Why Trump Wants Greenland; Afterlife of White House Solar Panels; Book Updates
and more about the human and environmental costs of renewable energy and digital technology—and how we can do better.
We’re back for 2025! Happy new year to one and all, and a particular welcome to the many new subscribers who signed up over the holidays. Delighted to have you here. If you’re the sharing type, please say hi in the Comments section below, or drop me a line directly—I’d love to hear what brought you here, what you hope to read and/or learn about from this newsletter, and anything else relevant that’s on your mind. And now, back to business.
Why Trump Wants Greenland
I don’t want to fall into the trap of freaking out every time Donald Trump says something crazy. That would be a full-time job, and anyway he never follows through on most of the things he says—see “Mexican border wall” or “jail Hilary.” But when Trump mused this week about taking over Greenland by force, he wandered into Power Metal territory. I figured it was worth explaining why he’s so fixated on this desolate, frigid, barely inhabited chunk of real estate.
Nutshell: Greenland, a territory of Denmark, is loaded with valuable natural resources, including many critical metals. Most prominently, rare earth elements. Rare earths are among the most critical of all the metals we need for the Electro-Digital Age. They’re the main components of electric car motors, and are also needed for cell phones and other screen-based electronics, wind turbines, and a range of health and military technologies. China holds an especially commanding position over rare earth supply chains, and they have wielded that leverage once already for political ends, when they briefly cut off exports to Japan in 2010 during a diplomatic dispute. Greenland also holds many other minerals needed for batteries, including graphite and lithium, as well as some oil and gas. (Plus its strategically located athwart important shipping lanes, which is why the US already has a military base there.)
Getting those resources out of the ground, however, is not easy. Though many companies are exploring for viable deposits, at the moment, there’s only one active mine in all of Greenland. The island’s extremely harsh weather and remoteness is one obstacle. Another is the 57,000-odd people living there, who are very protective of their environment. Burned by destructive extractive industries in the past, Greenlanders have banned oil and gas extraction, and in 2021 shot down a proposed rare earth mine.
Oddly, one mineral they are willing to exploit is my favorite underappreciated natural resource (and subject of my first book): sand! As climate change melts away Greenland’s glaciers, they are leaving behind enormous quantities of sand and gravel, which are crucial for making concrete. Some suggest all that sand could be sold to the many countries where it is running so short that black marketeers are killing people for it. A recent survey found most Greenlanders are fine with the idea of mining and selling those precious grains.
All that said, the idea of the US somehow taking over Greenland isn’t quite as far-fetched as Trump’s similar yen to incorporate Panama and Canada. The territory was ruled by Denmark for centuries, but has more recently won limited autonomy, including the right to secede from Denmark. Trump’s efforts to buy the island back in 2019 seem to have been more serious than I realized at the time. There is a growing sentiment to break free of Denmark and a willingness to forge closer ties with the US, as Greenland’s prime minister made clear in a New Year’s Day speech. He also recently declared, however, that “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.” And take note, Pentagon planners: Denmark just announced a $1.5 billion upgrade to Greenland’s defense capabilities. Hope those extra sled dog teams make Trump think twice!
The Afterlife of the White House’s Solar Panels
Speaking of presidents…after Jimmy Carter’s recent death, there was a lot of rueful chatter about how he had presciently installed solar panels on the White House roof back in the 1970s, only to see them removed by Ronald Reagan. That was a setback for the then-nascent solar industry, no doubt, but it turns out that at least the actual panels didn’t go to waste. Seems the then-director of Maine’s Unity College found out the decommissioned panels were being stored in a Virginia warehouse, reports The New York Times, and thought they’d be a great gimmick to draw attention to the college’s environmental efforts. So with Carter’s blessing, he bought them for $500 and personally drove them up to Maine in a converted bus. They were used for years to heat water for the school’s cafeteria. After they finally wore out, some of the panels were donated to museums around the US, plus one in China. A few are still at the school—now known as Unity Environmental University.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush brought solar panels back to the White House roof in 2002, and Barrack Obama added even more. Solar has been on a roll ever since. It’s on track to become the world’s #1 source of electricity surprisingly soon.
Power Metal Book Updates
Next Big Idea, a sort of online book club curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink and other nonfiction luminaries, posted a nice rundown of the main ideas in Power Metal—which you can also hear me personally narrating. Resilience, a publication of the Post Carbon Institute, ran a solid review of the book here, while fellow Substacker and mining expert Ian Morse does an extremely thorough job of comparing Power Metal to three other important books on critical metals published recently.
Tired of reading stuff? I’ll be doing several live events in the coming months, kicking off with a conversation with fellow metal-minded author Chris Pollon at Vancouver’s Upstart & Crow bookstore on January 23. Tickets are free, but please register here if you want to come—it’s a small space.
More News Worth Knowing
🐌 Big new lithium deposits discovered in the US and China. But just because there’s metal underground doesn’t mean it can be dug up profitably, or without causing intolerable damage. Case in point: Enviros are warning a new lithium mine in Nevada may be endangering a rare snail.
⚙️ I recognize I’ve got weird obsessions, but I love this video of guys extracting copper from old undersea cables. (Thanks to Gavin Clark for the tip!)
🔋 Almost all cars sold in Norway last year were electric!
🕌 The Taliban want to mine Afghanistan’s critical metals (and emeralds).
⛽️ Hey Elon! Really want to cut wasteful government spending? Start with fossil fuel subsidies.
Very interesting..so he's not crazy...
Hi Vince, Did you hear Elisabeth May’s speech to Trump regarding his threats and annexation wishes? She was outstanding. Cheers, Renée on Gabriola