Three of Trump’s core policies are the genesis for this question. The desire to annex Canada, the desire to annex Greenland, and the push for autarky.
Now, I realize this isn’t an explicit policy, and it couldn’t be considering how they message politically on climate change. And even if Trump isn’t thinking that far ahead, I wouldn’t be so sure about the Silicon Valley billionaires like Musk that are running most of his cabinet and feeding him ideas. Sure, Trump doesn’t have long to live based on his age. But someone like Zuckerberg? Catastrophic climate collapse is a scenario that you may face in your lifetime.
In a catastrophic climate change scenario, the appeal of having more northern territory is obvious. In some of the more severe scenarios, this century the US is looking at the collapse of its agricultural heartland as corn, soy, and wheat belts march north. And of course there are newly opening Northernly trade routes as the polar ice thaws.
Trump has long had a belief that the US should be more self-sufficient. He seems to genuinely believe in the concept of autarky. And if some of the worse projections of climate change come to pass, we are looking at what may be known to history as the Great Famine. We’re facing potential vast decreases in agricultural productivity and multiple simultaneous breadbasket failures. And whenever a country experiences a food shortage, the very first thing its government does is to prohibit the export of food staples.
I again don’t think Trump himself is playing this level of chess, strategizing for decades in the future. But some of the tech billionaires, the ones that follow Yarvin and dream of reorganizing society from top to bottom? There’s zero chance those guys aren’t also factoring in climate change into their machinations. There’s a reason so many of them are building bunkers in New Zealand and other remote locations likely to fair relatively well in the event of catastrophic climate change.
I would never expect them to admit this is their strategy. The fossil fuel wing of the Republican Party has been pushing the “climate change is a hoax” line for so long that the party can’t just abandon that messaging without being eaten alive by their base. But looking at their actions, it sure looks like the actions of an amoral sociopath that was concerned about catastrophic climate change.
I ask myself, “if I had no conscience, didn’t care about hurting innocent people, and was running the US, what would I do to best position the US for catastrophic climate change?” And it looks an awful lot like what the Trump administration is doing right now.
Any time you wonder if Trump is exercising any kind of foresight, the answer is no. Any time you wonder if Trump is cleverly manipulating events, the answer is no. He makes decisions on impulse, without regard to advice, policy, consistency, or legality.
He’s also barely sentient so all of his positions are coming from behind the scenes. He’s just the front man.
Considering they just announced reviving the timber industry by allowing 59% of national forests to be clear cut… I’d say no.
There’s also the “drill, baby, drill” during the inauguration so I don’t really think so
My intuition tells me it’s a resource grab too. Greenland may be expressly because they think the glaciers will melt and it will be a Seward’s Folly 2.0 (big oil, minerals & resource boom a la the Alaska purchase).
I think I can answer that: no.
The need for people to think that Trump is playing 12-dimensional chess is bizarre to me.
OP isn’t saying trump is playing 12D chess though. They’re speculating whether some of the younger people that have been known to be planning for societal collapse for years already are using their influence over trump to help their plans for societal collapse.
They’d be stupid not to, so no. Probably not.
I’ve often thought the same OP, except instead of preparing for it, I’d argue they may even be deliberately hastening it. There’s a book by British comedian Ben Elton, called Stark, which explores basically this concept.
The problem with this idea comes down to soil and environment. One can’t just pick up whole crop areas and transplant them into a new one solely based on the temperature. It’s the same fallacy that invites fantasy maps of settlements on Antarctica. And the bunkers of the wealthy? Death traps because they’re built on an assumption of a limited climate problem that goes away soon and allows them to emerge in some Hollywood rebirth of society (take the ending of the movie 2012 as an example of convenient, “it’s all okay now”).
The problem with this idea comes down to soil and environment. One can’t just pick up whole crop areas and transplant them into a new one solely based on the temperature.
Agreed, but this is Trump we’re talking about. I imagine that in his addled head it absolutely is as simple as that.
Gotcha, like bleach and tariffs. Maybe he saw a clip from the movie Greenland and thought, we need that!
I’m also toying with the idea that he was elected promising cheap eggs and sees Greenland on the map and thinks it kind of looks like a giant egg.
Not out of the question at this point.
You’re way overthinking that. The far north already has mineral resources opening up, and potential shipping passages. They’re ready for exploitation long before catastrophic climate change hits
