Inside Out | The Arctic is the next geopolitical hot spot that the US wants to freeze China out of

If Donald Trump is right, and global warming is a “hoax”, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit earlier this month to Rovaniemi, capital of Finnish Lapland, for a meeting of the eight-member Arctic Council, must have had a surreal air.

This traditional home of reindeer, the indigenous Sami people and Santa Claus, is getting into the habit of celebrating “black Christmas” as rain begins to replace snow during the winter months. The government is thinking of moving the Santa Claus village further north to make sure the 300,000 visitors during winter have a white Christmas.

Discussions at the Arctic Council became heated as Pompeo blocked efforts to include references to climate change or the Paris Accord commitments to carbon dioxide emission cuts.

Pompeo and the US administration are focused not on the climate-change warnings from the Arctic, where scientists say temperatures are rising twice as fast as in most parts of the planet, but on the strategic and military challenges as the Arctic Ocean opens to sea traffic and China has begun to talk of the “Polar Silk Road” as part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.