Nice and green

Our copy of Newsweek arrived in the mail yesterday and in it YT was astonished to discover a major feature on Niceland, including an interview with our Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde , which the mag calls ‘the greenest political leader in the world‘. [Aside: if you are ‘green’ in Niceland, it means you are incredibly naive. Ahem.]

The mag waxes lyrical about Niceland’s clean energy, as well it should, although to be fair we didn’t exactly plan it this way, we just happen to have all this water and no trees, hence no coal. And no oil - although that possibility has not yet been eliminated, what with offshore test drilling set to commence in the next couple of years if I remember correctly. The US has set a goal to obtain 10 to 15 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources ‘at some point in the distant future’ [according to Newsweek] and the EU to obtain 20 percent by 2020. Meanwhile, we’re already at 80 percent.

Iceland sits on a very thin crust of earth, meaning that all the seething volcanic activity below the ground heats [some of] our groundwater up to, um, some seriously hot degrees [I don’t know how many]. We then drill down to get it, store it in hot water tanks that can also come in handy as a viewing platform for tourists, and then pipe it into our radiators for warmth. It’s also useful for heating the 130 or so open-air swimming pools around the country [!! - a lot when you consider there are only 307,000 peeps living here] and generating electricity by harnessing the steam emissions from the ground. In a class of its own is then the above-ground water, primarily run-off from the glaciers that is harnessed to drive massive turbines for creating electricity.

[/geology lesson.]

Anyway, I found myself nodding and agreeing with everything in the article, except when I got to the part where the PM waxes lyrical about the damn Alcoa plant in the east, which is supposedly so clean and wonderful and for which a massive area of land was sunk in order to create a power plant to feed it, wiping out natural habitats of several species as well as a handful of waterfalls and a river. And when he got to the part about how wonderful it is that Niceland is able to produce aluminium using clean energy as opposed to it being produced elsewhere in the world using dirty energy, I wanted to barf. I mean, what’s pristine landscape worth? Nothing? - Evidently not. This is the largest unspoiled wilderness in Europe and it’s sold to the highest bidder without a second thought. And now they want to build more smelters. Because we’re so altruistic, or something.

THE SUN CAN’T DECIDE IF IT SHOULD SHINE
It’s been mostly grey and overcast all day, although the sun makes a brave effort to shine every now and then before vanishing into the murky greyness once again. Right now we have 12°C [54C] and sunrise this morning was at 4.52 am, sunset due for 9.59 pm.