The Crossed Pond

Seriously, I heard this story on NPR today and nearly shit myself in irritation. It goes like this:

Iceland’s extraordinary access to geothermal energy; clean, cheap, environmentally responsible, etc, has given them so much excessive cheap electricity that high-energy processing industries are willing to ship raw material around the world in order to process them in Iceland. Prime example: aluminum smelters. So Icelandic companies are building them, creating jobs and investment. Additionally, since one quarter of the world’s aluminum smelting is done via coal fired generators, using geothermal instead is environmentally smart. So: Clean, cheap energy leads to clean processing, jobs, and international investment. Iceland’s 40-year history of aluminum smelting helped pull them from a low position on the European economic totem poll up to one of the wealthiest (per capita) nations in the world. All good right?

Of course not. Meet the opposition: Omar Ragnarsson has started a political party specifically to oppose Aluminum smelter plants. You see, he thinks they are ugly. Now, you are asking me, “Jack, come clean now, what’s his real opposition?” And I’m telling you that’s it. They are ugly. It is the most basic, unsupportable NIMBY argument I have heard in a long while. A flavorful Omar teaser for you:

“There are plans for seven huge smelters in Iceland. These smelters will require all the energy that this country can offer, and destroy all our nature,”

Got that? Destroy all our nature. With seven plants. Ok, so he makes one hyperbolic statement, surely he has more compelling logic? How exactly will these plants “destroy all our nature?” Allow NPR to summarize his argument:

Ragnarsson says Iceland’s volcanic landscape is a world treasure and should not be criss-crossed with steam pipes and transmission lines or pocked with power plants.

Considering that Iceland does not even have 200,000 households, I’m just trying to imagine the real negative impact of these egregiously ugly steam pipes and transmission lines. I suspect that at least ten or even a dozen people would be irreparably offended by the aesthetic horror show that is the Icelandic geothermal and aluminum smelting industry. I kept waiting for something more, like maybe there are all kinds of heavy metals produced in the process that flow into rivers and seas. Or maybe it releases toxic gases, or causes sterility in tree frogs. Anything. And you know, there really could be a lot of terrible negative aspects of geothermal aluminum smelting. But I don’t have any idea what they are, because all I got was this:

“In Yellowstone, you see huge amounts of energy, but in America it would be a civil war if someone mentioned to harness one ten-thousandth of the hot springs there”

Marvel at the reasoning: Other nations don’t do exactly what we are doing, so it must be bad. Stare in awe at the hyperbole, something for which Omar clearly has a talent. A Civil War merely at the mention of using part of Yellowstone. Brother against brother. A million dead. Terrible future rock-opera retrospectives on the great Yellowstone War Between the States.

Let’s try this: I am openly advocating that we make part of Yellowstone available for geothermal energy. I await the calls for secession.

But ole Omar, he is not done. The online article is missing part of the originally aired radio version, in which he was asked by the obvious question by the NPR correspondent, to wit, what about the downside of not using Iceland’s geothermal energy to smelt aluminum, specifically the alternative coal fired plants’ effect upon the environment. Omar, he said, “Burning coal you say? No not burning coal.” Apparently Omar believes other countries would, magically, abandon their dirty coal plants and build geothermal plants of their own. No word from Omar on the aesthetic concerns these other countries might have. But seriously Omar, this going to happen simply because you wish it so? Yes, that should do it. Jesus wept.

This post brought to you by Glenfiddich and raw irritation, working together in disharmony.