US president Donald Trump’s attempted annexations of Greenland and Canada earlier in 2026 were signs of mounting climate-linked geopolitical tensions, according to ex-diplomat Arthur Snell.

Central to the “Arctic Great Game”, Snell believes, both are rich in precious minerals essential for the energy transition and are becoming increasingly important to extractivist economies for access to the wider Arctic region. As the planet warms, shipping routes will open across the sea ice, and the area may become more agriculturally and industrially productive. Other countries are making moves, too: Russia enlarged its claim to 70% of the Arctic seabed in 2021, and China began to include the polar regions in security laws in 2015, unveiling a ‘Polar Silk Road’ initiative in 2018. The “unfreezing of the Arctic”, writes Snell, “is leading to an unfreezing of the delicate strategic balance in that region.”

This is the sobering stuff of Elemental, Snell’s ambitious new book about the geopolitical implications of the climate crisis. Snell, who left Britain’s Foreign Office in 2014 and now hosts Behind the Lines podcast, is concerned with how today’s apocalyptic geopolitical headlines are increasingly inseparable from the deterioration of the planet.

Over the course of the book, Snell figuratively and literally roams the planet – in a way that perhaps only a former British diplomat can – exploring how the climate crisis and energy transition are starting to affect the global order. Unambiguous information about the impacts of the climate crisis is still surprisingly difficult to come by. As mainstream climate writing continues to prevaricate, Elemental traces the sprawling map of resources, state boundaries and transitions unusually firmly. The work is wide-ranging, covering food supplies, migration, energy market transformations, water access and much more.

Snell believes such changes aren’t simply a direct response to the climate crisis, but that they are increasingly a factor. “There is an important distinction to be drawn between the idea that ‘everything is because of climate change’, which is an oversimplification,” he writes, “and the truth, which is that ‘climate change changes everything.’” This nuance is useful without disrupting Snell’s clear-sightedness about the scale and reality of the issue.

Snell sensibly avoids a truly impossible scope by focusing fairly tightly on what is and will happen due to the climate crisis. He largely avoids judgements about why it is happening, or what must be done. As a result, he builds his case well to make confident, if not grim, conclusions: “As much as it is an unwelcome prospect, it feels most likely that the current growth trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions will continue for several more decades.”

But there is a lingering horror in this book that is separate to the awful realities of fires, floods and food chains. By translating the climate crisis into the faceless, impersonal game of geopolitics, Elemental reveals that for many it is increasingly being treated as a player in deeper and more insidious machinations – cynically framed in public as a question of possibilities and statistics, but in reality a geopolitical dimension whose course can be predicted with some accuracy. The US, Russia and China are making moves that suggest they are aware of the melting Arctic and the need to secure minerals for the energy transition. Elemental hints that current global leaders are fully aware of what is going on and are acting accordingly.

There are some moments of cheer: Snell is adamant that climate impacts can also generate cooperation, citing the example of scientific breakthroughs to improve crop production, countries deterred from conflict by risks to food and energy supply, and innovative new governance systems emerging. But while Elemental is challenging, it is useful. As the world’s powerful become clear-eyed about the impacts of this crisis, turning it to their own ends, understanding their logic becomes essential to resisting it. This is an unblinking analysis of the state of the global order as the climate crisis begins to bite.

Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It by Arthur Snell. Wildfire, 2026. ISBN: 9781035412969

Martha Dillon is a freelance writer specialising in the climate crisis and its links to cities, technology and housing.