Greenland Close to Independence

By Nick Gier, Unfiltered 7-24-09

WORLD'S LARGEST ISLAND CLOSER TO INDEPENDENCE

By Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho

Adding to the ignorance many Republicans display about global warming, party chairman Michael Steele recently pontificated that Greenland got its name because it was once just as green as Iceland was.

When Iceland was settled in the 9th Century, glaciers covered only 10 percent of the land mass, but Greenland's ice sheet extended over 80 percent of the island. Fugitive Eric the Red told tall tales about verdant landscapes in order to get people to settle there.

Greenland was heavily forested 450,000 years ago; and, come to think of it, Middle Pleistocene would be a good way to describe many GOP personalities and policies.

The Norse emigrants (5,000 at their peak) eked out a living in the warming period before the "Little Ice Age" cooled the Northern Hemisphere during the 15th-18th Centuries.
Ice eventually blocked the fjord to the Western Settlement and all the people there died by 1350. The last recorded event in the Eastern Settlement was a wedding in 1408.

On orders from their bishop, the Norsemen were forbidden to trade with or learn from the Inuit. Rather than sewing warm clothing from skins, the settlers insisted on wearing the latest European fashions.

The first recorded encounter found the Norsemen stabbing captive natives to see how they would bleed. Understandably, the Intuit fought back and the Norsemen, desperately recycling worn-out iron implements and weapons, simply could not defend, let alone, feed themselves.

Denmark took over the island in the early 18th Century and ruled it until the Greenlanders were granted home rule in 1979. The Danish colonists survived primarily because they dressed, ate, and transported themselves as the Inuit did.

Greenland's oil and mineral reserves are massive, and Canadian, Danish, and Russian military ships are staking out new Arctic oil fields. It is estimated that Greenland alone may have 50 billion barrels.

In the November 2008 election, 76 percent of Greenlanders voted for independence, and last month the Danish government handed over control of everything except defense, currency, and foreign policy.

Dressed in native costume complete with seal skin pants and boots, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark made it official in a ceremony in Nuuk, the island's capital. The country will now be called Kalaallit Nunaat (Land of the Greenlanders) and Kalaallisut will become the official language.

The 2008 election also saw the turning out of Social Democrats, who had dominated the Kalaallit parliament for 30 years. Their members had lived it up a little too much in the bars and restaurants of Copenhagen.

The Socialist Party, led by people in their 20s and 30s, received 44 percent of the vote. American defense officials were relieved to hear that the new prime minister Kuupik Kleist will allow the U.S. to stay at its base in Thule, which is now part of America's missile defense system.

In 2007 the increase in temperatures on Kalaallit, depending on the location, was a dramatic 2.3-4.8 degrees Fahrenheit. All of Kalaallit's glaciers are in major retreat and the largest, the Jakobshavn Glacier, has, according to Oregon State scientists, "nearly doubled its flow speed in the past decade."

In 2007 24 cubic miles of the ice sheet broke off into the sea. The melting and breaking up of Kalaallit ice is responsible for a quarter of the alarming increase in sea levels since 1996.

Global warming is bad news for Kalaallit's people in the north. Their life style, which depends on hunting and traveling on ice, has been severely disrupted, not only for Greenlanders but Arctic people all across the top of the world.

With 56,000 people Kalaallit will be the 9th smallest country in the world, but most of those in group (South Pacific and Caribbean islands, Monaco, and Liechtenstein) are doing quite well despite their size. We should wish the people of Kalaalit the very best in their new adventures in nationhood.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Read or listen to all his columns at www.NickGier.com

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