Why Greenland? The world’s largest island plays a key role in climate change

Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world’s seas would rise by 24 feet.

Remote, icy, and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsize role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet.

Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics, and new trade patterns all intersect, said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko.

The world’s largest island is now “central to the geopolitical, geoeconomic competition in many ways,” partly because of climate change, Dabelko said.
Since his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally, and a founding member of NATO. It is also home to a large U.S. military base.