Greenland: Fade To Black

 

GREENLAND

Fade to Black

Climate change is turning Greenland black. Algae growing due to warmer temperatures is darkening the ice sheet on the icy Arctic island, reported Business Insider. Since dark colors reflect less sunlight than lighter ones, the algae will likely speed up the melting that is already occurring in the Danish-controlled territory.

Greenland’s ice used to melt for around 50 days in the summer. Now it’s melting for as many as 75 days a year. That’s around seven times faster than the melting of nearly two decades ago. The island’s lakes are vanishing as a result, too, potentially providing lubrication that helps the thick ice slide over the bedrock below, further causing the ice to dissipate into the ocean, added Scientific American.

The disappearing ice has revealed how plants once lived on Greenland, confirming that a deep freeze is not destined to rule the island, Wired wrote. That means, what Eric the Red, a Viking who lied about how Greenland was a verdant paradise to lure settlers more than a millennium ago, might in fact be coming true.

Ancient plants aren’t the only treasures on Greenland, however. A motherlode of rare earth metals is in the territory, too. That’s where things become political.

On April 6, Greenland voters are scheduled to vote on a new government. In February, wrote Quartz, the governing Siumut party collapsed due to disagreements over a rare earth and uranium open-pit mine called Kvanefjeld.

Some are frightened of the ecological effects of such a large resource-extraction project. The critics argued that such a mine could hurt another growing industry on the island: tourism. Visitors to Greenland can see icebergs, primordial tundra and the aurora borealis, Conde Nast Traveler wrote.

“This is a project that probably really would make a difference, in terms of providing jobs and a healthy dose of income to the national purse,” Danish Institute for International Studies Senior Researcher Ulrik Pram Gad told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “But it’s also a very controversial project. Should we sacrifice this beautiful spot and the kind of life that people live there, for the sake of the greater good – in this case, inching toward national independence?”

Proposed 15 years ago, Kvanefjeld’s proponents of the project argue that it will help Greenland become independent. Home to 56,000 people, Greenland is largely autonomous but leaders in Copenhagen dictate its foreign, defense and monetary policy, Reuters explained.

Under Danish law, Greenlanders have the right to secede from the Kingdom of Denmark. But currently, Denmark pays for half the island’s annual budget, Foreign Policy magazine reported. Without the mining project, it’s not clear if the island’s residents can afford their current level of public services.

That’s the kind of hard choice that comes with standing on one’s own two feet.