Max Colchester

and efforts to try and build out mines in Greenland haven't really come to much because, you know, you've got to go into the middle of some icy tundra, dig a hole, build a road to it, build housing for your workers, build a port, maybe build a runway.

It's incredibly expensive and then it's such bad weather for a chunk of the year you can't even access it.

So it's not a place that you just turn up and it's waiting to go.

Exactly.

When you get there, you realize that although it's been painted as this potential El Dorado for minerals and whatnot, when you get there, you realize people basically live off fishing and Danish subsidies.

And it's not a gold mine in that sense.

It's more of a money pit.

They provide the Greenlandic government with what's called a grant every year to help pay for education and whatnot.

They also cover health care for the Greenlandic people, and they pay for the defense of Greenland.

So it's quite an expensive tab for the Danish government to pick up every year.

No, it's not really something he's addressed.

And it is this huge welfare state that he would be inheriting that would receive, you know, federal funding-wise, it would receive way more per capita than, say, Alaska or Washington, D.C.

does.

So it would be, to start with at least, it would be a huge drain on the federal purse to own and run Greenland.

I think many people feel that they've come to an accommodation with Denmark which works for them.

And they're wary of just throwing it all up in the air.

And of course, America has a bad record in dealing with indigenous people.

And they know that.

So I think the idea of letting in a load of mining prospectors from America in return for cash is a model they've seen has not worked for others in the past.

So I think they're wary.