Basically, they found deposits of rare earth elements and whatnot that is estimated to be worth $2-3 trillion. However, those elements also occurred in the presence of uranium. Unless the ban on mining uranium was lifted, they couldn't legally mine the rest of the rare earth elements.

If you do the math, all 56,000 citizens on Greenland could become multimillionaires.

I just hope that greed doesn't get the best of them and lead the people of Greenland to destroy their environment and Greenland for their children.

humans hastening their own extinction

If we are ever going to reduce our dependence on petroleum for our energy needs, it is going to take a LOT of rare earth magnets, copper, and lithium.

But we need to quit digging in the ground for them. We need to start doing underground tunnel mining, with the waste and tailings kept to a minimum.

As for Greenland: it should be a "global environmental sanctuary", depopulated and supported by the world as a whole.

The rare earth metals are always recycled... So its a once and done process to acquire enough material to electrify our world and cease to use fossil fuels.

For example, we still need to mine MILLIONS of tons of lithium to transition the world's cars from petroleum to batteries.

They have less than half the population of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Less than a quarter if the Wolverines have a home game.