Global warming is making both places more important to global shipping and trade.
By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2024
To imagine the kind of future a hotter, dryer climate may bring, and the geopolitical challenges it will create, look no farther than two parts of the world that Donald Trump wants America to control: Greenland and the Panama Canal.
The president-elect in recent days has insisted that both places are critical to United States national security. He’s called to reclaim control the Panama Canal from Panama and acquire Greenland from Denmark, both sovereign territories with their own governments.
They have something else in common as well: Both are significantly affected by climate change in ways that present looming challenges to global shipping and trade.
Because of warming temperatures, an estimated 11,000 square miles of Greenland’s ice sheets and glaciers have melted over the past three decades, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Massachusetts. That has huge implications for the entire world. If the ice melts completely, Greenland could cause sea levels to rise as much as 23 feet, according to NASA.
Greenland’s retreating ice could open up areas to drill for oil and gas and places to mine critical minerals, a fact that has already attracted international interest and raised concerns about environmental harms. And, ship traffic in the Arctic has surged 37 percent over the past decade, according to a recent Arctic Council report, as sea ice has declined. More melting could open up even more trade routes.
Amanda Lynch, a professor at Brown University who has studied climate change in the Arctic for nearly 30 years, said the new trade routes created by ice melt could also heighten the risk of environmental disasters. Ships from some countries, she said, are not designed to withstand Arctic conditions.
“An oil spill or some other toxic accident on that route is inevitable and could already have happened and we just don’t know it,” she said.
China has shown significant interest in a new route through the Arctic, and in November China and Russia agreed to work together to develop Arctic shipping routes.
“The traffic lanes in the Arctic are changing because of climate change,” Jose W. Fernandez, the State Department under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in an interview. “It’s something that we are devoting more and more attention to, and any new administration is going to have to address going forward,” he said.
Trump calls climate change a hoax. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. But his former national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien suggested on Sunday that climate change was one factor in Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland.
“Greenland is a highway from the Arctic all the way to North America, to the United States,” he told Fox News. “It’s strategically very important to the Arctic, which is going to be the critical battleground of the future because as the climate gets warmer, the Arctic is going to be a pathway that maybe cuts down on the usage of the Panama Canal.”
Which brings us to the Panama Canal.
Over 51 miles across the middle of Panama, the vital waterway uses a series of locks and reservoirs to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific. The canal spares ships having to go roughly 7,000 additional miles to sail around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America.
In 2023, a lengthy drought caused widespread disruption at the canal. Water levels at Gatún Lake, the principal hydrological reserve for the canal, sank to historically low levels and the authorities reduced shipping through the canal to conserve the lake’s fresh water. The resulting lines of ships waiting for weeks to cross the canal threatened to trigger a domino effect across supply chains.
Scientists found the immediate cause was El Niño, a natural weather phenomenon that can last several years. But, they found, climate change may also be prolonging dry spells and raising temperatures in the region. The canal authority has proposed a $1.6 billion project to dam the nearby Indio River to secure freshwater.
Climate change is walloping the canal from several angles, said Kevin Trenberth, the former head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Its lock system also is facing increased threats from rising sea levels, which could cause floods and erode the canal banks.
Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, said Trump’s interest in both the Panama Canal and Greenland were “kind of an indirect acknowledgment” that climate change is real and creating new global challenges.
“It’s interesting that the narrative from Trump is that if we control these places, it would be better somehow. But the challenge is the climate change component doesn’t go away,” he said.
Trump’s aspirations face some big hurdles. President José Raúl Mulino of Panama has ruled out discussing control of the canal with Trump. And the prime minister of Greenland, Mute Egede, has said control of the island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, is “not for sale and will never be for sale.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/31/climate/trump-greenland-panama-canal-climate-change.html