On "Forbes Newsroom," Mike Albertus, Professor at the University of Chicago, discussed Greenland's strategic importance for U.S. shipping.
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00:00You've written that Arctic shipping has increased 37 percent over the last decade, and you were just talking about that Northwest Passage.
00:09Can you talk a little bit more about these shipping lanes and how it currently works?
00:13Because can the U.S. currently get around Greenland or is it blocked?
00:17Like what would open up if Greenland were part of the U.S.?
00:22All right. So so currently, you know, you can drive ships to Greenland, around Greenland and the like.
00:29But there's a seasonality, of course, to Arctic ice, and that season is getting shorter for in terms of ice coverage, particularly at the northern fringes of Canada and Russia, because, you know, doing loops around Greenland doesn't get you so much.
00:43But if you can connect very different markets in different parts of the world and avoid places like having to, you know, ship through the Suez Canal or ship around, you know, the Asian subcontinent and things like that, you can start to unlock a lot of value through those very different shipping routes.
01:01And so that's what's really critical here. And why why Greenland?
01:05Well, Greenland is a potential waypoint along both of these shipping routes, the ones that run north of Canada and north of Russia.
01:11It's reasonable to think of Greenland as a as a as an important waypoint on those shipping routes.
01:16And those are long shipping routes, too. Right.
01:18So there would probably be many waypoints along those routes.
01:21But if one is going to try and impact, you know, the flow of goods through those areas, then having a longer chain of influence or control is going to be very important.