Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird yes. Someone was explaining some of the problems that extraction would have. Climate etc plus that applies to shipping windows in the extremely short season.
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@futurebird The petrofaction ("keep extracting fossil carbon no matter what") sees the Arctic Ocean as the Next Big Thing, it's practically an interior sea like the Med if it wasn't frozen over and there's decades of Russian "and soon it will not be frozen over and it is ours" positioning.
Thing is, the Bering Strait is epicratonic (=shallow, over continental crust), it's not really suitable for major trade. The only really deep water access is Fram Strait.
@futurebird Fram is next to Greenland. So there's this economic fantasy about control of Atlantic access to the Arctic Ocean which means needing a strong territorial claim to something along the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.
There's a belief that melting glaciers will just leave masses and masses of rock flour that can be scooped up and refined at low cost; there's another belief that the US should exert territorial control over the entire Western Hemisphere.
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@futurebird Fram is next to Greenland. So there's this economic fantasy about control of Atlantic access to the Arctic Ocean which means needing a strong territorial claim to something along the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.
There's a belief that melting glaciers will just leave masses and masses of rock flour that can be scooped up and refined at low cost; there's another belief that the US should exert territorial control over the entire Western Hemisphere.
@futurebird There's a belief that NATO is a scam; the other NATO members are exploiting US defense funding so they don't have to spend, which is an economic advantage, and a huge fraction of (at least) Republicans feel like they're being ripped off and resent it bitterly. (Having to spend money instead of just stealing things is the worst thing that can happen to a mammonite.) They want to destroy NATO because they, personally, aren't getting money from it.
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@futurebird There's a belief that NATO is a scam; the other NATO members are exploiting US defense funding so they don't have to spend, which is an economic advantage, and a huge fraction of (at least) Republicans feel like they're being ripped off and resent it bitterly. (Having to spend money instead of just stealing things is the worst thing that can happen to a mammonite.) They want to destroy NATO because they, personally, aren't getting money from it.
@futurebird Putin's legacy grand strategy is a safe Russia, which means no other nuclear powers and control of the ice-free Arctic. That means breaking up alliances and taking over the government of any other nuclear power and ideally crashing their economy so hard they cannot maintain a credible deterrent. (In the Time of Angry Weather, that is a simple ambition.) So Putin's an input, but not the only input; "why shouldn't we steal it?" is home grown.
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@futurebird Putin's legacy grand strategy is a safe Russia, which means no other nuclear powers and control of the ice-free Arctic. That means breaking up alliances and taking over the government of any other nuclear power and ideally crashing their economy so hard they cannot maintain a credible deterrent. (In the Time of Angry Weather, that is a simple ambition.) So Putin's an input, but not the only input; "why shouldn't we steal it?" is home grown.
@futurebird It is important to note that this interior-sea vision of the ice free arctic is abject nonsense; it may well get there, but it doesn't get there on a timescale of human lifetimes, and there's nothing to eat in the meantime.
It's also important to note that the freebooting "we want it, we should take it" basis of policy is predicated on different material conditions than those which actually pertain.
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@futurebird It is important to note that this interior-sea vision of the ice free arctic is abject nonsense; it may well get there, but it doesn't get there on a timescale of human lifetimes, and there's nothing to eat in the meantime.
It's also important to note that the freebooting "we want it, we should take it" basis of policy is predicated on different material conditions than those which actually pertain.
@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
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@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
I wonder if over the short term it’s analogous to the point that @pluralistic has made about deliberate share price inflation by AI vendors.
All the world’s biggest private fossil/mining companies are sitting on assets which are in a superposition of being stranded. These same companies have the engineering expertise (in theory) to exploit Greenland. Merely ‘owning’ its assets is sufficient to provide a prop to share prices
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
Your CW ate into my character limit, so I've rewritten my response and posted it here.
https://mastodon.world/@ApostateEnglishman/115888012566269860
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@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
I think we're extremely lucky that the people who'd rather immolate the world simply do not have the self-control to not broadcast their intentions and seem to be able to only hamfistedly pursue their antisocial goals.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird
Natural resources, Greenland has some oil and lots of uranium and rare earths.Strategic value, it would give the regime a military foothold in the north oceans.
Willy-waving, he'd be The Big Man who conquered the Vikings.
Real estate, he likes the idea of owning land.
And finally, he's butthurt that he had a whim ("I want Greenland!") but people didn't fall all.over themselves to make it happen for him. He wants to.punish the nonbelievers.
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I think we're extremely lucky that the people who'd rather immolate the world simply do not have the self-control to not broadcast their intentions and seem to be able to only hamfistedly pursue their antisocial goals.
@johnzajac @futurebird Well, to a degree, but note that when they made that decision back in the 80s fossil carbon use started going up and is still going up; society is as much as possible organized to force you to buy gas.
The only reason we're in as hopeful a position as we are comes down to some Chinese engineers presenting a smog mitigation plan to the Central Committee back around 2000. (Thus a major economy decided to put money into Solar PV.)
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird The point is that it's so obviously outrageous it helps keep the #EpsteinFiles out of the news
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Your CW ate into my character limit, so I've rewritten my response and posted it here.
https://mastodon.world/@ApostateEnglishman/115888012566269860
@ApostateEnglishman @futurebird
and the US already did this to Hawai'i
Hawai'i IS a slave colony. Its indigenous people, the rightful owners of ALL of it, are shoved into slums and exploited as "local flavor" for tourist consumers and colonizing devourers.
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@johnzajac @futurebird Well, to a degree, but note that when they made that decision back in the 80s fossil carbon use started going up and is still going up; society is as much as possible organized to force you to buy gas.
The only reason we're in as hopeful a position as we are comes down to some Chinese engineers presenting a smog mitigation plan to the Central Committee back around 2000. (Thus a major economy decided to put money into Solar PV.)
That, and the hubris of a US neofascism that had already written off certain parts of the world as either worthless except for labor OR as good only for extractive purposes, and by the 90s were high on their own overwhelming victories.
Had the neofascists been capable of seeing China become the threat to them it currently is, we'd be in a very different world right now.
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There is a theory that this move is designed to break up NATO.
I thought that was a little far fetched at first, NATO is really good for the US, it's like the birthday boy throwing a tantrum.
But some conservatives have a deep seated fear of "world government." So maybe that's it? Basically these are the guys who find it galling that there are notions like "international law" or "human rights" however unevenly applied.
@futurebird i think its a couple things, there is at least one faction, maybe just one person, who put the idea in his ear because they think they will profit from it and Donnie is very stupid, he probably thinks Greenland is green and that it is huge because of the errors in Mercator projection. Whether there is someone(s) who want the mineral rights i dont know, but i believe that the Russian government (such as it is) has amplified this obsession with Greenland as important real-estate which Donnie has been talking about consistently for 10y. For Russia the upside is obvious, trying to conquor Greenland throws chaos into our relationship with Europe and weakens us both, plus is good trolling, and all they seem to heat their homes with over there is hate, pain and vodka.
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There is a theory that this move is designed to break up NATO.
I thought that was a little far fetched at first, NATO is really good for the US, it's like the birthday boy throwing a tantrum.
But some conservatives have a deep seated fear of "world government." So maybe that's it? Basically these are the guys who find it galling that there are notions like "international law" or "human rights" however unevenly applied.
@futurebird
I think a lot of it has to do that Mercator projection makes Greenland look big on the map. The Don would like to add some new territory to be known as somebody who increased the USA landmass.As far as NATO goes he doesn’t really care. If they bought some of his crypto coins he would be happy to keep it. The fact that Putin doesn’t like NATO is of course a strike against it.
The military base argument is bogus. The US has closed all but one bases that were previously there. As part of NATO I don’t see how it would be a problem to reopen them if needed.
Minerals. The US already has some mineral rights, and could possibly buy more. But, the minerals are under a thick sheet of ice, and nobody has so far found a way of profitably extract it. On top of that, rare earth minerals are not rare. They are just difficult and time consuming to extract. China has mastered the extraction process which is why they are the world leader.
If the issue was really getting access to minerals in a shorter timespan than waiting for Greenland’s ice to melt, the better option would be to go in an throw Russia out of Ukraine, since The Don already persuaded Ukraine into signing an agreement to let US mine for minerals there.
The only logic behind anything is the raccoons running around in Donny’s head. He wants to be remembered forever, and he will. Just not for the reasons he thinks.
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@futurebird I think you're seeking rationality where there is absolutely none.
@darkling @futurebird bingo. nobody else in MAGA world was pushing for this, it's just a toddler obsession. Denmark will already let the US put up all the military bases they want.
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@futurebird
The us wants to be able to be a free agent and so donald trump is cashing out all the us based international structure possible. I mean, its about a lot of stuff but also, Sometimes i think these idiots literally think like a big map game and want to get the continent bonus or some shit@DebbieDoomer @futurebird Sadly, this is close to Trump’s own answer.
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There is a theory that this move is designed to break up NATO.
I thought that was a little far fetched at first, NATO is really good for the US, it's like the birthday boy throwing a tantrum.
But some conservatives have a deep seated fear of "world government." So maybe that's it? Basically these are the guys who find it galling that there are notions like "international law" or "human rights" however unevenly applied.
@futurebird as someone who was hanging around with trumpies in 2016, it absolutely is this -
Everyone wants to be a little big man instead of actually doing amazing big things. The lack of imagination depresses me.
@futurebird @EugestShirley this dovetails with another convo this morning: https://brain.worm.pink/notice/B2FXMKWWaJuiO45v8K
