US President Donald Trump continues to insist that the US must acquire Greenland at all costs, by force or money, following direct talks last week between the foreign ministers of the US, Denmark and Greenland that ended without any agreement. An American take-over of Greenland would increase GHG-emissions and risk push the planet over a tipping point.
On Saturday, Trump threatened to impose extra tariffs on the UK and those EU Member States that have announced that they plan to send troops to Greenland to reinforce its defence with a military presence there. The new tariff measures would be enforced “until Greenland is completely sold”.
NATO soldiers from Europe should satisfy Trump who had said Greenland was defenseless and that he needed the island “from the standpoint of national security”. There is no need for the US to buy Greenland for defence purposes.
If the US wanted to reinforce Greenland’s defence against threats from Russia and China, he could activate the 1951 Defence of Greenland agreement with Denmark and ask to reopen military bases and send more military to the still existing base there. The agreement explicitly authorized the US to construct and operate military installations on the island.
Ownership of natural resources
But apparently ownership is more important for Trump. “That’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success,” he said in an interview in The New York Times. “I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
EU leaders, European Commission President von der Leyen and European Council President Costa, responded quickly to Trump in a joint statement on Saturday evening. “Territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law. They are essential for Europe and for the international community as a whole."
They continue to believe in the transatlantic partnership with the US and NATO’s role. “We have consistently underlined our shared transatlantic interest in peace and security in the Arctic, including through NATO. The pre-coordinated Danish exercise, conducted with allies, responds to the need to strengthen Arctic security and poses no threat to anyone.”
“Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed to upholding its sovereignty”
What does Greenland have that Trumps wants? He has highlighted its geopolitical location, close to Arctic shipping lanes. Greenland is also rich in natural resources.
It has both untapped deposits of onshore and offshore fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) and critical rare minerals (rare earth elements, graphite, lithium, etc.), making it a strategically important area for resource extraction. The latter resources, deep under the ice and among the largest in the world, are crucial for green energy technologies and defense.
But there is crux to American mineral extraction in Greenland. The US under Trump has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. This happened by an executive order in January 2025 directly after he was sworn in as President.
The US did not participate in COP30, the climate chance conference in Belém, Brazil, last November. And only a week ago, the Trump administration announced that the US would withdraw from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Trusting the US to extract fossil fuels and critical rare minerals in Greenland with due regard to the environment and climate change is risky. Greenland holds the second-largest ice sheet on Earth (after Antarctica) and is warming faster than the global mean. Its ice sheet has been melting for years because of global GHG emissions, raising sea levels.
Irreversible tipping point
In fact, the planet is close to an irreversible tipping point which is linked to Greenland, Swedish professor Markku Rummukainen at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Science, Lund university, told The Brussels Times in 2021 ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.
“Many tipping points, if they do occur, will of course result in large consequences on a global or regional scale. Examples of tipping points are the ocean current system in the North Atlantic Sea, large eco systems such as the rain forest in the Amazon, the melting of the ice shelves in the Western Antarctic and the Greenland ice.”
“Mountain glaciers, permafrost and Artic ice can also recover if the temperature is retrieving. However, sea level rise, diminishing ice in Greenland and Antarctica and the warming of the deep sea will be irreversible in the long-term spanning hundreds to thousands of years,” explained Professor Emeritus Pinhas Alpert at the Department of Geophysics, Tel-Aviv University.
He drew attention to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the key circulation system of the Atlantic Ocean. It moves heat from the Tropical region to the Northern hemisphere by transporting warm water masses northward at the ocean surface (Gulf Stream), and returning as a cool current southward at the bottom of the ocean.
In the course of the last century, the AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition following the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic Sea ice. If it would collapse, it would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components.
“This tipping point is irreversible,” says Professor Alpert. “If AMOC would collapse, it will change our climate irreversibly, not only in Northern Europe and North America but also impact the rest of the world.”
