Greenland? What About Alaska?

Czarist Russia was desperate for cash; they approached the United States. Wanna buy Alaska? It was an obsession by then-U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, started during the James Buchanan administration, implemented during the Andrew Johnson presidency, passing the Senate by a single vote. “Seward’s Folly.” “Seward’s Icebox.” But on April 9, 1867, for the paltry sum of $7 million, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia; the transfer occurred six months later. The laughter subsided when gold, lots of it, was discovered in 1868. Alaska’s natural resources have provided enormous benefits for the lower 48 from inception.

I am reasonably confident that Donald Trump is dramatically unaware of how Alaska became part of the United States. The idea emanated from the seller, a monarchy facing severe economic problems. When the Soviets took Russia in 1917, they disavowed the Czar’s right to have sold precious Russian land, which they stated belonged to the people. Even to this day, there are significant Russian interests that believe that Alaska still belongs to Russia, reinforced by Russian forays and claims to Arctic lands, their construction of a strong nuclear ice breaker force designed to dominate the Northwest Passage as it thaws.

Trump’s off-handed suggestion that the United States should consider buying the largest island on earth is filled with ironies and evoked waves of derision from both Greenlanders and their parent country, Denmark. “Crazy” was oft repeated. One Danish parliamentarian suggested that perhaps Denmark might consider buying California, a political question that might yield a strong positive local vote if it came down to choosing between Denmark and living within Donald Trump’s vision of America.

Like Alaska, Greenland is a vast storage ground of natural resources, increasingly accessible as global warming melts tundra and glaciers at alarming speed. China has also been interested in opening vast tracts of Greenland to resource exploitation contracts. The United States maintains it northern-most air base (Thule), 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 947 miles south of the North Pole. The above map illustrates how U.S. surveillance patrols routinely watch naval and other military developments in Russia from that base.

What is particularly ironic, however, is how some of the worst damage to the rest of the world has been born in these northern territories. Melting tundra releases trapped organically generated methane, a greenhouse gas that is over 23 times denser and more damaging than carbon dioxide. Melting polar ice, from glaciers to surface ice and snow, are steadily adding massive ocean water, adding most significantly to rising tides and eroding coastlines. Alaska just happens to be a red state that is particularly aware that climate change is not a Chinese hoax. The symptoms are hardly subtle, making Greenlanders mockingly aware that Donald Trump may be the most inappropriate world leader to offer to “buy” land that most clearly reflects these mega-warming realities.

Welcome to reality, Alaska-style (reflective of parallel occurrences in Greenland): “July was Alaska’s warmest month ever, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration… Sea ice melted. Bering Sea fish swam in above-normal temperatures. So did children in the coastal town of Nome. Wildfire season started early and stayed late. Thousands of walruses thronged to shore.

“Unusual weather events like this could become more common with climate warming, said Brian Brettschneider, an associate climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center. Alaska has seen ‘multiple decades-long increases’ in temperature, he said… ‘It becomes easier to have these unusual sets of conditions that now lead to records,’ Brettschneider said.

“Alaska’s average temperature in July was 58.1 degrees. That’s 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) above average and 0.8 degrees (0.4 Celsius) higher than the previous warmest month of July 2004, NOAA said.

“The effects were felt from the Arctic Ocean to the world’s largest temperate rainforest on Alaska’s Panhandle… Anchorage, the state’s largest city, hit 90 degrees on July 4 for the first time, 5 degrees higher than the city’s previous recorded high of 85… Sea ice off Alaska’s north and northwest shore and other Arctic regions retreated to the lowest level ever recorded for July, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Arctic sea ice for July set a record low of 2.9 million square miles. That was a South Carolina-size loss of 30,900 square miles beyond the previous record low July in 2012… Sea ice is the main habitat for polar bears and a resting platform for female walruses and their young. Several thousand walruses came to shore July 30, the first time they’ve been spotted in such large numbers before August.” Los Angeles Times, August 18^th.

In the end, Trump’s suggestion is very much in line with his dramatic ignorance of history and global politics, a complete lack of understanding of even the most basic economic principles, a willingness to ignore hard facts to placate a base that prefer their own “interpretations” of the New Testament instead and his fundamental to self-aggrandizing irresponsibility. For those who believe that this is an essential tenet of evangelicalism, those of Trump’s evangelical supporters who deny man-induced climate change only represent a very small segment of the global evangelical movement that accept the predominant view of climate change.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s hard to navigate by applying common sense to a government that is so mired in mythology and unsupported doctrinaire beliefs that reality is simply not relevant.