m thus sharing this not because I have secret Trump documents demonstrating that these aims are an influence on his policies, but because this seems to plausibly connect a number of his puzzling moves and stances.
This may reflect my work as a scholar of the Bible. While others are happy to declare these ancient authors incoherent and self-contradictory (and sometimes they are, as all human beings are), I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt, to first assume that they are trying to be coherent and rational in a manner that made sense in their time. Their assumptions are often so different from ours that what made perfect sense to them will not to us, and vice versa.
It is easy to make fun of the Trump administration, given the fact that they are making blunders left and right. This doesn’t mean that no one who is influencing the current administration has consistent aims. Those who’ve followed Project 2025 will point to that as one example.
Are there experts commenting on the possibility that Donald Trump’s climate policy which stands to exacerbate global warming (or at least is doing nothing to help address the problem), his interest in Greenland and Canada, and his alignment with Russia, all reflect his approach to international affairs as first and foremost a matter of business? Has anyone commented on how these policies and maneuvers might all reflect forethought about a possible future when the Arctic Ocean is not impassible ice but a navigable shipping route?
Sometimes despite my best efforts to find consistency and coherence, ancient authors seems to simply not be making sense. The same may be true now. This brief article seeks to draw attention to what I think is an important question rather than to confidently answer it. Is there a consistent policy that we might label apocalyptic, one in which catastrophe may have befallen New York, New Orleans, Florida, and the Netherlands, but trade in the Arctic is booming? Might this be the reason for Donald Trump’s seeming obsession with Greenland and Canada?
It should go without saying that seeking to profit from rather than prevent or assist with the misfortune of others is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Jesus. His parable about the Jericho Road did not feature an entrepreneur who made money off of providing an alternate safer route between the two cities, much less someone who sought to exacerbate the problem of safe travel on the Jericho Road in the interest of profiting from a potential alternative.
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