Good on you for calling out the hypocrisy of European leaders for protesting the Russian invasion while continuing to buy Russia's oil!
But you must be consistent in your calling out hypocrisy: Trump mistreated friends and allies on the global stage while at the same time expecting fealty.
If I did this in my personal life, I'd quickly be out of friends and allies. So it is no surprise that the U.S. is in the position it is in today. And to contain China, you need allies.
Without friends or allies, the only game left to play is the old prisoner's dilemma. No more stag hunt. And the diminishing returns of the prisoner's dilemma quickly become evident for all to see.
If Denmark doesn’t want to sell at any price. is Greenland valuable enough due to minerals and location to break up NATO / shed blood over? Methinks not
This is an intellectually unserious attempt to retrofit grand strategy onto what is, in reality, rhetorical posturing. The argument depends on freezing China’s carbon intensity while extrapolating GDP growth, despite clear evidence that emissions per unit of GDP have been falling for years as cheaper and superior technologies such as solar, batteries, electrification, and transmission scale. Treating this kind of deliberately extreme assumption as a plausible base case is not realism, it is manufacturing inevitability.
The rare earth argument fails at an even more basic level. Reserves are not supply. The constraint is processing and supply chain integration, not ore in the ground, and Greenland would be among the slowest, most expensive places on Earth to build that capability in any relevant timeframe. Inflated claims about global reserve shares only underscore the sloppiness.
The military framing is equally weak. The United States already has basing rights and longstanding defense arrangements in Greenland, just as it did throughout the Cold War. Sovereignty is not required for access, and threatening it only undermines cooperation that already works.
What’s presented as hard-headed realism is, in fact, a series of category errors strung together to justify a conclusion that collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Very well said. This was by far the flimsiest piece I’ve read near, sorry to say. Drawing a line from all these straw men to ‘we need to own Greenland’ can only be done in Orange crayon!
Hi Alexander, apologies if my earlier comment came across as harsh. I did not mean it personally. I strongly disagree with your analysis and, more importantly, with the implications it carries in an already heated geopolitical context.
On China’s coal use specifically, the empirical trend is very clear. Data from sources such as Our World in Data show that coal’s share of China’s electricity generation has fallen from roughly 70 percent in 2010 to just over 50 percent in 2024. That decline has occurred despite rapid growth in total electricity demand, which makes it more significant, not less.
If you look at the scale of non-coal capacity additions, especially wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and now storage, China is adding more clean power each year than any other country in absolute terms, and at a pace that increasingly covers most or all incremental demand growth. This is why several independent analyses now argue that China’s carbon emissions may have peaked in 2024 or 2025, or are at least very close to peaking, even if year to year confirmation will take time.
It is also worth noting that since the Paris Agreement, most mainstream climate models have revised projected warming pathways downward. This is largely due to faster than expected deployment of renewables, electrification, and efficiency gains, with China being a central driver of those trends rather than an outlier resisting them.
When you look at technology fundamentals, the direction of travel becomes even clearer. The cost curves for solar, wind, batteries, and grid-scale storage continue to fall, and China dominates manufacturing in each of these sectors. That translates directly into faster deployment, faster electrification, and faster decarbonization, both domestically and globally.
You are absolutely right that China is the world’s largest emitter today in absolute terms. But it is equally true that China is decarbonizing and electrifying faster than any other major economy, driven by technological capability and cost advantages that no other country currently matches. Ignoring that trajectory risks misreading both the climate picture and the strategic implications that flow from it.
I haven’t done that research but I may. If you’re asking because you think CHINA NO COAL traces some sort of line to US MUST OWN GREENLAND (if this is what you’re doing), in my opinion you are being far too clever. (And this by no means any critique of you as an analyst, that’s not my intent.).
If the US can find a path to do 90% of what it needs to do without the collateral damage of forcefully appropriating it from an ally, don’t you think that makes more sense? Whether China stops using coal or not?
Smart strategy to win Greenland at the cost of losing Europe and Canada. Because that it what is happening right now; no it's not posturing. Watch what happen next.
The hate-to-views ratio (probably seen in comments) on this research piece is going to be very high...and I appreciate the balls it took to publish it.
Interesting parallels. Around 2011, I began arguing that globalization had created social, economic and political imbalances across and within countries. Historically, such imbalances signal a shift toward populism and deglobalization.
By 2021, I suspected the re-orientation of global supply chains would trigger commodity scarcity and a decade of 'secular stagflation.' When Russia invaded Ukraine, I looked deeper into how Europe might replace Russian energy. Marx famously argued that 'capital is distilled labor' - I realized finished goods are essentially distilled energy. For instance, 35% of the cost of aluminum is electrolysis, which explains why Iceland is a major producer—it leverages abundant, cheap geothermal power. Unfortunately, beyond the króna, I couldn't find a liquid, pure-play instrument for Icelandic assets, as most producers are global conglomerates.
Greenland fits a similar thesis, but the implicit "Trump volatility" may dampen risk-adjusted returns. Given that post-COVID policy is increasingly driven by interests rather than values, the better play may be via vol-washed private assets, specifically those with privileged access to the Trump administration. This isn't my game, although it's a logical one.
More generally, I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes. It's just as important to have cyclical macro conditions aligned, which I think currently are for commodities writ-large. Low conviction view, though...
hmm. got me thinking. One challenge with the narrative is the very long term time horizon. I am not convinced that the US administration is playing 4D chess ... at times I wonder if they could manage tic tac toe. One interesting test might be the quantum of beachfront property owned by the TEAM. If your thesis is right there is an awful lot of water coming off the shelf in the medium term !!
Good on you for calling out the hypocrisy of European leaders for protesting the Russian invasion while continuing to buy Russia's oil!
But you must be consistent in your calling out hypocrisy: Trump mistreated friends and allies on the global stage while at the same time expecting fealty.
If I did this in my personal life, I'd quickly be out of friends and allies. So it is no surprise that the U.S. is in the position it is in today. And to contain China, you need allies.
Without friends or allies, the only game left to play is the old prisoner's dilemma. No more stag hunt. And the diminishing returns of the prisoner's dilemma quickly become evident for all to see.
If Denmark doesn’t want to sell at any price. is Greenland valuable enough due to minerals and location to break up NATO / shed blood over? Methinks not
Did I say it was? Thought I was pretty clear it's NOT worth breaking up NATO.
What part of "a fair market price" did you not understand? How can I make this more clear?
This is an intellectually unserious attempt to retrofit grand strategy onto what is, in reality, rhetorical posturing. The argument depends on freezing China’s carbon intensity while extrapolating GDP growth, despite clear evidence that emissions per unit of GDP have been falling for years as cheaper and superior technologies such as solar, batteries, electrification, and transmission scale. Treating this kind of deliberately extreme assumption as a plausible base case is not realism, it is manufacturing inevitability.
The rare earth argument fails at an even more basic level. Reserves are not supply. The constraint is processing and supply chain integration, not ore in the ground, and Greenland would be among the slowest, most expensive places on Earth to build that capability in any relevant timeframe. Inflated claims about global reserve shares only underscore the sloppiness.
The military framing is equally weak. The United States already has basing rights and longstanding defense arrangements in Greenland, just as it did throughout the Cold War. Sovereignty is not required for access, and threatening it only undermines cooperation that already works.
What’s presented as hard-headed realism is, in fact, a series of category errors strung together to justify a conclusion that collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Very well said. This was by far the flimsiest piece I’ve read near, sorry to say. Drawing a line from all these straw men to ‘we need to own Greenland’ can only be done in Orange crayon!
thanks for the feedback!
I agree the first theme assumes that China will not stop using coal.
What evidence do you see that they will?
Hi Alexander, apologies if my earlier comment came across as harsh. I did not mean it personally. I strongly disagree with your analysis and, more importantly, with the implications it carries in an already heated geopolitical context.
On China’s coal use specifically, the empirical trend is very clear. Data from sources such as Our World in Data show that coal’s share of China’s electricity generation has fallen from roughly 70 percent in 2010 to just over 50 percent in 2024. That decline has occurred despite rapid growth in total electricity demand, which makes it more significant, not less.
If you look at the scale of non-coal capacity additions, especially wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and now storage, China is adding more clean power each year than any other country in absolute terms, and at a pace that increasingly covers most or all incremental demand growth. This is why several independent analyses now argue that China’s carbon emissions may have peaked in 2024 or 2025, or are at least very close to peaking, even if year to year confirmation will take time.
It is also worth noting that since the Paris Agreement, most mainstream climate models have revised projected warming pathways downward. This is largely due to faster than expected deployment of renewables, electrification, and efficiency gains, with China being a central driver of those trends rather than an outlier resisting them.
When you look at technology fundamentals, the direction of travel becomes even clearer. The cost curves for solar, wind, batteries, and grid-scale storage continue to fall, and China dominates manufacturing in each of these sectors. That translates directly into faster deployment, faster electrification, and faster decarbonization, both domestically and globally.
You are absolutely right that China is the world’s largest emitter today in absolute terms. But it is equally true that China is decarbonizing and electrifying faster than any other major economy, driven by technological capability and cost advantages that no other country currently matches. Ignoring that trajectory risks misreading both the climate picture and the strategic implications that flow from it.
I haven’t done that research but I may. If you’re asking because you think CHINA NO COAL traces some sort of line to US MUST OWN GREENLAND (if this is what you’re doing), in my opinion you are being far too clever. (And this by no means any critique of you as an analyst, that’s not my intent.).
If the US can find a path to do 90% of what it needs to do without the collateral damage of forcefully appropriating it from an ally, don’t you think that makes more sense? Whether China stops using coal or not?
Smart strategy to win Greenland at the cost of losing Europe and Canada. Because that it what is happening right now; no it's not posturing. Watch what happen next.
The hate-to-views ratio (probably seen in comments) on this research piece is going to be very high...and I appreciate the balls it took to publish it.
Idk maybe the simple explanation is he just has dementia
Interesting parallels. Around 2011, I began arguing that globalization had created social, economic and political imbalances across and within countries. Historically, such imbalances signal a shift toward populism and deglobalization.
By 2021, I suspected the re-orientation of global supply chains would trigger commodity scarcity and a decade of 'secular stagflation.' When Russia invaded Ukraine, I looked deeper into how Europe might replace Russian energy. Marx famously argued that 'capital is distilled labor' - I realized finished goods are essentially distilled energy. For instance, 35% of the cost of aluminum is electrolysis, which explains why Iceland is a major producer—it leverages abundant, cheap geothermal power. Unfortunately, beyond the króna, I couldn't find a liquid, pure-play instrument for Icelandic assets, as most producers are global conglomerates.
Greenland fits a similar thesis, but the implicit "Trump volatility" may dampen risk-adjusted returns. Given that post-COVID policy is increasingly driven by interests rather than values, the better play may be via vol-washed private assets, specifically those with privileged access to the Trump administration. This isn't my game, although it's a logical one.
More generally, I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes. It's just as important to have cyclical macro conditions aligned, which I think currently are for commodities writ-large. Low conviction view, though...
hmm. got me thinking. One challenge with the narrative is the very long term time horizon. I am not convinced that the US administration is playing 4D chess ... at times I wonder if they could manage tic tac toe. One interesting test might be the quantum of beachfront property owned by the TEAM. If your thesis is right there is an awful lot of water coming off the shelf in the medium term !!