Max Colchester
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So when I spoke to people, there was a real sense that they still wanted to be independent, but they really didn't want to become independent at the price of becoming dependent on the U.S.,
That seems to be the most obvious way to square that the circle of demands between the Greenlandic and the U.S.
government.
But obviously that would require the people of Greenland to vote for independence.
It would require the government of Denmark to agree to independence.
presumably would take many years well past Trump's term in office to happen.
So the big question is what happens if Trump wants to expedite this?
And that's when the worry of some sort of threat of military force comes into play.
Does Trump threaten something to speed this process along?
For the past two decades, European leaders have been promising this green transition as a central part of their future energy plans.
And they promised plenty of green jobs as part of this transition away from fossil fuels onto solar and wind energy and cheap prices and low emissions.
Now, parts of that promise aren't going to come true.
The cheap energy seems like, according to economists, it could still be decades away if it ever comes.
There are green jobs.
There are people putting up wind turbines all over Germany and the UK, putting up solar panels on people's roofs.
At the same time, you have job destruction.
So net-net, some studies suggest it'll be a wash or there'll be maybe even fewer jobs in future during this transition.
So whereas the renewables in the US and China are also being added in large volumes, they're being added on top.
But in Europe, there was this effort to do a transition, to switch one for the other.