Greenland, a Danish protectorate since 1721, has nurtured dreams of independence that so far failed to materialize - mostly because 40% of its GDP come from Denmark’s economic assistance. In other words, between material comfort and the privilege of having your own bureaucracy Greenlanders have always plumped for the former.
Bizarrely enough, recent tendencies of polar ice melting gave world’s largest island’s freedom drive an unexpected boost. As retreating glaciers have uncovered huge deposits of mineral resources, prospectors from mining companies and metallurgical conglomerates are flooding the country. As an even more welcome piece of news, offshore, where polar bears used to roam, the U.S. Geological Survey alleges 31 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and gas.
If boring, drilling and digging go unhitched, Greenland will effectively trigger a self-perpetuating bonanza: fossil fuel extracted off its shores will speed up the global thaw, easing access to more and more natural resources. Who knows, there may even come the day when Greenland’s present colonial masters will learn to bend over backwards to bask in the kind of special relationship Britain nowadays likes to think it has with the USA.
In that light, the episode in a new BBC drama Burn Up where an Inuit activist lady performs self-immolation in protest against Greenland ice melting seems a bit far-fetched. Or she must have been anti-independence.
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