This story was produced by Grist and copublished with Wired. It was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Greenland’s massive cap of ice, containing enough fresh water to raise sea levels by 23 feet, is in serious trouble. Between 2002 and 2023, Greenland lost 270 billion tons of frozen water each year as winter snowfall failed to compensate for ever-fiercer summer temperatures. That’s a significant contributor of sea level rise globally, which is now at a quarter of an inch a year.
But underneath all that melting ice is something the whole world wants: the rare earth elements that make