In 1969 the first of three aluminium smelters was built in Iceland at Straumsvík, near Hafnafjörður, on the South West side of Reykjavík by Alusuisse (subsequently Rio Tinto-Alcan). In 1998 a second smelter was constructed by Century Aluminum (now a subsidiary of controversial mining giant Glencore), at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík, and in 2007 the third, run by Alcoa, was completed at Reyðarfjörður in the remotely populated East of the country. The Icelandic Government had been advertising the country’s vast ‘untapped’ hydroelectric and geothermal energy at ‘the lowest prices in Europe’ hoping to attract jobs and industry to boost Iceland’s already very wealthy but somewhat fishing dependent economy. The industry, which would permanently change Iceland’s landscape with mega-dams, heavy industry scale geothermal plants and several kilometer long factories, was promoted by the Icelandic Government and the aluminium companies as ‘good employment for a modern age’. However, ten years after the flagship Alcoa Fjarðaál project was completed, unemployment is higher than it was in 2005, and Iceland’s economy has become dependent on an industry which is vulnerable to commodity cycle slumps and mass job losses. Worse, the price charged for Iceland’s energy is tied to the price of aluminium and analyses of the country’s 2008/9 economic crisis suggest it was exacerbated by the poor terms of Iceland’s late industrialisation. Yet demands for further industrialisation remain, and more than 1000 Icelanders are employed in the aluminium sector.

This article exposes the conditions inside Iceland’s aluminium smelters based on interviews with workers conducted in 2012. The stories from two smelters share correlating accounts of being forced to work in dangerous conditions under extreme pressure, and without adequate safety equipment, leading to serious accidents which are falsely reported by the companies. These shocking allegations require serious attention by the trade unions, Icelandic government and health and safety authorities. This especially in the current context of labour disputes with the aluminium companies, alongside revelations about the same companies’ tax avoidance schemes and profiteering in the country.

Century, Grundartangi:

A former worker from the Century plant at Grundartangi shared his story, though did not want his identity revealed. Steini (not his real name) had worked at the plant for ten years and only quit recently.

“When I went to work there I thought of it as just a job and it was good pay. My experience of it was that they were taking our labour for cheap and making work us like slaves. The only thing we get out of it is our pay.

There were so many accidents that were their fault, not ours. They put so many rules in place, but you have to break the rules to get the work done, which they are pressuring you to do, then if something goes wrong its all your fault.”

Steini described how bonuses are awarded to the shift according to the number of accidents. If you have an accident and are off work you lower your annual bonus. At first the bonuses included smart new bikes, then they were reduced to a restaurant meal, and finally just pizza and beer.

He described the pressure of the job; how workers are pushed to work harder, but as soon as they get quick at the tasks they add more work so they are even more pressured. Akin to Alcoa Fjardaál in the East of Iceland the turnover rate is around 20% with only a handful of people staying for ten years as he had. Similarly, both Alcoa and Century Aluminum have gradually replaced permanent jobs with contract labour. Increasingly the work force was made up of University students on summer jobs which made the work even more risky as this short term labour was less experienced and more prone to accidents.

Shifts were twelve hours long, for 183 hours/month and the working hours were very unsociable, many at night for three days in a row. Steini described how most of the days off in between shifts were used to sleep and recover energy in order to work again. As the plant was expanded and more pots were added the work got harder.

“Everybody who works in Norðurál [Century] hates it. Most of the people are eating anti-depressants and everything. They hate the company, they hate the work but they are afraid to change and be without work.” He said.

He described how many accidents there were at the factory and how the company avoid paying compensation or having to report the severity of the incident;

“I got a broken finger, I burned my feet and once I had a forklift drop on my arm. I never got any compensation from the company and when I went to insurance companies I could get nothing either. The company ask you to come back to work as soon as you can move and just sit at the computer, then they count that as being ‘well’ in their records so it looks like less ‘work days lost’. The insurance companies also see it this way so it it very hard to get compensation.

One guy was doing something very risky and fell into the [molten aluminium] pot up to his knees. He was on morphine for a few weeks. I remember the health and safety guy coming out of a meeting with him smiling. He had admitted that it was all his own fault.”

Industry standards on reporting discriminate between lost time injuries and restricted work injuries, with the former being taken more seriously. Like Alcoa, Glencore claim that the ‘total recordable injury frequency rate’ (TRIFR) is being reduced annually. Nonetheless ten people died at Glencore’s global operations last year according to their 2015 Annual report, and sixteen in 2014.

Scandals over worker’s rights had previously erupted in Iceland during the construction of several mega power projects for the aluminium industry after the conditions of cheap foreign labour were exposed. More than a dozen Chinese and other foreign workers died during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dam and several Romanian workers suffocated in geothermal pipes on the site of a Reykjavík Energy work camp in Hellisheiði where they worked up to 72 hour weeks.

Steini described the heat of the pot rooms and how restrictive and hot the many types of safety clothing are. As a result most workers chose to use the minimum amount of safety clothing, enabling them to be comfortable and work faster to get bonuses;

“You used as little safety equipment as you could so you could get the job done. When I was in the pot room I just used a paper mask for comfort. I stopped noticing the smell of the gases, then after a period working in the pot lining rooms I went back to the pot room and I really smelt it. It chokes your throat and you know it’s bad.”

‘Pot rooms’ are huge sealed troughs of carbon anodes and aluminium flouride through which up to 320,000 amps of electricity are passed to separate the strongly bonded oxygen from the alumina. Molten aluminium is then ‘tapped’ from the pots and cast into ‘ingots’. The process generates gases including inorganic fluorides, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and perfluorocarbons. Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are extremely potent greenhouse gases lasting up to 50,000 years in the atmosphere. Tetrafluoromethane, the most common PFC is 6,500 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 and its main global source is from aluminium smelters. Sulphur dioxide and fluoride emissions are acidic and can kill or stunt plant growth. Fluoride emissions also build up in the bones and teeth of animals and humans causing Skeletal Fluorosis, which weakens bones and can lead to bone deformation much like arthritis. Farmers living around Centrury’s smelter in Hvalfjörður claim their sheep and horses have got sick and even died from flouride poisoning.

Saga (not her real name) started work in Century Aluminum’s Grundartangi smelter in 2006, before turning twenty. It was her first big job and her introduction to the working world. She was working twelve hour shifts from the outset, and her work began in the pot rooms. Like Steini she described the fallacy of the health and safety training;

“We were told to wear dust-masks because of all the dangerous and unhealthy gases that come out of the pots, also because of the alumina, fluoride and other pollution in the air. You could always smell it all through the mask though. It was emphasized very heavily not to smoke inside because smoking inside the pot-rooms could result in ‘stone-lungs’ in few years time, which is very common amongst smelter-workers. That is because of all the pollution in there. If you would smoke inside, you were inhaling three times more tar and other stuff straight down to your lungs than if you where smoking outside in more normal surroundings. We also learnt that pregnant women are never allowed to enter the pot-rooms because there is a great risk of foetal harm.”

Saga accused Century of extremely low health and safety standards and condemned the company for making workers “repeatedly risk their lives to keep the smelter operational into the next shift”. She described being given second hand protective clothing in poor condition, and claimed that much of the equipment was in need of repair but was still being used as parts were hard to come by. Like Steini she had witnessed and experienced serious injuries, which had been misreported or disguised by asking workers to come in for office days when injured in order to improve the figures on workdays lost due to injury;

“Working for show” you could call it. I have even heard about workers with broken legs being made to show up for hanging out in the office for a few hours just to keep the records clean. It was easy to pressure people with many passive methods, such as bringing down the accident record which means that their shift doesn’t get a reward like the others that went through the year “without” accidents that caused absents.”

She gave a scathing and detailed account of the pressured and dangerous work environment;

“I witnessed others, and found myself, doing dangerous and life threatening things in the smelter. This was not because we had some kind of death wish or thirst for adrenaline but because there was no other way to finish our daily jobs on time. There is no other choice than to climb on that pot, drive that windowless forklift, work on this broken down and not really functioning crane today, not take proper breaks. Be one doing two people’s jobs, drive too fast because you have to hurry and “fixing” things with all possible and impossible ways so they will last just a little bit longer. I have seen people run away, scared for their lives, and then being forced back because somebody has to take care of what went wrong. I have witnessed what happens after a pot explodes.

Far too many people cram themselves into vehicles, because distances are very long and your main transport is your own two legs on the hard concrete floors. These are all labeled as dangerous things to do in there and in theory they are not “really” allowed. For example climbing on pots –which are very often badly closed and have broken lids or holes. Working alone on a crane, which is strictly speaking never allowed, always to be performed by a team of at least two workers. That’s because of the danger of people passing out from the heat, exhaustion, lack of liquid, rest or food, and a crane-operator could very likely be in a critical place when that happens, like over an open pot. Driving vehicles with the lights not working, broken windows or too filthy windows to actually see out is not allowed. Neither is the operation of any vehicles or cranes without proper training, or vehicles and cranes that are broken or not functioning properly. Having your shoes not closed all the way, having an old helmet, old shoes, no dust-mask, standing under an crane in use, not preheating your tools well enough to touch liquid metal or acid. Working in too much loudness, too much darkness or too much pollution. Not getting the breaks that you are entitled to. Teaching yourself how to do things. Working with a person you don’t trust or yourself being in so bad physical state, like suffering illness, fatigue, hunger, pain, that you don’t even trust yourself.

All of these things, I have had to do to finish my duties, just like everybody else in there (at least back then). Of course I could have said no at any given time, but you don’t really want to do that when you know that it is just going to be somebody else, a co-worker who is in the same shoes as you, that will have to take care of it and finish what you left. Everything has to be finished every day no matter what it takes.”

Alcoa Fjarðaál.

The Alcoa plant in the East of Iceland was heralded by the Icelandic Government as the saviour of the waning Eastern economy and a fantastic employment opportunity which would bring young people from Reykjavík to the East. Officials promised up to 1000 permanent jobs, plus another 2.5 jobs created in other sectors for each job in the aluminium industry. Ten years later, however, few of the promised benefits have come to the region, and overall unemployment in Iceland, which was less than 3% in 2005, reached 7.5% in 2009 and remained at 5% 2015.

Alex Smári drove the Alcoa bus from Stöðvarfjörður to Reydarfjörður from 2006 to 2008. He says people in the East believed work in the smelter would be easy, with good pay and plenty of time off, but the reality had turned out to be very different. He described workers returning from their shifts as ‘like corpses’ in the bus, and claims many quit their jobs after a short time. In his opinion the East has not become more thriving as the politicians and company promised, to the contrary “Fjarðabyggd is like a labour camp”.

One worker in the Alcoa Fjarðaál smelter was willing to speak to me though he did not want to be named. Bergur (not his real name) noted the high turnover of workers with many leaving after just a year or two. He claimed around 100 of the 450 employees in the smelter were foreign, suggesting that many in the East simply don’t want to work there. There are only a handful of people who have remained in employment with the company since the smelter opened in 2007.

“Out of twenty people on my shift that started working there five years ago there are only two left. Everyone else quit because they didn’t like working there. The turnover was 20% last year. 20% with all the unemployment in Iceland! It really tells a story.”

Like the Century workers he described how the managers push the workers to work as fast and hard as possible during the shift. However, once they have learnt to work faster the job load simply goes up again.

“The Alcoa building system is devised to suck every bit of what you have. You start with 100 people doing 100 people’s jobs and then you push everyone until 90 people are doing 100 people’s jobs, and then there are 60 and then 50. At Alcoa, everyone gets into the situation where he is working the whole shift doing his absolute best and still walking away with a kick in the butt for not finishing something or other.”

Bergur claimed company people had told them in a meeting that Fjarðaál is the most dangerous of Alcoa’s smelters in Europe. Shifts are twelve hours long and often at night and employees are expected to work 176 hours a month compared with only 142 hours on eight hour shifts at Rio Tinto’s Straumsvík plant near Reykjavík.

There is also a bonus system that rewards the workers for the quantity and quality of aluminium they produce. This means workers effectively get fined when a machine breaks or poor quality alumina is delivered, even though this is out of their control.

“Everything is connected to the bonus. If a crane breaks down and it holds off production it lowers the bonus for everyone. Now we have low quality alumina coming in which means we get through more anodes and that also lowers the bonus. When this situation is going on the workload gets substantially higher, so not only are you working a lot more, but you know you are getting less pay.”

As a result of this pressure Bergur claims the few days off between shifts are usually spent simply sleeping and recovering before work starts again. Contrary to Alcoa’s claims that the workplace is ‘family friendly’ he claims Alcoa Fjarðaál has become known locally as ‘the divorce factory’ since so many couples have separated due to the unsociable hours which affect their relationship.

Bergur also spoke about Alcoa’s use of contract labour, and its effect on worker’s rights and the strength of the unions:

“There are two groups of people working at Alcoa: There are Alcoa employees and there are contractors who are not part of Alcoa. We are doing the same work but they are not members of the unions. By having these two groups they can control the employees more easily and the unity within the factory will be less.”

“We have to live!”

Former Prime Minister of Iceland Halldór Ásgrímsson famously promoted the Alcoa Fjardaál project by proclaiming “we have to live!”. But what kind of livelihood have Icelanders been forced to accept? All of the workers expressed feeling misled by the government and the aluminium companies.

Saga claimed that prospective workers were denied information about the health and safety risks;

“Our government has been been eagerly promoting smelters as very agreeable and good working places for years. Smelters are being promoted in places where people don’t know them, don’t know the dangers, the threats and the health risks, and don’t feel they have a choice. How can a place where you are constantly breathing heavy pollution – alumina, fluoride and dangerous gases – that make you feel like your lungs took a severe beating every time you open up a pot, be a healthy and agreeable working place?”

Bergur analysed the Icelandic government’s claim that the smelter would reverse the East to West migration trend:

“The people who have quit there, who have returned to Reykjavik or whatever…I call those the sensible people. They have moved to the East to work for Alcoa, maybe both man and woman. They come with high hopes and determination to make this work. After working for a year, or a year and a half, the pressure which goes on at the shift becomes too much, and when they realise this is the system and will not change, that they are never going to be in a situation where you are working a relatively easy shift and going home not so tired….this is not going to happen. When they realise that, they quit and get out.”

Steini also questioned the government’s promotion of aluminium smelting as a good employment for Icelanders;

“People in Iceland just wanted jobs, but not necessarily this kind of factory. The question is who put this idea in our minds that the only way to get a job is by having an aluminium smelter?”

Of course, Icelandic smelter workers are not alone in their experience of pollution and dangerous working conditions, and there is much potential to link up with global struggles for workers rights. At Hindalco’s Hirakud aluminium smelter in Odisha, India, workers are taking the company to court asking why they were not told what they were breathing in. They were being moved from the pot-room every four years, told that this was due to the potential health effects of working in such high heats, but the effects of breathing in highly toxic fumes were never mentioned. They believe the company was deliberately concealing the dangers while trying to minimise them.

On top of poor working conditions, employment in the aluminium industry is innately insecure, as it is vulnerable to the peaks and troughs of the commodities supercycle. The recent commodities downturn led to the demise of the UK steel industry, including the likely closure of Port Talbot steel, cutting 11,000 jobs. The workers have already lost part of their pensions, a common phenomenon in the metals industry, as the owners – Tata Steel – claim they cannot afford to pay the full amounts. The rusting skeleton of Century Aluminum’s Helguvík smelter, abandoned midway through construction in 2009, stands as a stark reminder of the false promises and volatility of this industry.

Iceland’s aluminium workers cannot expect their employers, experts in anti-unionising and misleading PR, to protect their rights. Instead, they must properly inform themselves of the risks to their health and security, and contribute to the debate on what constitutes ‘a nice place to work’ in a modern Iceland.

Sources:

Cooke, K. and Gould, M.H. 1991. The health effects of aluminium, a review. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. 111, 163-8.
Aslam M, Khalil K, Rasmussen RA, et al. (October 2003). “Atmospheric perfluorocarbons”. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37 (19): 4358–61.
Dr R. Liteplo and Ms R. Gomes, 2002, ‘Environmental Health Criteria for Fluorides’. International Programme on Chemical Safety, UNEP. http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/…

Indriði H. Þorláksson, economist and former tax director

Frumvinnsla áls – Lýsing á hinni mengandi og orkufreku framleiðslu álbarra

Haukur Már Helgason

Last week’s Thursday, the majority of Alþingi’s Industrial Affairs Committee (AIAC) announced its intention to to re-categorize eight sites as “utilizable” options for the construction of hydroelectric power plants. These have until now been categorized, either as for preservation, or as on “standby”. These are categories defined by the Master Plan for nature conservation and utilization of energy resources, as bound by law. The re-categorization would serve as the first legal step towards potential construction.

The proposal had neither been announced on the committee’s schedule, before its introduction, nor introduced in writing beforehand. The committee’s majority gave interested parties a week’s notice to submit comments on the proposal, which is admittedly faster than we managed to report on it.

Reasoning

When asked, by Vísir, why the proposal was made with such haste, without any prior process in the committee or an open, public debate, Jón Gunnarsson, chair of the committee on behalf of the Independence party, replied that “it is simply about time to express the majority’s intention to increase the number of options for utilization.”

The proposal is in accordance with statements made by the Minister of Industry, Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir, at Landsvirkjun’s autumn meeting earlier that week, as reported by Kjarninn. In her speech at the occasion the Minister said: “I will speak frankly. I think it is urgent that we move on to new options for energy development, in addition to our current electricity production, whether that is in hydropower, geothermal or wind power. I think there are valid resons to re-categorize more power plant options as utilizable.”

Opposition

As the proposal was introduced to Alþingi, members of the opposition rose against the plans.

Róbert Marshall, Alþingi member in opposition on behalf of Bright Future, has called the lack of process “deadly serious” and “a war declaration against the preservation of nature in the country”. Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, the Left-Greens’ former Financial Minister, concurred, calling the proposal the end of peace over the topic, as did the former Environmental Minister on behalf of the Left-Greens, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, who called the proposal “a determined declaration of war”. Katrín Júlíusdóttir, former Minister of Industry, on behalf of the Social-Democrats’ Coalition commented that the proposal was obviously not a “private jest” of the committee’s chair, but clearly orchestrated by the government as such.

Lilja Rafney Magnúsdóttir, the Left-Greens’ representative in AIAC, and the committee’s vice chair, condemned the proposal. According to her, Minister of the Environment, Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, specifically requested fast proposals on these eight options. She says that she considered the data available on all options to be insufficient, except for the potential plant at Hvammur.

That same Thursday, the Icelandic Environment Association (Landvernd), released a statement, opposing the proposal. According to Landvernd’s statement, five of the eight options have were not processed in accordance with law. Landvernd says that the proposal “constitutes a serious breach of attempts to reach a consensus over the utilization of the country’s energy resources.” It furthermore claims that the AIAC’s majority thereby goes against the Master Plan’s intention and main goals.

Landsvernd’s board says that if Alþingi agrees on the proposal, any and all decisions deriving thereof will “constitute a legal offense and should be considered null and void”. Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, Landvernd’s manager, has since stated that if the plans will proceed, the high lands of Iceland will become a completely different sort of place.

The Iceland Nature Conservation Association (INCA) also opposes the plans. The association released a statement, pointing out that if current ministers or members of Alþingi oppose the Master Plan legislation, they must propose an amendment to the law, but, until then, adhere to law as it is.

The options

Mid-October, Environmental Minister Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson already proposed re-categorizing one of the eight areas, “the plant option in Hvammur”, as utilizable. This was in accordance with proposals made by AIAC last March. Leaders of the parties in opposition then objected to the decision-making process, saying that such proposals should be processed by Alþingi’s Environmental Committee before being put to vote. The Hvammar plant would produce 20 MW of power.

The other seven options to be re-catogorized are: the lagoon Hágöngulón (two options, totalling 135 MW); Skrokkalda, also related to Hágöngulón (45 MW); the river Hólmsá by Atley (65 MW); lake Hagavatn (20 MW), the waterfall Urriðafoss (140 MW); and Holt (57 MW).

The last two, as well as the plant at Hvammur, would all harvest the river Þjórsá, the country’s longest river. The eight options total at 555 MW.

Backstory: Kárahnjúkar

The latest power plant construction in Iceland took place at Kárahnjúkar. The 690 MW hydropower plant at Kárahnjúkar is the largest of its type in Europe. It fuels Alcoa’s aluminum smelter in Reyðarfjörður. The largest power plant in the country before Kárahnjúkar, was the Búrfell hydropower plant, on-line since 1969, at 270 MW. The Icelandic government and the national power company Landsvirkjun committed to the dam’s construction in 2002, which was concluded in 2008. The total cost of the construction was around USD 1.3 billion. The largest contractor was the Italian firm Impregilo. The construction was heavily contested, for its environmental and economic effects, for the treatment of the workers involved and for a lack of transparency and accountability during the prior decision- and policy-making process.

At least four workers were killed in accidents on site, and scores were injured. “I have worked on dam projects all over the world and no-one has even been killed on any of the schemes. To have this number of incidents on a site is not usual,” commented International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) vice president Dr Andy Hughes at the time.

During the construction, the country saw new kinds of protest actions, involving civil disobedience and direct action, led by the organization Saving Iceland. Andri Snær Magnason’s 2006 book Draumalandið – The Dream Land – contesting Iceland’s energy policies, and calling for a reinvigorated environmentalism, became a bestseller at the time. Ómar Ragnarsson, a beloved entertainer and TV journalist for decades, resigned from his work at State broadcaster RÚV to focus on documenting the environmental effects of the Kárahnjúkar plant and campaigning against further construction on that scale.

In the eyes of many, however, the greatest impact was the environmental damage done to a significant part of the country’s wilderness and fragile eco-system, as one thousand square kilometers of land were submerged by the dam. Along with Saving Iceland, INCA was at the forefront of the struggle against the plant’s construction.

Few would contest that the dam construction at Kárahnjúkar was the most dividing topic of debate in the country during the first decade of this century, until the 2008 economic crash. Alþingi’s Independent Investigative Committee, established to investigate the advent of the crash, was not alone in relating the expansive effect of construction on this unprecedented scale to the succeeding crisis.

[Correction: Apart from a 2 MW plant in Kaldakvísl, n]o new power plants have arisen since the construction at Kárahnjúkar. Which plays the bigger role, environmentalist campaigns, or the economic crash which ensued, may be debated. What remains at stake is not any single construction project, as such, but the pro-heavy industry policy, continuous through multiple governments through the last fifty years.

Earlier this November, before the latest turn of events, INCA pointed out that at least three of the options that Landsvirkjun already categorized as “utilizable” were considered for preservation according to the still current Master Plan. Due to this, the association protested the Landsvirkjun’s vice president Ragna Árnadóttir’s recent claims, that the company intended to reach a wide consensus on the use of energy resources.

Landvernd and Landsvirkjun

Landvernd, the Icelandic Environment Association, was founded in 1969. It is among the the country’s leading environmental NGOs, runs several educational programs, lobby groups and reviews parliamentary bills and motions. In the last two decades, its emphasis has moved from the conservation of soil and vegetation towards protecting Iceland’s wilderness and landscapes, not least in the country’s uninhabited central highlands. It has initiated civil disobedience actions, its website citing the Mayday Green Walk in 2013 as an example.

Landsvirkjun is the country’s largest electricity provider, operating seventeen power plants, on a scale from Hafið’s 2MW to Kárahnjúkar’s 690MW. The largest hydroelectric power plant serving the public, rather than industry alone, is the plant at Búrfell, at 270MW.

Original source: Grapevine

Bjork will play a concert in protest at the Icelandic government’s proposed changes to conservation laws.

The Icelandic singer tops the bill at the event, which will take place on March 18 at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland. Artists appearing include Lykke Li, Patti Smith, Mammút (pictured below), Highlands, Of Monsters And Men, Samaris and Retro Stefson.

The concert is organised in conjunction with the Iceland Nature Conservation Association (INCA), Landvernd, the Icelandic Environment Association and director Darren Aronofsky, whose film Noah was shot on location in Iceland in 2012 and will premiere at Sambíóin Egilshöll Cinema on the same afternoon.

Collectively operating under the name Stopp!, the group aims to encourage the Icelandic authorities to protect Iceland’s natural environment and impose controls on the damming of glacial rivers and harnessing of geothermal energy, in light of new legislation, reports RUV.

This project was introduced at a press conference at Harpa on the 3^rd of March 2014. Björk and Darren Aronofsky participated in the press conference.

The artists will donate their time and the net income will go to INCA and Landvernd.

The following statement lists the group’s demands:

Stop – Guard the Garden!

All over the world too much of priceless nature has been sacrificed for development, often falsely labeled as sustainable. Rain forests have been cut, waterfalls dammed, land eroded, lakes and oceans polluted, earth’s climate altered and the oceans are now rapidly getting more and more acidic.

In Iceland, the Karahnjukar Power Plant has become the symbol for the destruction which threatens human existence on this earth.

It is our duty to protect Icelandic nature and leave it to future generations, undamaged. The Icelandic highlands, Europe’s largest remaining wilderness – where nature is still largely untouched by man, is not just a refuge and treasure which we inherited and will inherit. The highlands belong to the world as a whole. Nowhere else can we find another Lake Myvatn, Thjorsarver Wetlands, Sprengisandur, Skaftafell or Lake Langisjor.

We demand that Thjorsarver Wetlands, the wilderness west of Thjorsa River and the waterfalls downstream will be protected for all future to come. We strongly protest plans by the Minister for the Environment and Resources to change the demarcation line for the extended nature reserve in the Thjorsarver Wetlands. By doing so, the minister creates a space for a new dam at the outskirts of the area. The way in which the minister interprets the law in order to justify that all nature and/or potential power plants are at stake in each and every new phase of the Master Plan for Conservation and Utilization of Nature Areas is an attack on Icelandic nature and not likely to stand in a court of law. [We have engaged a law firm and we are threatening lawsuit if the Minister goes ahead with his plan]

We now have a unique opportunity to turn the highlands into a national park by bill of law to be adopted by the parliament. Thereby the highlands as a whole will be subject to one administrative unit and clearly defined geographically. Thus all plans for power lines, road construction and/or other man made structures which will fragment valuable landscapes of the highlands will belong to history.

We strongly caution against any plans to construct a geothermal power plant at or near Lake Myvatn. The Bjarnarflag Power Plant is not worth the risk. Lake Myvatn is absolutely unique in this world. Hence, we have a great responsibility for its protection.

We demand that the nature of Reykjanes Peninsula will be protected by establishing a volcanic national park and that all power lines will be put underground.

We find it urgent that the government will secure funds for conservation by hiring land wardens and will protect valuable nature areas against the ever growing pressure of mass tourism.

In particular we protest against the attack on nature conservationists, where unprecedented (sic. S.I. editor) and brutal conduct by the police as well as charges pressed against those who want to protect the Galgahraun Lava, was cruel and unnecessary. We remind that the right of the public to protest nature damage everywhere, worldwide, is a basic premise for the success of securing future human existence on this earth.

We demand that the proposed bill of law repealing the new nature protection laws be withdrawn and that the new laws should take effect, as stipulated, on April 1.

Each time a free-floating rumour gets confirmed, and past political behaviour becomes a scandalous spectacle, one cannot resist wondering if such conduct might be going on today. This was the case in 2006, after a grand exposure of espionage the Icelandic state aimed at socialists during the Cold War. During parliamentary discussions following the revelation, Mörður Árnason, MP for the Social-Democratic Alliance (“Samfylkingin”), highlighted the importance of revealing if similar espionage was indeed occurring in present times. If so, he asked, “how is it being conducted? […] Which foreign states have been able to access this information?” Quite typically, those questions were never answered.

Half a decade later, in late 2010, it was revealed that a British police officer, one Mark Kennedy, had travelled around Europe for seven years disguised as environmental and anti-capitalist activist ‘Mark Stone’ and was collecting information about various activist movements and, in some cases, acting as an agent provocateur. Along with the UK, Denmark, Germany, Italy and France — to name but a few of the places where he worked — he did a stint in Iceland’s Eastern highlands in the summer of 2005. In Iceland, he attended a protest camp organised by the environmentalist movement Saving Iceland which targeted the construction of the gargantuan Kárahnjúkar dam and American aluminium giant Alcoa’s smelter in Reyðarfjörður.

The revelation mostly stayed within activist circles and publications, until early 2011, when a public expose of the spy’s true identity lead to the collapse of a UK trial against six climate-change activists, in which Mark’s secretly obtained evidence played a key role. British newspaper The Guardian then took up the case, and the Mark Kennedy saga started to snowball contemporaneously with the broader attention it received, bringing to light a number of other undercover spies.

Sex, Secrecy And Dead Children’s Identities

Shortly after Mark was exposed, Irish and German authorities admitted that he had worked within their jurisdictions and with their knowledge. Due to the ongoing efforts of Andrej Hunko — MP for German left party Die Linke — a truckload of information regarding European cross-border undercover police operations has since seen the light of day.

A recent book on the matter, written by Guardian journalists Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, brings further context to the affair — the mapping of at least 30 years of police espionage and infiltration of environmentalist, anti-racist and anarchist movements in the UK and elsewhere. Among the information revealed, the authors explain how the undercover officers at the Special Demonstration Squad — the undercover unit responsible for the infiltration — had the modus operandi of taking up identities of dead children in order to build up credible alter-egos based on the short lives of real persons.

It has also been revealed that Kennedy — along with others in his position — enjoyed several intimate relationships with some of his prospects, using sex to build up trust and gather information. One infiltrator, Bob Lambert, even fathered a child with one of these women, only to disappear as soon as his undercover employment became too risky. Eight British women who were victims of this tactic have pressed charges against the spies’ employer, the Metropolitan Police, due to the psychological damage they suffered. In a recent episode of investigative TV programme ‘Dispatches’ on Channel 4, some of them described their experience as having been mass-raped by the state, as they would never have consented to sleeping with the police officers had they been aware of their real identities. Adding insult to injury, their claims will not be heard openly — the British High Court recently ruled that it would take place in the secret Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Saving Hell’s Angels

Enter Iceland, where the big question concerned whether Mark Kennedy had operated with or without the Icelandic authorities’ knowledge and approval. According to the country’s penal code, a foreign party or state’s espionage that takes place within the jurisdiction of the Icelandic state — or is directed at something or someone therein — is illegal and punishable with five-years imprisonment. Had Mark operated without the authorities’ knowledge, it should have caused an international conflict. If he, on the other hand, collaborated with the Icelandic police, it would have equaled the invoking of proactive investigative powers, which the Icelandic police apparently didn’t have at that time.*

Thus the affair entered Iceland’s parliament in late January 2011. Assuming the former version being more likely than the latter, the above-mentioned MP Mörður Árnason asked his fellow party-member and then-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Össur Skarphéðinsson, about the government’s possible actions regarding the matter. After a few lousy personal jokes thrown between the two, Össur claimed he would wait for a report on the matter — conducted by the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police — which Ögmundur Jónasson, MP for the Left Greens and then Minister of the Interior, had already requested.

But when finally published by the Commissioner’s National Security Unit in May 2011, it was pretty much impossible to estimate the relevance of the report, as the details of Ögmundur’s request were never made public. It was, however, clear that the National Commissioner — whose report literally equated environmentalist activists with Hells Angels — wasn’t about to bring any concrete information out into the public domain.

Lost In Information

Although admitting that the police received information about the activists and their plans via domestic and foreign sources, and that the Icelandic police collaborated with foreign police authorities regarding the protests, the report’s authors nevertheless fully dodged the question regarding the Icelandic police’s alleged collaboration with Mark Kennedy. The main conclusion of the report merely found that “during an overhaul of data at the National Commissioner’s office, no information has come forth enabling an answer regarding whether this agent provocateur […] was here in collaboration with or without the knowledge of the Icelandic police in 2005.”

Despite criticism from Saving Iceland and Árni Finnsson, head of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association, which both accused the minister of condoning cover-ups and evasions by accepting these results, Ögmundur never really touched officially on the issue again. Neither did Össur nor Mörður or — as a matter of fact — anyone else from the establishment.

The truth regarding Kennedy’s operations in Iceland is still not publicly acknowledged, and the absurdity of the issue as it now stands is probably best described by Ögmundur’s own words, taken from an article published on Smugan — a now defunct leftist news-site —  and his last public remark on the report: “The National Commissioner’s report states that the Icelandic police obtained information from abroad concerning the protests at Kárahnjúkar, but that the police do not have information about how this information was obtained.”

—

* It is, in fact, questionable if the Iceland police had proactive investigative powers or not. As a result of weak laws and a lack of regulations, it actually seems that until 2011 the police had just about carte blanche regarding whom to spy on and for what reason. See more about it here.

—

Click here to go to the support site for the women’s legal action against the Metropolitan Police.

Watch the above-mentioned Dispatches show here below:

The Police’s Dirty Secret (47mins – Dispatches/Channel4 – 24JUN2013) from Casey Oliver on Vimeo.

First published in Grapevine. Based on a 2010 article entitled “Í landi hinna klikkuðu karlmanna.” (“In the Land of the Mad Men”). Translated in part by Haukur S. Magnússon.

After the election, we see the old parties of economic mass destruction are coming back to power. Giving enormous promises of easy money to be wrestled from evil vulture funds, debt relief and tax reduction, The Progressive Party doubled in size after a few years of hardship. There is a jolly good feeling between the two young new leaders of a brave new Iceland, and when a radio host called them up and offered to play them a request, they asked for Duran Duran’s ‘Wild Boys.’ I Googled the lyrics, not quite remembering the lines, and got a nice chill down my back:

Wild boys fallen far from glory
Reckless and so hungered
On the razors edge you trail
Because there’s murder by the roadside
In a sore afraid new world

They tried to break us,
Looks like they’ll try again

Sounds quite grim. This, coupled with the new government’s announcement that it would be effectively dismantling the Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources and that there will be no Minister for the Environment, gave me a strange flashback feeling. I decided to revisit the state of mind that we used to call normal in 2006. When the economic policy, the energy policy, the expansion of our towns, the mortgages on our homes—almost all aspects of our daily life had become totally mad. This is not my own diagnosis; if you search the homepage of the IMF for the phrase “Collective Madness,” you’ll find this:

“’Iceland, in the decade and a half leading up to the crisis, was an example of collective madness,’ said Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, a remark that elicited spontaneous applause from the more than 300 participants, many of them Icelandic policymakers, academics, and members of the public.”

In our daily lives, we usually sense what is normal and what is over the top. Sometimes the discourse will blind us; PR and propaganda can create a kind of newspeak. It can be a good exercise to try to talk about things in a foreign language, to view them in a new light. As an Icelander, you could for instance try to tell someone from another country that Iceland’s government sold one state bank and received payment in the form of a loan from another state bank—and vice versa. That the state banks were thereby handed to men that were closely connected to the then-reigning political parties. The manager of one of the parties became head of one of the banks’ board of directors, while the other party’s former Minister of Trade belonged to the group that was given the other bank. That man had access to every bit of inside information about the bank’s standing.

In the meantime, this former Minister of Trade became Central Bank Manager. He went to the US and made Alcoa an offer that the company could not refuse. He had thus set in motion the largest-scale construction project in Icelandic history, greatly increasing economic activity in Iceland—a grand boon for the bank he just finished selling to himself.

If you tell this story in a foreign language, people shake their heads. They gape in disbelief. They use words like “corruption” and “mafia.” They exclaim, full of disbelief and even disappointment, “no, not in Scandinavia!”

THE ACCEPTED INSANITY

It is insane to expand a banking system by tenfold in eight years. We know that now. It isn’t technically possible to grow all the knowledge and experience needed to build up and manage such a contraption in such a short time. Not even by shoving an entire generation through business school. It is impossible.

But the megalomania was not just confined to the banking sector. Energy production in Iceland was doubled from 2002–2007, when the huge Kárahnjúkar dam was built in the eastern part of the highlands—to serve one single Alcoa smelting plant. The energy it produces, about 650MW annually, is enough to power a city of one million people. Doubling the energy production in a developed country over a five-year period is not only unheard of, but it would also be considered ridiculous in all of our neighbouring nations. Most industrialised states increase their energy production by around 2–3% annually. Doubling it would be unthinkable. It has been proven again and again that gargantuan investments generally destroy more than they create.

In Iceland, however, the goal was to double the nation’s energy production AGAIN by building aluminium smelters in Helguvík, Húsavík and enlarging the Straumsvík smelter by more than threefold. The period of insanity was to be succeeded by a total and complete madness. This was to be funded by 4–5 billion dollar 100% loans to Icelandic energy companies from foreign banks. Nearly 20,000 dollars for every single Icelander—every loan directly connected to aluminium prices and secret energy prices. The media reported this as your everyday act of government job-creation. It was regarded extremist to ask critical questions. Many regarded it unthinkable for the survival of the nation NOT to do this.

Now we know that we did not only sacrifice our nature for the economy, we sacrificed nature and the economy. Again, we do not have to seek out the websites of activists or environmental groups for this information. We just go to the IMF reports:

“Executive Directors observed that the Icelandic economy is at a difficult turning point. The long economic expansion, initiated by aluminium sector investments, sustained by a boom in private consumption, and fuelled by ready access to external financing, contributed to a build-up of macroeconomic imbalances and financial vulnerabilities.”

COCAINE IN THE HOT WATER?

The madness made itself clear in the business of geothermal energy, making itself known in the form of financial troubles and enormous debt of the energy companies. The geothermal field had enjoyed an even and stable development since it got started in the early twentieth century. During the great depression, the City of Reykjavík created the world’s largest geothermal heating system by pumping hot ground water into the homes in the city. Later they started producing a small amount of electricity by harnessing steam through turbines. But one day it seemed as if someone drilled into a cocaine vein. Out of the twenty high temperature geothermal areas in Iceland, plans suddenly emerged to harness sixteen right away, all for the sake of the aluminium industry. The energy companies applied for permits to do research drilling in most of the remaining ones. In an instant, the field went from a very slow, conservative development to becoming a geothermal wild west.

In the south, a major development of all the geothermal areas from the Reykjanes Peninsula to Þingvellir was planned—a chain of power plants in pristine and delicate areas—to serve a Century Aluminium smelter in Helguvík. But the geothermal plants would not have sufficed—the remaining power would be squeezed from hydro electricity in the Þjórsá river—potentially threatening the greatest stock of North Atlantic Salmon in Iceland—and up in the highlands—threatening the Pink-footed Geese of Þjórsárver.

So what was referred to as “moderate development” when the parties of The Wild Boys were last in charge of our energy sector? Their plans went like this: A new Alcoa smelter in the east, a new Alcoa smelter in Húsavík, a new Rio Tinto Straumsvík smelter beside the old one, an expansion of the Century smelter in Hvalfjörður and a new Century smelter in Helguvík. Amounting to a total of 1.4 million tons of aluminium. Each one of them needing energy that could serve one million people in their daily lives. Each one of them demanding sacrifice of great natural wonders, wild rivers and pristine geothermal areas.

How did they fare? The Alcoa Smelter in the East has been built, with the destruction of two glacial rivers, Lagarfljót and 50 km2 of highland beauty. The expansion of the Rio Tinto smelter was stopped and the Húsavík smelter did not go through, however, a skeleton of the Helguvík smelter is currently rising—with no power in sight.

The Alcoa smelter in the north would have required all the harnessable power in the northern part of Iceland, only excluding Jökulsá á Fjöllum. Close to Mývatn, we have the Krafla geothermal area. After a long and often struggling forty-year development period, the available power from the area reached about 60 MW. Now, the goal was suddenly to quadruple the area’s energy production—expanding it by 150 MW in just a few years, and harnessing the beautiful Þeistareykir area to its utmost capacity—up to 200 MW. They also had their eyes set on Bjarnarflag and Gjástykki, delicate areas that should be regarded as national heritage sites. All this was to serve a new Alcoa factory they wanted to build close to Húsavík, the famous whale watching and fishing village in North Iceland. Having done all that, however, the energy production would still not reach the 600 MW that Alcoa really needed—the harnessing of two more glacial rivers would have been necessary: Skjálfandafljót with the waterfall Aldeyjarfoss and the glacial rivers running from Hofsjökull.

The interesting thing is not how crazy this seems in hindsight, how extreme, how mad this reality was — but that outsiders did not see this plan as collective madness. The scheme was praised in international media as being a progressive plan for “clean” energy, and we still have members of parliament that regret that this did not happen. And the fact that our labour unions and politicians have referred to this when they say that “nothing is happening” in terms of business and job creation in Iceland. Or that they refer to this when they say “we have still only harnessed X% of our energy.” They are talking about this as a normal feasible future state of Iceland.

Why are people so crazy? Is it or was it a good idea to indebt the nation by a total of 5 billion dollars to place two Alcoa smelting plants in the same constituency? To surround the Faxaflói bay, where 70% of Iceland’s population resides, with three smelters? The answer is simple: The mad men still think so. One of the new Independence Party MPs, Brynjar Níelsson, has no regrets for the death of the river Lagarfljót in service of Alcoa. He said it was apparent that protectionists loved a few fish more than they did people.

But you can still ask like a fool: Did Iceland really have enough accumulated knowledge and manpower to multiply all our energy companies in the space of ten years? Was there never a doubt in the geologist’s mind when he found himself in a magical place such as the Torfajökull area above Landmannalaugar, Kerlingarfjöll or the steam areas around Reykjavík? Did they really want to do drill, pipe and harness EVERYTHING, right away? And do it all for the sake of a single industry—the aluminium industry. Did it have to be the role of a marginalised group of a few activists to use their spare time to criticise this?

OF “REYKJAVÍK” KNOWLEDGE

I was once at a meeting in Húsavík, where I screened my film, ‘Dreamland.’ At that meeting, the local geothermal plant manager claimed he could easily harness 1,000 MW out of geothermal areas north of Mývatn. I asked if it wasn’t correct that scientists are concerned about overexploitation of the country’s geothermal areas. The scientists’ criticisms were quickly blown off the table as “Reykjavík knowledge,” and in that instant every alarm bell went off.

Now we understand that power is not as plenty as the hype promised, and now most Icelanders understand that energy production on the banks of Lake Mývatn in Bjarnarflag might just jeopardise the ecosystem in that wonderful lake. But you wonder if the people developing our most delicate areas possess good enough judgement to work close to natural wonders. It seems like they are ready to take the risk, to see what happens.

I found an interview with the aforementioned plant manager from 2002. At that time, he had drilled a big hole for 170 million ISK because a Russian company potentially wanted to build an aluminium oxide factory and a giant aluminium plant in Húsavík.

If one sets aside minor ethical facts, such as the Russian aluminium industry being run by the mafia at that time, one is still left to ponder the fact that almost no industry in the world produces as much and as toxic waste as aluminium oxide production (or alumina, as it is called). Those that followed the horrible events when a red slush toxic lake in Hungary broke should know what comes with an alumina refinery. But this local hard-working man had spent more than one and a half million dollars looking into the feasibility of such a plant in Húsavík. Things have been so good here that people think they are untouchable.

Even though the companies engage in malevolent practices in other countries, they would never do that here. Sure.

THE HOLY LOCAL

It seems that for some reason the most unbelievable hogwash gets promulgated without any critical thought. We enter a boom after boom and never learn from mistakes. We can look further back in history to see how madness is mixed up with ambition, how extreme and unrealistic views of the future are presented and taken seriously.

In an edition of Morgunblaðið from March 1987, one can read a prediction of the impending evolution of local fur farming until 1996. At that time, thirty fur farms were operated in Iceland. Morgunblaðið cites a report that predicts Iceland will foster 600 mink farms by 1996. They assume a twenty-fold growth in ten years, as if nothing were more natural. A month later, this optimistic story ran: “The mink stock will double this year.” Only three years later, in April of 1990, we find this dramatic headline in a copy of Morgunblaðið: “Fur farming: The industry is on its last legs. Many farmers on the edge of despair.”

In this country everything is considered normal if a “local” wants it. Nothing in Iceland is as crazy as the holy local is when he wants a smelter or an oil refinery, no matter how large or out of proportion. He has the sacred right to that, especially if he uses “job creation” as an argument. Numbers that would be considered sizeable in large nation’s economic statistics, energy resources and infrastructure that are earmarked by the world’s superpowers as being “strategically important” are subject to “the will of the locals.” The nation’s energy resources and nature are in the hands of a smattering of district councils that have no staff and no expertise while the majority of Icelanders that reside in the capital area seem by default “local” to nowhere.

So, the locals of the east destroyed their highlands, the locals of the south want to dam the wonders of the Skaftá area, the lower part of the Þjórsá river and the locals of the southwest are ready to harness almost every single geothermal area. And this seems to be a global problem—rural communities losing their youth and talents to the cities of the world are willing to sell off their forests, their mountains, their rivers and valleys for some hope of development and a future.

It is strange to see that one of the major driving forces behind this development resides within our labour leaders, who have been demanding extreme leverage and risk on behalf of public energy companies. If there should be a hesitation in the risk taking, the responsible parties are “dragging their feet.” The labour unions’ “stability agreement” with the former government entails that “every obstacle be removed” that somehow hinders the proposed Helguvík aluminium plant. It is exactly this kind of thinking that lead to almost 200 foreign workers being left disabled and unemployable as a result of working on building the Kárahnjúkar dam. Conditions of workers were severely compromised to make the dam construction process cheap enough. Every obstacle was removed to provide Alcoa with energy prices that save them 200 million USD annually. That amounts to the combined yearly wages of more than 10,000 teachers.

The noble cause of creating jobs becomes quite grim if it involves harming the work capacity of so many. The PR people talk about a ‘multiplication effect’ of every job in a smelter—but wouldn’t it be polite to subtract the disabled workers? People will go so far to satisfy their prince charming that they behave like the ugly stepsister in the fairy tale, cutting their toes off to fit the glass shoe.

HOUSE OF CARDS

The Helguvík aluminium smelter close to Keflavík Airport is a symbol of how poorly run Iceland can be; the Helguvík aluminium smelter is already being built, even though nobody knows where we can scramble together its required 600 MW of energy. The Helguvík smelter is a symbol of how weak the nation’s administration can be, of how shattered professionalism and long-term thinking can become, and how the media all but encourages unlawful activities in their headlines, if job creation is at stake. They started to build the smelter without access to power sources, and without the necessary power lines planned or agreed upon by landowners.

Why start building, then? Because in 2006, the Wild Boys were in power, showing their ambition and “competence” by signing long term sales agreements for cheap energy before the energy sites had been researched, planned or developed. Now Reykjavík Energy and HS Orka are bound by agreements that neither company wants to fulfil due to foreseeable losses from selling the energy below its production costs.

The sharks were very aware that they were taking advantage of a country with mad politicians in a rare period in our history. When they were willing to sell almost everything, anything, anywhere to anyone. In a remarkable investor report called: “Harnessing unlimited power and profit from the world’s most progressive energy program,” an analyst made this great comment:

“It works out great for Iceland, too. It is very cheap for Iceland to deliver power to Century. The Icelandic power companies will make extraordinary profits on that power if aluminium prices stay strong. And if aluminium prices weaken, Iceland is not biting the hand that feeds it.”

This is how politicians build an elaborate house of cards that combine risk, debt and commitment that collapses if only one of the cards falls. Thus, the hands of future city governments have been tied and an insane construction binge in important areas has been commenced, all to benefit one company that’s lacking most of the needed permits.

Could anyone recount the details of the Century Aluminium Helguvík Smelter project at an international conference without being booed off the stage as a fraud? At an aluminium conference, however, such a man would actually bring more lust than an exotic dancer.

Despite being in the hands of extreme capitalists, the labour movement has not called for professionalism or long-term thinking in energy affairs. It simply demands that “every obstacle be removed.” Get the trucks rolling immediately.

In 2006 we were in the middle of a revolution, but the Wild Boys did not call themselves “The Aluminium Revolutionary Front”—they defined themselves as the norm, even though their scale was insane. If they were criticised, they started thinking of themselves as persecuted. Warlords are always persecuted moderates when they’re merely conquering neighbouring nations in the name of peace.

THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM

Throughout the years, polls have shown that a large part of Icelandic males aged 40–70 have been in favour of the collective insanity seen in the energy policy of 2006. The biggest problem seems to be with male voters of The Independence Party, where a vast majority has even considered the most extreme energy policy as the sole basis for the continued survival of Icelanders. That explains the great emotional attachment they have to dams and smelters. To secure their survival, the majority of them wants to cut back on our environmental regulations, and they have no standards whatsoever on the ethical background of the corporations coming to Iceland.

Therein lies Iceland’s most serious political ill. If everything were normal, our males would be conservative, moderate, aversive to risk, frugal, orderly and even a bit boring. This is an important group of people in every society. It contains a lot of average household fathers; it contains pillars of society, company directors, influentials, MPs and even journalists and editors. These are men that have the power to define what is normal and what is abnormal and/or excessive.

OF RESPONSIBLE PUNKS AND SURREALISTS

It is harmful for communities when a critical mass of their important males starts adhering to revolutionary and completely reckless ideas, adopting a blind belief in them. This group is not fit for governing anything while the situation lasts, and it is therefore no coincidence that the city of Reykjavík is now governed by the punkers and surrealists of the Best Party. A moderate mixture of surrealism and punk rock is a down to Earth, conservative and responsible policy when compared to the delusions and anarchy of the crazed men. They have proved very moderate and responsible, and have now moved the policy of Reykjavík Energy, Reykjavík’s energy company, into a more sustainable and modest direction. And the Left Green Social Democrat government did the same with Landsvirkjun, the national energy company.

Those that are worst off in this group of mad men share a mutual admiration for Einar Benediktsson (1863-1945). The Icelandic National Myth is perhaps best embodied in the figure Einar Ben, our poet of progress. His most recent biography gives a good picture of the kind of man he was and the impulses that motivated his actions:

What drives Einar Benediktsson on to undertake this long journey […] is his unshakeable belief in his own abilities to be of use to his impoverished fatherland in countries abroad. His dream is to furnish the money that will transform Iceland into a modern country, with towns, factories, railways, roads, harbours and large-scale farms. He carries nothing with him except his belief in himself…

Einar Benediktsson had great dreams for the future of Iceland, replete with hydroelectric dams, factories and railways. While his generation on both sides of the Atlantic saw their dreams become a reality, and sometimes a nightmare, Einar was to be disappointed in all his great hopes and ambitions. Henry Ford was born a year before Einar Benediktsson, and Sam Eyde, the founder of Norway’s Norsk Hydro was born three years after him. But Iceland failed to industrialize in the way Einar envisaged. Whether Iceland was fortunate or unfortunate to have missed out on the Industrial Revolution is something we can argue over. But the failure of Einar’s dreams left an unfilled space in the Icelandic soul. Iceland’s wealth came from fishing, but Einar’s ideas still hovered in the air, leaving a sense of a task left unfulfilled—the unfinished Icelandic dream. The Americans could move on from Ford to Gates. The Icelanders were still lacking a Ford.

One of the first bubbles in Iceland happened when businesspeople travelled the country buying rights to harness waterfalls in the beginning of the 20th century. Einar Ben had the Norwegian engineer Sætersemoen draw up a row of power plants spanning the entirety of Þjórsá. The drawings of the proposed power plants look magnificent and enticing and would without doubt be considered among Iceland’s most beautiful buildings had they been constructed. But how realistic were the plans? They had planned for harnessing Þjórsá to produce 600–800 MW—in 1918, nota bene. This does not include the rest of the water rights these men had secured for themselves, including Dettifoss and Gullfoss. In comparison one could note that today, one hundred years later, the City of Reykjavík uses 200 MW—on Christmas Eve, with every electric appliance running at full steam.

What did Einar plan on doing with all this energy in 1918? Aluminium production was barely on the horizon as a feasible industry, and televisions and freezers were but distant dreams. What were they planning to do with all the power? Produce fertiliser? The Gufunes fertiliser plant used around 20 MW when it was running at its peak. Who was to use all the energy and pay for the series of power plants? The answer is likely simple: No one. No one in the world could have found use for this energy.

Of course Einar could easily have harnessed a small stream to light up a small village, maybe even a cowshed or two. But there is no glory in that. The act would not appease the deranged men’s need for conquest and magnitude. There’s much more spunk, gusto and vigour in lining all of Þjórsá with power plants, even if the energy produced is way beyond what the nation can use one hundred years later. To this day, a lot of people think that Iceland’s government at that time was backwards, afraid of foreigners and somehow prevented the founding of a great and profitable company and “foreign investment.” But it’s enough to look at the numbers to see that the whole thing was a sham.

It’s so weird to think that, ever since, a certain group of Icelandic males have harboured a strange sort of national grief. It’s as if Einar’s unrealistic ideas have been haunting later generations of Icelanders. Not as fantasy, but as real, attainable goals or lost opportunities: “The dreams of our turn of the century poets have finally come true.” Remarked former PM Geir Haarde as he signed a deal with Alcoa in 2002. Yes, finally, the nation was dragged into a century old illusion.

THE MAD MEN VS. THE WISE GIRLS

The mob seems tolerate nothing worse than young, educated women who that use words like “professional” or “process.” Even if aluminium production in Iceland has been tripled over the last ten years, a lot of the crazy guys think that Iceland’s economic problems stem first and foremost from a lack of aluminium smelters.

Supporters of a new Century Aluminium smelter in Helguvík spent millions in advertisements campaigning against departing Minister for the Environment Svandís Svavarsdóttir, who delayed the building process with demands of a sober overview of the energy demand and environmental impact. The blogosphere went wild when Left-Green MP Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir spoke up against deep-sea oil drilling in Icelandic waters. One sensed a lynch mob in the making as former-Minister for the Environment Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir met with locals in Húsavík advocating for a full environmental impact assessment for a new Alcoa smelter—the audience was only lacking the pitchforks. The decline of The Independence Party is very evident in the fact that Katrín Fjeldsted lost her seat in parliament. She is a well-educated, intelligent and logical doctor and the only party MP who questioned the insanity. Every obstacle shall be pushed out of the way.

Icelanders harvest 1% of the world’s fish. We receive more tourists per capita than most nations. Iceland has harnessed five times the amount of energy that the nation needs to function, and we currently operate three aluminium smelters. But we have ALREADY harnessed five times more energy than our neighbouring countries. We are already an energy superpower—if everything were normal, such an investment should yield a fair bit of profit to the nation, if we don’t blow the proceeds and resources in another round of debt. But the discourse is so crazy. People act as if “NOTHING IS PERMITTED” when the energy production is already five times more than the nation can consume. Of the energy we produce, 90% already goes to smelters.

We already have everything a modern society needs. We just need to tend to what we have already built, to reap some profit from the power plants we have already constructed and take better care of what we’re currently fishing. People get insecure when interest groups moan: “Who will support us in the future?!?” as if Iceland is a country without foundations. The fear that is purposely spread is resulting in Iceland acting like a man that demands radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery to fix his headache. The truth is that the treatment will never cure him—but it might kill him. He will in the best-case scenario grow addicted to the drugs.

THEY TRIED TO BREAK US…

We are a small community and we need peace and room to work. That Björk should need to take time off work to fight the insanity is just a small example of the disturbance that thousands of Icelanders suffer every day because of this crazy nonsense. Living here will become unbearable if something like the reckless policy from 2006 goes full speed again. It is maddening that we cannot seem to leave our most beautiful areas alone. We are a small community where co-dependency is the norm and people are polite.

The new leaders are young and nice guys; Sigmundur Davíð loves old buildings and has good ideas for city planning. But behind them is a crowd of mad men, “fallen far from glory, reckless and so hungered.” Were four years from power enough to sober up the mentality in terms of the energy policy? What will come out of the “rethinking” of the Energy Master Plan? Will we be strapped up into another rollercoaster, just to take another ride of boom and bust? “They tried to break us. Will they try again?”

It’s dark and silent — nothing unusual around midnight by river Laxá and lake Mývatn in the north of Iceland. But somewhere behind the darkness, beneath the silence, something extraordinary is about to happen. Suddenly, a dynamite explosion disturbs the silence — in what has gone down in history as a single yet highly important step in a much greater movement of resistance.

More than a hundred farmers officially claimed responsibility for the explosion, which annihilated a small dam in the river on August 25, 1970. The area’s inhabitants were determined to prevent the construction of a much bigger dam, which would have destroyed vast quantities of this natural area, as well as most of the surrounding farmlands.

Just as determined to keep the saboteurs away from legal troubles, those who claimed responsibility kept a strict policy of silence, making it hard for the authorities to single out alleged leaders or protagonists. Now, almost half a century and a saved river later, another bang has broken that silence.

A WATERSHED ACT IN ICELANDIC HISTORY

Namely, that is Grímur Hákonarson’s documentary ‘Hvellur’ (“Bang” — see trailer below), which premièred at the Bíó Paradís cinema on January 24. Through dialogues with some of the participants, many of whom still reside by the river, the film tells the story of the Laxá conflict. “We kept all commentators and university professors out,” Grímur told me a few days before the première, “focusing instead entirely on those who took part in it.”

The case is often considered the beginning of environmentalism in Iceland. Shortly thereafter, Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness wrote his famous, hard-headed call-out for nature conservation — titled ‘The Warfare Against the Land’ — and the Laxá conflict also brought about the Environmental Impact Assessment, which up until then had been completely absent in Iceland’s energy production.

“What makes the Laxá conflict peculiar is that those who resisted also succeeded,” Grímur says. “The planned dam was never built and the area was saved.” Four years later, parliament passed a law securing the protection of Laxá and Mývatn, contributing to the explosion’s status as “the most remarkable and powerful event in the history of environmentalism in Iceland,” as Sigurður Gizurarson, the bomber’s defence lawyer, put it.

Celebrating the forty-year anniversary of the act in August 2010, one of Iceland’s most remarkable environmentalists, Guðmundur Páll Ólafsson, remarked that the act “literally saved the ecosystem of Mývatn and Laxá.” He also maintained that the dynamite “blew up a democracy-restriction imposed on the district’s inhabitants and all those who loved the land, by the authorities and the board of Laxárvirkjun,” the company that owned the dam. “The arrogance of the authorities hovered over the land until the bomb exploded, but then we became free — for a while.”

Sixty-five people were charged for sabotage, but no one spoke out about any details and the Supreme Court ended up handing out mild suspended sentences. The film now reveals that three men were responsible for igniting the dynamite. Only one of them is still alive.

STILL THE BONE OF CONTENTION

In any case, exposing secrets is much less the film’s aim than documenting and preserving this extraordinary story. And for a good reason — it could easily fall into oblivion. “People over fifty remember this event very well, but those who are younger don’t really know the story,” Grímur says, adding that during the film’s making, they were told numerous times that they should have started filming much earlier as many involved have since passed away.

But how do those still alive recall these events today? “No one looks back regretfully, and most of them are still politically radical, opposed to large-scale destruction of natural areas for energy production. They are proud of the results of their act,” Grímur says.

But as Guðmundur Páll’s words, “then we became free — for a while,” imply, the plans had not been cancelled for good. During the construction of the huge Kárahnjúkar dams in Iceland’s eastern highlands, a new construction plan for Laxá was put on the drawing table. However, as words of warning came from Mývatn — including that the locals surely hadn’t forgotten how to use dynamite — the plans were later drawn back. Siv Friðleifsdóttir, then Minister of the Environment, stated that never before had she been so pleased to cancel a project.

Many of Iceland’s most remarkable natural areas are still the bone of contention between environmentalists and industrialists, including geothermal areas close to Mývatn [see here and here]. Grímur doesn’t consider the film to be part of the current conflict, but it doesn’t mean that people won’t feel some connection with today’s most pressing environmental issues. “One only needs to listen to the debates in parliament,” Grímur concludes, “to notice that the same old discussion is still going on today.”
___________________________________________________________________

HVELLUR from Ground Control Productions on Vimeo.

People can let off steam, get angry, shudder at the thought of it… ‘Who do these politicians think they are?’ ‘Scumbag generals!’ […] And they get more and more angry, and then, burp! A little liberatory burp to relieve their social indigestion.

These words came to mind last month when Iceland’s media reported upon the current situation of river Lagarfljót in the east of Iceland. “Lagarfljót is dead,” some of them even stated, citing the words of author and environmentalist Andri Snær Magnason regarding a revelation of the fact that the river’s ecosystem has literally been killed by the the gigantic Kárahnjúkar Dams. The dams were built in Iceland’s eastern highlands in the years between 2002 and 2006, solely to provide electricity for aluminium giant and arms producer Alcoa’s smelter in the eastern municipality of Reyðarfjörður.

The revelation of Lagarfljót’s current situation originates in a report made by Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s state owned energy company and owner of the 690 MW Kárahnjúkar power plant, the main conclusions of which were made public last month. Although covered as breaking news and somewhat of a scandal, this particular revelation can hardly be considered as surprising news.

Quite the contrary, environmentalists and scientists have repeatedly pointed out the mega-project’s devastating irreversible environmental impacts — in addition to the social and economical ones of course — and have, in fact, done so ever since the plan was brought onto the drawing tables to begin with. Such warnings, however, were systematically silenced by Iceland’s authorities and dismissed as “political rather than scientific”, propaganda against progress and opposition to “green energy” — only to be proven right time and time again during the last half a decade.

AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS SHOULD RECEIVE MORE ATTENTION

One of the Kárahnjúkar plant’s functions depends on diverting glacial river Jökulsá á Dal into another glacial river Jökulsá í Fljótsdal, the latter of which feeds Lagarfljót. This means that huge amounts of glacial turbidity are funnelled into the river, quantitatively heretofore unknown in Lagarfljót. This has, in return, led to the disintegration of Lagarfljót’s ecosystem, gargantuan land erosion on the banks of the river, serious decrease in fish population and parallel negative impacts on the area’s bird life.

As reported by Saving Iceland in late 2011, when the dams impacts on Lagarfljót had become a subject matter of Iceland’s media, the glacial turbidity has severely altered Lagarfljót’s colour. Therefore, sunlight doesn’t reach deep enough into the water, bringing about a decrease of photosynthesis — the fundamental basis for organic production — and thereby a systematic reduction of nourishment for the fish population. Recent research conducted by Iceland’s Institute of Freshwater Fisheries show that in the area around Egilsstaðir, a municipality located on the banks of Lagarfljót, the river’s visibility is currently less than 20cm deep compared to 60cm before the dams were constructed. As a result of this, not only is there less fish in the river — the size of the fish has also seen a serious decrease.

Following last month’s revelation, ichthyologist Guðni Guðbergsson at the Institute of Freshwater Fisheries, highlighted in an interview with RÚV (Iceland’s National Broadcasting Service) that the destruction of Lagarfljót’s ecosystem had certainly been foreseen and repeatedly pointed out. He also maintained that aquatic environment tends to be kept out of the discourse on hydro dams. “People see what is aboveground, they see vegetation, soil erosion and drift,” he stated, “but when it comes to aquatic ecosystems, people don’t seem to see it very clearly. This biosphere should receive more attention.”

BENDING ALL THE RULES

All of the above-mentioned had been warned of before the dams construction took place, most importantly in a 2001 ruling by Skipulagsstofnun (Iceland’s National Planning Agency) which, after reviewing the Kárahnjúkar plant’s Environmental Impact Assessment, concluded that “the development would result in great hydrological changes, which would have an effect, for example, on the groundwater level in low-lying areas adjacent to Jökulsá í Fljótsdal and Lagarfljót, which in turn would have an impact on vegetation, bird-life and agriculture.” The impacts on Lagarfljót being only one of the dams numerous all-too-obvious negative impacts, Skipulagsstofnun opposed the project as a whole “on grounds of its considerable impact on the environment and the unsatisfactory information presented regarding individual parts of the project and its consequences for the environment.”

However, Iceland’s then Minister of the Environment, Siv Friðleifsdóttir, notoriously overturned the agency’s ruling and permitted the construction. Although her act of overturning her own agency’s ruling is certainly a unique one, it was nevertheless fully harmonious with the mega-project’s overall modus operandi: For instance, during Alcoa and the Icelandic government’s signature ceremony in 2003, Friðrik Sophusson, then director of Landsvirkjun, and Valgerður Sverrisdóttir, then Minister of Industry, boasted of “bending all the rules, just for this project” while speaking to the US ambassador in Iceland.

A BIOLOGICAL WONDER TURNED INTO DESERT

As already mentioned, the destruction of Lagarfljót is only one of the dams irreversible impacts on the whole North-East part of Iceland, the most densely vegetated area north of Vatnajökull — the world’s largest non-arctic glacier — and one of the few regions in Iceland where soil and vegetation were more or less intact. Altogether, the project affects 3,000 square km of land, no less than 3% of Iceland’s total landmass, extending from the edge of Vatnajökull to the estuary of the Héraðsflói glacial river.

Sixty major waterfalls were destroyed and innumerable unique geological formations drowned, not to forget Kringilsárrani — the calving ground of a third of Iceland’s reindeer population — which was partly drowned and devastated in full by the project. In 1975, Kringilsárrani had been officially declared as protected but in order to enable the Kárahnjúkar dams and the 57 km2 Hálslón reservoir, Siv Fiðleifsdóttir decided to reduce the reserve by one fourth in 2003. When criticized for this infamous act, Siv stated that “although some place is declared protected, it doesn’t mean that it will be protected forever.”

The dams have also blocked silt emissions of the two aforementioned glacial rivers, Jökulsá á Dal and Jökulsá í Fljótsdal, resulting in the receding of the combined delta of the two rivers — destroying a unique nature habitat in the delta. In their 2003 article, published in World Birdwatch, ornithologists Einar Þorleifsson and Jóhann Óli Hilmarsson outlined another problem of great importance:

All glacier rivers are heavy with sediments, and the two rivers are muddy brown in summer and carry huge amounts of sediment, both glacial mud and sand. The Jökulsá á Dal river is exceptional in the way that it carries on average 13 times more sediment than any other Icelandic river, 10 million metric tons per year and during glacial surges the amount is many times more. When the river has been dammed this sediment will mostly settle in the reservoir.

In contravention of the claim that Kárahnjúkar’s hydro electricity is a “green and renewable energy source,” it is estimated that the reservoir will silt up in between forty and eighty years, turning this once most biologically diverse regions of the Icelandic highlands into a desert. While this destruction is slowly but systematically taking place, the dry dusty silt banks caused by the reservoir’s fluctuating water levels are already causing dust storms affecting the vegetation of over 3000 sq km, as explained in Einar and Jóhann’s article:

The reservoir will be filled with water in autumn but in spring 2/3 of the lake bottom are dry and the prevailing warm mountain wind will blow from the south-west, taking the light dry glacial sediment mud in the air and causing considerable problems for the vegetation in the highlands and for the people in the farmlands located in the valleys. To add to the problem the 120 km of mostly dry riverbed of Jökulsá á Dal will only have water in the autumn, leaving the mud to be blown by the wind in spring.

This development is already so severe that residents of the Eastfjords municipality Stöðvafjörður, with whom Saving Iceland recently spoke, stated that the wind-blown dust has been of such a great deal during the summers that they have often been unable to see the sky clearly.

All of the above-mentioned is only a part of the Kárahnjúkar dams over-all impacts, about which one can read thoroughly here. Among other factors that should not be forgotten in terms of hydro power would be the dams’ often underestimated contribution to global warming — for instance via reservoirs’ production of CO2 and methane (see here and here) — as well as glacial rivers’ important role in reducing pollution on earth by binding gases that cause global warming, and how mega-dams inhibit this function by hindering the rivers’ carrying of sediments out to sea.

TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF CORRUPTION AND ABUSE OF POWER

“Lagarfljót wasn’t destroyed by accident,” Andri Snær Magnason also said after the recent revelation, but rather “consciously destroyed by corrupt politicians who didn’t respect society’s rules, disregarded professional processes, and couldn’t tolerate informed discussion.” The same can, of course, be said about the Kárahnjúkar ecological, social and economical disaster as a whole, the process of which was one huge textbook example of corruption and abuse of power.

Responding to same news, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Iceland’s current Minister of the Environment, cited a recent report by the European Environment Agency, titled “Late Lessons from Early Warnings,” in which the results of a major research project into mega-project’s environmental impacts and public discussion are published. One of the damning results, the report states, is that in 84 out of 88 instances included in the research, early warnings of negative impacts on the environment and public health proved to be correct.

This was certainly the case in Iceland where environmentalists and scientists who warned of all those foreseeable impacts, both before and during the construction, found themselves silenced and dismissed by the authorities who systematically attempted to suppress any opposition and keep their plans unaltered.

One of the most notorious examples of this took place after the publication of Susan DeMuth’s highly informative article, “Power Driven,” printed in The Guardian in 2003, in which she highlighted all the up-front disastrous impacts of the project. The reaction in Iceland was mixed: While the article served as a great gift to Icelandic environmentalists’ struggle — tour guide Lára Hanna Einarsdóttir suggesting “that an Icelandic journalist would have lost their job if he or she had been so outspoken” — the reaction of the project’s prime movers was one of fury and hysteria. Mike Baltzell, president of Alcoa Primary Development and one of the company’s main negotiators in Iceland, wrote to The Guardian accusing DeMuth of “creating a number of misconceptions” regarding the company’s forthcoming smelter. Iceland’s Ambassador in the UK and Landsvirkjun’s Sophusson took a step further, contacting the British newspaper in a complaint about the article’s content and offering the editor to send another journalist to Iceland in order to get “the real story” — an offer to which the paper never even bothered to reply.

Another example is that of Grímur Björnsson, geophysicist working at Reykjavík Energy at that time, who was forbidden from revealing his findings, which were suppressed and kept from parliament because they showed the Kárahnjúkar dams to be unsafe. His 2002 report, highly critical of the dams, was stamped as confidential by his superior at the time. Valgerður Sverrisdóttir, then Minister of Industry, subsequently failed to reveal the details of the report to parliament before parliamentarians voted on the dams, as she was legally obliged to do. Adding insult to injury, Grímur was finally deprived of his freedom of expression when his superior at Reykjavík Energy — taking sides with Landsvirkjun — prohibited him to speak officially about the Kárahnjúkar dams without permission from the latter company’s director at that time, Friðrik Sophusson.

THE SHADOW OF POLLUTED MINDS

Similar methods applied to the East-fjords and other communities close to the dams and the smelter, where the project’s opponents were systematically ridiculed, terrorized and threatened. One of them is Þórhallur Þorsteinsson who, in a thorough interview with newspaper DV last spring, described how he and other environmentalists from the East were persecuted for their opposition to the dams. In an attempt to get him fired from his job, politicians from the region even called his supervisor at the State Electric Power Works, for which he worked at the time, complaining about his active and vocal opposition. Another environmentalist, elementary school teacher Karen Egilsdóttir, had to put up with parents calling her school’s headmaster, demanding that their kids would be exempt from attending her classes.

Farmer Guðmundur Beck — described by DeMuth as “the lone voice of resistance in Reyðarfjörður” — was also harassed because of his outspoken opposition towards the dams and the smelter. After spending his first 57 years on his family’s farm where he raised chicken and sheep, he was forced to close down the farm after he was banned from grazing his sheep and 18 electricity pylons were built across his land. Moreover, he was literally ostracised from Reyðarfjörður where Alcoa’s presence had altered society in a way thus described by Guðundur at Saving Iceland’s 2007 international conference:

In the East-fjords, we used to have self-sustaining communities that have now been destroyed and converted into places attracting gold diggers. Around the smelter, there will now be a community where nobody can live, work or feed themselves without bowing down for “Alcoa Director” Mr. Tómas.* — We live in the shadow of polluted minds.

(*Mr. Tómas” is Tómas Már Sigurðsson, Managing Director of Alcoa Fjarðaál at that time but currently president of Alcoa’s European Region and Global Primary Products Europe. Read Guðmundur’s whole speech in the second issue of Saving Iceland’s Voices of the Wilderness magazine.)

A LESSON TO LEARN?

All of this leads us to the fact that Icelandic energy companies are now planning to go ahead and construct a number of large-scale power plants — most of them located in highly sensitive geothermal areas — despite a seemingly non-stop tsunami of revelations regarding the negative environmental and public health impacts of already operating geothermal plants of such size. This would, as thoroughly outlined by Saving Iceland, lead to the literal ecocide of highly unique geothermal fields in the Reykjanes peninsula as well as in North Iceland.

Two of the latter areas are Þeistareykir and Bjarnarflag, not far from river Laxá and lake Mývatn, where Landsvirkjun wants to build power plants to provide energy to heavy industry projects in the north. Large-scale geothermal exploitation at Hellisheiði, south-west Iceland, has already proven to be disastrous for the environment, creating thousands of earthquakes and a number of polluted effluent water lagoons. The Hellisheiði plant has also spread enormous amounts of sulphide pollution over the nearby town of Hveragerði and the capital area of Reykjavík, leading to an increase in the purchasing of asthma medicine. Another geothermal plant, Nesjavallavirkjun, has had just as grave impacts, leading for instance to the partial biological death of lake Þingvallavatn, into which affluent water from the plant has been pumped.

Responding to criticism, Landsvirkjun has claimed that the Bjarnarflag plant’s effluent water will be pumped down below lake Mývatn’s ground water streams. However, the company has resisted answering critical questions regarding how they plan to avoid all the possible problems — similar to those at Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir — which might occur because of the pumping and thus impact the ecosystem of Mývatn and its neighbouring environment. In view of this, some have suggested that Iceland’s next man made ecological disaster will be manifested in a headline similar to last month’s one — this time stating that “Mývatn is dead!”

Concluding the current Lagarfljót scandal — only one manifestation of the foreseen and systematically warned of Kárahnjúkar scandal — the remaining question must be: Will Icelanders learn a lesson from this textbook example of political corruption and abuse of power?

Recent polls regarding the coming parliament elections on April 27, suggests that the answer is negative as the heavy-industry-friendly Framsóknarflokkur (The Progressive Party), for which both Siv Friðleifsdóttir and Valgerður Sverrisdóttir sat in parliament, seems to be about to get into power again after being all but voted out of parliament in the 2007 elections. Following the Progressives, the right-wing conservative Sjálfstæðisflokkur (The Independence Party) is currently the second biggest party, meaning that a right-wing government, supportive of — and in fact highly interrelated to — the aluminium and energy industries, is likely to come into office in only a few days from now.

In such a case, Iceland will be landed with the very same government that was responsible for the Kárahnjúkar disaster as well as so many other political maleficences, including the financial hazardousness that lead to the 2008 economic collapse and Iceland’s support of the invasion in Iraq — only with new heads standing out of the same old suits. Sadly but truly, this would fit perfectly with the words of Dario Fo’s Maniac when he states on behalf of the establishment:

Let the scandal come, because on the basis of that scandal a more durable power of the state will be founded!

There is a photograph by Richard Peter of a statue of an angel overlooking the card-house-like ruins of Dresden. During three days in February 1945, the German city was annihilated by the allied forces using a new firestorm technique of simultaneously dropping bombs and incendiary devices onto the city.

The photo resonates with philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘On the Concept of History,’ in which he adds layers of meaning to a painting by Paul Klee titled ‘Angelus Novus’. Benjamin describes Klee’s angel as ‘The Angel of History’ whose face is turned towards the past. “Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.”

Wanting to “awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed,” the Angel’s wings are stretched out by a storm from Paradise, which “drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high.”

“That which we call progress,” Benjamin concludes, “is this storm.”

Can You Stand in the Way of Progress?

If the storm disenables us to fix the ruins of the past, what about preventing the storm from blowing? That would not be so simple according to art collective Angeli Novi, comprised of Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir and Ólafur Páll Sigurðsson, whose exhibition is currently showing at The Living Art Museum (Nýló).

Under a confrontational title — ‘You Can’t Stand in the Way of Progress,’ shaped as the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign of Auschwitz — Angeli Novi have greatly altered the museum’s space with an installation of sculptures, soundscapes, smells and videos, including a 20-minute film of the same title as the exhibition. The film is a kind of kaleidoscopic time machine, examining the plight of generations which, one after the other, become tools and puppets of economic and historical structures.

In a well-cooked and stark manner — adjectives borrowed from Nýló’s director Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir — often shot through with streaks of black humour, the exhibition displays a dark image of Western civilization via versatile manifestations of the horrors embedded in capitalism, industrialism, nationalism, religion, the dualistic and linear thought of occidental culture, and the individual’s buried-alive position in society.

The metaphor here is literal as the only visible body-parts of the film’s thirty protagonists are their heads. The rest are buried under ground. Between themselves, their chewing mouths fight over ceremonial ribbons carrying a collection of Western society’s fundamental values, doctrines and clichés, in a dynamic collision with a collage of significant images behind them — “the history of Western thought,” as author Steinar Bragi points out. Towering over a coffin shaped as a baby’s cot, located in a mausoleum at the museum’s entrance, the same ribbons have been tied onto a funeral wreath. A single cliché, “From the Cradle to the Grave,” hangs between the mouths of two children’s heads that stick out of the black sand below the coffin. A smooth corporate female voice greets the visitors: “Welcome to our world!”

I Sense, Therefore I Think

“It’s very pessimistic,” Steinar Bragi says during our conversation in a bunker-like room of Nýló. “The film shows us disembodied beasts, fighting over the phrases that our entire society is built upon. I always see the head as the rational approach to life, stuck in these dualistic pairs that are so far from reality as I experience it. We have sensibilities, then emotions, and finally there are words and reason. Reason is useful for certain tasks, when one has to go from place A to place B, but it’s only a tool to be used on something far more extensive.”

Steinar and I agree that society is constantly simplified into Cartesian dualism — “I think, therefore I am” — the ground zero of Western thought. And while dualism doesn’t necessarily reject sensibilities and emotions, Steinar maintains that it locates reason on a higher level. “Reason is expected to control, which it certainly does in a small and unglamorous context, but it’s only an expression of what lies beneath.”

Enemies of Progress?

It’s clear that the core of this rationalism is simplification such as how political and social conflicts tend to be reduced to a fight between alleged good and evil forces. This not only brings us to the religious nature of the myth of progress, but also the power of language. Because “although they are hollow and empty and repeatedly chewed on, these phrases are also very powerful,” as literary scholar Benedikt Hjartarson points out. “They conduct the way society is shaped. They manifest the social and economic reality we live with.”

As former director of US aluminium corporation Alcoa Alain Belda told the newspaper Morgunblaðið in March 2003: “Some people are against progress.” He was referring to the opponents of the Kárahnjúkar dams, constructed in Iceland’s highlands to create energy for Alcoa’s smelter. “But fortunately,” he continued, “the world is growing and people are requesting better lives.”

Such an argument equals economic growth and people’s welfare, portraying the megaproject’s opponents as enemies of progress. At the same time it negates the destructive nature of progress, manifested for instance in the culturally genocidal impacts — in the form of displacement of populations — and irreversible environmental destruction often associated with large-scale energy production, and how the lives of whole generations are wasted by wars waged for power and profit.

“We see this contradiction within modernity,” Benedikt continues, “how the idea of progress thrives on destruction and always calls for annihilation.” But unlike the revolutionary destruction encouraged by 19th Century anarchist philosopher Michail Bakunin — who stated, “the passion for destruction is a creative passion too!” — the annihilation inherent to progress is rather used as a stimulus for an unaltered continuum of the status quo under the pretext of development. Thus, the contradictory nature is evident again, as well as the religious one: “The present is never here,” Benedikt says, “it’s always something we are aiming for.”

Violence Intrinsic to Social Contracts

The film displays a great amount of violence, which musician Teitur Magnússon sees with a strong reference to alienation. “One feels like it’s somehow supernatural, like it’s not the work of humanity but rather of a monster that’s eating everything up, and we don’t seem to have any control of it.”

Artist Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir furthermore connects this brutality with authority. “Humans aren’t able to handle more power than over themselves,” she says. “As soon as someone is granted higher power, violence enters the picture.” She maintains that some sort of violence is intrinsic to all simplifications — “all of society’s attempts to try and settle upon something” — meaning a wide range of social contracts, from organized religion to written and unwritten rules regarding people’s behaviour.

A Leap Into the Future

As Angeli Novi’s subject is not only complex but also polarized — layered with our cultural history of construction and destruction, repression and revolt — the exhibition doesn’t preach any simple solutions to the great problems it addresses. Such attempts are often just as contradictory as the myth of progress itself, or as philosopher Slavoj Žižek ironically sums up in his analysis of what he calls ‘a decaf reality,’ when the “very thing which causes damage should already be the medicine.”

Thus, one cannot resist wondering if there actually is a way out of the horrors analysed and manifested in the exhibition. Or is humanity bound to be stuck in a premature burial while the seemingly unstoppable catastrophe witnessed by Benjamin’s Angel of History keeps on enlarging into eternity?

With images referring to France’s July Revolution of 1830, Angeli Novi reject such a vision and suggest instead a peculiarly creative approach to revolt. Already during the revolution’s first day, clocks on church towers and palaces all over Paris were shot down and destroyed, signifying the urgent need to nullify predominant social structures and ideologies by putting an end to the time of the oppressors.

In continuum of this rebellious tradition of what philosopher Herbert Marcuse referred to as “arresting time” — directly related to what William Burroughs called “blowing a hole in time” — Angeli Novi transcend the well known demand for “all power to the people” with a leap into the future, granting wings to the mind and calling for all power to the imagination.

_______________________________________________________________

See also:

Saving Iceland: Kárahnjúkar Dam Blown Up in New Film by Angeli Novi

Jón Proppé: Standing in the way of progress

Þóroddur Bjarnason: Jafnvægislist (Icelandic only)

Angeli Novi’s webiste

At the heart of the exhibition, which consists of audio, video and sculptural pieces, is a 20 minute long film in Icelandic and English, bearing the same title as the exhibition. Around 30 people were willingly buried alive during the making of the film, which was shot this year in Greece and Iceland. Soundscapes were created by Örn Karlsson in collaboration with Angeli Novi.

Corporate green-wash and the Kárahnjukar dams play a key role in You Can’t Stand in the Way of Progress. In one of the film’s scenes, the 700 m long and 200 m high central Kárahnjúkar Dam is digitally blown up by the very same explosion that blew up the Dimmugljúfur canyon in March 2003. The first destruction of the 200m deep canyon, which was carved out by the 150 km long river Jökulsá á Dal, played a strategical key role in the conflict about the power plant’s construction, and was meant to signify the government’s determined intention to steamroller Iceland’s eastern highlands in order to produce electricity for the US aluminium corporation ALCOA. As environmentalists warned from the beginning, the construction has turned out to have devastating environmental, social and economical impacts, and contributed also heavily to Iceland’s infamous 2008 economic collapse.

Asked about the cinematic blast, artists Gunnlaugsdóttir and Sigurðsson said: “It was particularly pleasurable to blow up the image of the dam that has now become the main symbol of corporate power abuse and ecocide in Iceland.” Sigurðsson  added that it was “Very appropriate to use for our purpose the same film footage that was used by the Icelandic government in 2003 to dash people’s hopes of saving the Kárahnjúkar area from deeply corrupt forces of corporate greed and governmental stupidity. These same forces have learnt nothing from their past crimes and mistakes and are now lining up for taking power next year in order to continue their destructive rampage through Icelandic nature.”

A press release  from The Living Art Museum states the following:

Angeli Novi create a kind of a kaleidoscopic time machine, examining the plight of generations which, one after the other, become tools and puppets of economic and historical structures. Through symbolism and imagery, Angeli Novi examine the ideological backdrops of these structures, the variously substance-drained core values of occidental culture, as well as as the reoccurring themes of doctrines and clichés in the societal rhetoric, necessary for society to maintain itself.

You Can’t Stand in the Way of Progress opened on 29 September and will run until 2 December. The Living Art Museum is located on Skúlagata 28, 101 Reykjavík.

On May 21, however, DV published an interview with Þórhallur Þorsteinsson, one of the people from Eastern Iceland who had the courage to oppose the construction. In the interview, which turns Janne’s claims upside down, it emerges how heavy the oppression was in the East during the preamble and the building of the dams and smelter was — people where “oppressed into obedience” as Þórhallur phrases it. He talks about his experience, loss of friends, murder threats, the attempts of influential people to dispel him from his work, and the way the Icelandic police — and the national church — dealt with the protest camps organized by Saving Iceland, which lead him to wonder if he actually lived in a police state.

Þórhallur Þorsteinsson is one of the people from Eastern Iceland who protested against the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dams. For that sake, he was bandied about as an “environmentalist traitor”, accused of standing in the way of the progress of society. Influential people attempted to dispel him from his job, he had to answer for his opinions in front of his employers, and his friends turned against him. The preparations for the construction started in 1999, but the construction itself started in 2002. The power plant started operating in 2007 but the wounds have not healed though a few years have passed since the conflict reached its climax.

“There are certain homes here in Egilsstaðir that I do not enter due to the conflict. Before, I used to visit these homes once or twice a week. I am not sure if I would be welcome there today. Maybe. But in these homes I was, without grounds, hurt so badly that I have no reason to go there again. Now I greet these people but I have no reason to enter their homes. I was virtually persecuted,” Þórhallur says, sitting in an armchair in his home in Egilsstaðir.

His home bears strong signs for his love of nature, his bookshelves are filled with books about the Icelandic highlands, nature and animals. For decades, Þórhallur has travelled in the highlands and did thus know this area [the land destroyed by the Kárahnjúkar dams] better than most people. “I had been travelling in this area for decades. I had gone there hiking and driving and I have also flown over it. I went there in winters just as in the summers. I went there as a guide and I knew the area very well. So I am not one of those who just speak about this area but have never got to know it.”

Not only did he know the land but also cared for it. He was hurt to see it drowned by the reservoir and has never managed to accept its destruction. “I am immensely unhappy with everything regarding this project. The dams, the [Alcoa] aluminium smelter, the environmental impacts, and additionally, it has not brought us what was expected. Thus I find hardly anything positive about this,” Þórhallur says.

“The sacrifice of this part of the highlands, the environmental impacts of these constructions, just can not be justified. Waterfalls by the dozen, many of them extremely beautiful, are rapidly disappearing and are just about waterless. A highly remarkable land went under water, under the reservoir, for instance Hálsinn which was the main breeding ground for reindeer. Additionally, this was the only place in Iceland with continuous vegetation from the sea, all the way up to the glacier. This has now be interrupted by Hálslón [the reservoir].”

The Resistance in the East

During the journalist’s trip around Eastern Iceland, many of the locals spoke a lot about how artists from 101 Reykjavík [the center of the city] protested against the construction. Þórhallur, however, points out that the original resistance against the project was formed in the local region. “People tend to forget this fact all the time, as they only speak about 101 Reykjavík. Before the conflict started, an association for the protection of Eastern Iceland’s highlands was founded here. It was founded with the purpose of opposing the construction — Kárahnjúkar had not even entered public discussion at that point although we, of course, knew about it.”

About thirty people joined the inaugural meeting and agreed upon the importance of such an association. Soon, a few people left the organization. “Those who had an opposite opinion compared to what people generally thought about the project were oppressed. The picture was painted in a way suggesting that the residents of Eastern Iceland should stand together. The rest of us, who were against the project, were not considered true members of this society. And we were not good citizens at all. In people’s minds, we were traitors. We were the people who wanted to send people back to the turf huts, as they used to say. We were said to be against development, against creating a good future for our children. All this was thrown at us, that the children would not come back home after studying, that they would not get any jobs. By opposing the construction, I was, in these people’s minds, taking away their children’s future livelihood, preventing the creation of jobs, and lowering real estate prices here in the east. I got to hear all of this. This is how it was.”

The First Protests

At a certain point, the verbal abuse was taken further than can be considered normal. “My life was threatened. A man that I used to work with met me in the street and said that I ought to be shot. Of course, it was painful to live through this, it hurt because they were trying to oppress me. They personified the issue so they could portray me as if I was taking something away from people, as if I was preventing the people here from living an ordinary life. This was the attitude.

I have lived here since I was a little kid and from early age I have been contributing to this community. I have partaken in building it up, socially and as an individual. I have been here all my life. Despite my opposition to this construction, I did not consider myself being any less of a member of this community. Nothing of what I have done justifies the accusations of me wanting to ruin this community. I was simply against this construction. But just like others, I was to be suppressed into obedience.”

Despite all this, Þórhallur refused to throw away his ideals and stay silent. Determined not to be silenced, he continued his fight with both words and actions. “I am probably the only resident in Eastern Iceland who ever has been fined for opposing the Kárahnjúkar dams [in fact Gudmundur Mar Beck, farmer at Kollaleyra in Reydarfjordur (site of the ALCOA smelter) was also fined a hefty sum for protesting against the project. Ed. SI.org]. Along with others, I blockaded a bridge over river Besstastaðaá and was fined,” he says and adds that he did happily pay the fine. “This action was symbolic for the situation at that time, as a token of the fact that the case had become insolvable. We didn’t intend to completely prevent these people from continuing their way,” Þórhallur says. These people were the board of Landsvirkjun [Iceland’s national energy company] as well as Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, then mayor of Reykjavík [later Minister for Foreign Affairs in the government that was toppled by protesters during the winter of 2008-9], and the area that was at stake at that time was Eyjabakkar wetlands. “We read two statements out loud, from the Association for the Protection of Eastern Iceland’s Highlands, and after that the protest was over.”

He does not regret this, even though he had to face the consequences his actions. “I was there in my spare time but at this time I worked for the The State Electric Power Works. Following the protest, we witnessed one of the worst witch-hunting periods in the history of Eastern Iceland. The severity is very memorable to me.”

Harsh Attacks

This protest had been organized by Þórhallur as well as Karen Egilsdóttir, who was an elementary school teacher, and Hrafnkell A. Jónsson, who has now passed away. “Parents phoned the school’s headmaster and demanded that their kids would not have to go to her classes. Politicians in the East systematically tried to get me fired from my job. They phoned both the State’s and the Region’s electric utility directors, demanding that I would be fired because of a thing I did in my spare time. These same men constantly interrupted the Chairman of RARIK [Iceland State Electricity] and I had to stand up for my opinions. I had to show up in front of the Region’s electric utility director and proof that I had been at the protest during my spare time. And as my words were not enough, I had to get my supervisor to come and proof it. Everything was tried. It was harsh.

And when I was informed that very influential people in the East, respected members of their society, were trying to get back at me and get me dispelled from work because of my opinions, I got a very strange feeling regarding what kind of a society I live in.

I also witnessed the behaviour of the police who chased protesters around the highlands, which made me wonder if I lived in a police state. The police tried to prevent protesters from resting by putting wailing sirens on during the middle of the nights, they constantly drove past them and around their cars, took photographs during darkness using flash, and blocked roads so that people could not bring them food. I saw all of this taking place.”

Always Knew of More Opponents

For two years in a row, the protesters set up camps in the highlands. During the first summer [2005], the protest camp was pitched on a land owned by the Bishop’s Office. “The church’s tolerance was not greater than so that the Bishop’s Office asked for the protesters to be removed. The second year I brought them food by taking an alternate route to their camp when the police had closed the main road. I supported these people because they were doing a job that many of us here, the locals, could not do. They were protesting against something that very few people from the East felt up to, due to the way those who dared to protest were treated. We were monitored and the word, about what kind of a people we were, was spread around. That is the reason why many people contacted me, people who otherwise did not dare to voice their opinion, did not dare to join the struggle. I always knew that I spoke on behalf of more people than just myself.”

Thus, when Saving Iceland contacted Þórhallur, he was more than willing to help. He was a spokesperson of the Icelandic Touring Association and explained to Saving Iceland that it would be just about impossible to expel them from the camping area at Snæfell, which had been open to the public for many decades. Eventually, a ten days long camp was to be set up there. “Then the word started to spread and I received a phone call from the Bishop’s Office, asking me if we could stop the camp from taking place. I told them that this camping area had been open to the public ever since the hut was built, but I invited them to come to the East and try to expel them themselves. A few days later, Landsvirkjun’s public relation manager called me and brought up the same thing. He asked about the possibility of putting a limit on the amount of people allowed to stay at the camp, if the health and safety authorities would agree upon this amount of people, etc. etc. I told him the same: “This is an open camping area and we do not choose who gets to stay and who not.” You get the picture of how the situation was at this time.”

Not everybody was happy within the Touring Association. “Some of the board members were against it and conflicts took place within the association. I asked them what they intended to do, if the Association would then, in the future, pick out people allowed onto the camping areas. I said to them: These people just enter the camping area, follow the current rules and pay their fee. While so, we can not do anything. Then, some of the people realized how far they had stepped over limits.

So the protesters came to Snæfell and stayed for ten days. That worked out pretty well but then they went to other places [within the intended reservoir. Ed. SI] and came up against all sorts of misfortunes.”

A Protection Cancelled

He also points out how politicians behaved in the Kárahnjúkar issue. “It is interesting to look at the current discussion about the Energy Master Plan. Some people now say that politicians are interfering with specialists’ work. In that case, it is worth remembering the fact that the Kárahnjúkar dams were removed from the Master Plan and were only briefly considered in that context. Those who decided this were politicians. The project underwent an Environmental Impact Assessment and Iceland’s Planning Agency rejected it due to the drastic and irreversible environmental impacts. But then the case was simply taken into a political process and soon it was decided to go ahead and build the dams, despite the Planning Agency’s view that the environmental impacts were unacceptable.

The way this case was handled should actually be an ample reason for an investigation. This area’s official protection was cancelled so the land could be drowned. Never before had this happened in Iceland, but it was nevertheless done by Siv Fiðleifsdóttir, then Minister of the Environment. That is her monument: being the one Minister of the Environment, responsible for the most severe environmental destruction,” Þórhallur says plain-spoken.

The Old People Got Away

He believes that only the further damming of Þjórsárver wetlands would have been a even bigger environmental sacrifice. “Thereafter came Kárahnjúkar. But this is all about politics, Icelanders have no time for politics. The Danes have done fine without heavy industry. This is always just a question of a political policy, and for decades, the inhabitants of Reyðarfjörður [where the Alcoa smelter is located] have been promised that someone will come and do something for them. In such a position, people tend to forget their survival instinct.

The exchange rate was way too high and all the local fishing industry left. Fishing company Skinney Þinganes moved all their business to Höfn in Hornafjörður, while Samherji [another seafood company incidentally owned by the family of Halldor Asgrimsson, one of two main perpetrators of the Karahnjukar dams] bought fishing quota from Stöðvarfjörður and Eskifjörður and took it away from there. But because an aluminium smelter was on its way, people believed that this was no problem. It is always possible to starve people into obedience. It is easy to change the mentality in such a way that it simply receives. All of a sudden the smelter appeared as some sort of a life buoy. The positive side of it is that now there are much younger people living in Fjarðabyggð [combined municipality of a few towns, including Reyðafjörður] than before. The old people got away. But behind this is the sacrifice. The sacrifice was too big and it was the whole region’s sacrifice. We sacrificed this for the benefits of a North American corporation. We sacrificed everything for too little. While all this took place, people were supposed to stand together and they spoke about the region as a totality. But immediately as the construction was over, all such solidarity disappeared.”

Direct and Indirect Payments

He is, nevertheless, able to understand why the region’s people were in favour of the construction and focused on getting a smelter. “I understand them very well, as they got something out of it. But it is clear that we got too little. 200 people from here work in the smelter, I think. 200 jobs — that is not enough for such a sacrifice. 500 jobs would also not have been enough when compared with the land that was destroyed. But people can be bought up if they are handed money. And I understand farmers who had never seen any real money but were all of sudden promised amounts which they would, in any other case, not have been able to even dream of. But is that the way we want it to be? That people can be mislead by money?

If they would have stood their ground and rejected all of , if the Fljótsdalshérað region would have rejected this, and the local politicians and the public — then this would never have become true. Now, some people state that we never had anything to say about it, but these are people who have a bad conscience because they did not fight against the construction.

Everywhere in the world, except Iceland, these “counterbalance steps” as they are called, would have been considered bribery. Basically, local politicians were bought up. Farmers and influential people were hired on good salaries and farmers got fertilizer to use on uncultivated land. All such indirect payments to influential people certainly have an impact on what decisions are made and on what premises they are made. Some farmers received compensation due to the destruction, but to pay compensation to only one generation is not acceptable. It would have made much more sense to link the compensation with the power plant’s electricity production and pay them to those living in the area on an annual basis.”

Gullfoss Falls Could be Forgotten

Asked about the actual value of the land now lost, Þórhallur answers: “This land used to be an attraction. The waterfalls that have now dried up, the vegetated land that went under water, the wilderness which is becoming increasingly precious. Being able to live with such quality is like nothing else. If well organized, hundreds of thousands of travellers could have been been shown this land without the land being harmed. Seen from a long-term perspective, that could have created more money than the dams.”

Think about the fact that the Gullfoss waterfalls and the hot spring Geysir did not use to be popular tourist places. It was not easy to get to them, say fifty or hundred years ago. We can not sacrifice something just because only a few people know about it. Using that same argument, we could as well dry up Gullfoss, as in a few decades we would forget about it and the next generations would not know what a beautiful waterfall used to flow there. We can not think in that way. One generation can not treat Iceland’s nature, this national treasure, in such a way.

I first drove to Hafrahvammar canyon in 1972 and, in fact, roads and paths have been there for many decades, but they were quite difficult to pass. That could easily have been changed and thus, the access to the area could have been increased.”

“The Same Horrific Situation Far and Wide”

In the end he says that the aluminium smelter has not lived up to society’s expectations. “It still has not been possible to staff the smelter with Icelanders. Only Icelandic-speaking people are hired there but despite all the unemployment and all the advertising, sub-contractors partly staff their companies with foreigners, as Icelanders are not willing to take on these jobs. The labour turnover has been about 25 percent. Despite the fiasco the nation has went through [the 2008 economic collapse], this is not considered a decent option for a working place.

Was the hole purpose of drowning this land, destroying this nature, drying up these waterfalls, to be able to import migratory workers from abroad? Do some of the unemployed people on Suðurnes not want to come to the East, move into all the empty apartments and work in the smelter in Reyðarfjörður? Isn’t there something wrong? Why do people not apply for jobs here?” Þórhallur asks and adds that the pot-rooms and the cast-house are not really desirable workplaces, though some other jobs in the smelter might lure some. “One has to work 12 hours shifts and I know no-one who works in the smelter and looks at it as their future job. I also know people who used to work there but quit because of the long shifts. They did not want to sacrifice their family life for the job. People will work there until they find a better job. If the economy recovers in a few years time, how will this end? Will we end up having to staff the smelter solely with foreign labour on season?

This was supposed to save everything but the same horrific situation is evident far and wide. The smelter had, for instance, no positive impacts in nearby places like Stöðvarfjörður and Breiðdalsvík.

The planned population increase in Eastern Iceland never took place, and as the senselessness was absolute, everything collapsed. No-one lives in the houses that were built — streets were laid but no houses built on them. The municipality is bankrupted, as it is expensive to go into such a construction and to sit up with this half-finished street-system. This situation might recover in a few decades, but it still was not worth it.”

German MP Andrej Hunko states that European police authorities are overtly and covertly planning increased surveillance of activists

Perhaps this is no longer common knowledge, but it still is a documented fact that the police authorities in the Western world operated in such a way throughout the whole of the 20th century.

“Though we have not yet managed to change the laws, we have managed to bring attention to the cause, which is very important.” So says Andrej Hunko who lately has been struggling against police spying on people involved with social movements in Europe. Hunko, who is a MP for the German left-wing party ‘Die Linke’, is concerned about the increased use of such espionage, especially as movements located on the political left wing are increasingly labelled as “leftist extremist and terrorists groups” that “have to” be monitored closely.

“I am concerned about this development. I am utterly opposed to the systematic criminalisation of international activists.” Among other things, Hunko, who is a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament, points out that plans are now being made to co-ordinate the laws of the member-states of the European Union, so that police spies from one country will be able to operate in another country without the special permissions that have been required. Hunko believes that this will subvert the work of social movements in Europe. “All this is happening very quickly and without an informed discussion, neither among members of national parliaments nor among members of the European Parliament, not to mention the public in those countries.”

Espionage Permitted in Iceland

In the beginning of March, I met Hunko at his office in the German parliament. Having forgotten to bring my passport, I was at first denied entrance into the German parliament. A woman sitting at the reception shook her head with a strict expression and maintained that she could do nothing to help me. But as I stood bewildered in the building’s lobby, I was suddenly greeted by a tall, smiling man, whose gait was light, his hair long and gray. Before long the doors opened up and he invited me to come along. After passing through security guards and metal detectors we started our journey and Hunko spoke briefly about the parliament building — this huge wing that consumed the two of us as we walked up the stairs towards his office.

Those who have followed DV’s coverage about the case of Mark Kennedy, the British police spy and agent provocateur, do probably already recognize Andrej Hunko. He has continuously kept the Kennedy case in the spotlight in Europe and has demanded answers from both the German and the European Parliaments. As for a short revision, it can be mentioned that Mark Kennedy, who operated under the alias Mark Stone, infiltrated the Icelandic environmentalist movement Saving Iceland at Kárahnjúkar in 2005. There, Kennedy surveyed the group’s operations, recorded discussions, documented and gathered information, which he then passed on to the British police and possibly the Icelandic authorities as well.

An article published in DV in May last year under the title “Espionage Against Saving Iceland Permitted”, revealed that according to Icelandic laws, Kennedy was allowed to spy on Saving Iceland. This has never been refuted by the Icelandic police authorities and Hunko believes that just as the German police, the Icelandic police were aware of Kennedy’s activities.

Police-Saboteurs

During a telephone interview with DV about a year ago, Hunko stated his opinion that Kennedy’s case is a sign of the threat faced by European social movements. Now, a year later, he reiterated his concerns regarding that by using agent provocateurs like Kennedy, the police in Germany and other countries have in fact encouraged illegal actions within activist movements. In an open letter last year, Hunko appealed to the Icelandic authorities to investigate Kennedy’s operations in Iceland, wherein he mentioned that Kennedy did commit sabotage during protests in Germany and thereby broke the law. Though it has never been confirmed, it is possible that something similar happened in Iceland.

Such tactics are well known among agent provocateurs and are implemented so as to directly impact the development of protests, often to cause disturbances or to defame a particular cause. Agent provocateurs have increasingly become the topic of discussion within European and North American social movements, but such agents are rarely unveiled, as these are clear violations of the laws — something that most police authorities prefer not to be implicated with. However, Hunko points out that as Kennedy’s case has been confirmed and documented, studying it may help understanding the wider context. “It is, in fact, great that the Kennedy case merged to the surface, as now we have a confirmed example of the methods that are implemented. Nevertheless, I think we have a long way to go.”

“Travesty of Democracy”

“By planting agent provocateurs into social movements, where they directly influence the operations of these movements, the respective states have in fact started participating in the organization of political resistance. That way, they can affect the groups’ actions and defame them by violating the law, as happened in Kennedy’s case. Then we are witnessing a travesty of democracy, which in my opinion is a huge problem,” Hunko states, but he was already concerned about this development before Kennedy’s case entered public discussion last year. However, not until that particular case was exposed did international media start talking about police spying in a broader context.

Hunko explains how he had tried to bring the attention of German media to Kennedy’s case, but nothing happened until British newspaper The Guardian started reporting it. “So we needed the British media in order to reach the German media, which is a bit strange,” Hunko says and points out that in the beginning, the Kennedy case got people to seriously think about police spying within democratic societies. But today people have become indolent again. In the wake of the Kennedy scandal it was revealed that the police department that he worked for in the UK has now been disbanded. This is an example of how the wool is pulled over the eyes of the public, Hunko says, as another police department was simply established to take care of the same task.

Lack of Information

“Despite the high profile of Kennedy’ case, it is by no means the sole instance of such police espionage,” Hunko says and adds that similar examples have already surfaced in Germany. Kennedy himself has also admitted his knowledge of other spies operating in Europe. Hunko says that in the German parliament, clear rules regarding freedom of information have made it easy for him and his fellow party-members to obtain information about the case. Thus it was possible to expose the fact that the German police were fully aware of Mark Kennedy‘s presence in Germany.

“The problem, however, is that it is way more complicated to obtain such information in the European Parliament,“ Hunko says and adds that new regulations are now being created, regarding the co-operation of European police espionage departments. “I consider it one of my tasks to bring this information to the public.“

Hunko believes that the Icelandic police — just as the German police — were aware of Kennedy’s presence and intelligence-gathering in Iceland. The Icelandic police authorities have not denied this and in a report by the National Commissioner, published in May last year, it is stated that judging from “the available data”, it is not possible to make clear if Kennedy, when in Iceland, was or was not “in collaboration or with the will and knowledge of the Icelandic police.”

The report also emphasised that the police is, in fact, allowed to use spies and agent provocateurs during the investigations of criminal activities. But the report failed to fulfil its simple objective, that is to bring forward answers to questions by Iceland’s Minister of the Interior. “There is nothing in it, it is just some foam,” Birgitta Jónsdóttir, MP for Hreyfingin, said about the report. She openly asked for clear information about the Icelandic police’s possible knowledge of Kennedy’s presence in Iceland. But so far, no clear answers have appeared.

Ögmundur Wants Increased Investigation Powers

Following the report, Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, Ögmundur Jónasson, stated that law amendments were needed regarding these issues — that it was necessary to change the law in a way that it does not allow the planting of spies into groups of political dissidents. By admitting the importance of law amendments, he admitted that up until then, the police had been allowed to spy on and infiltrate political groups, due to loopholes in the body of laws. On 22 March this year, he emphasised this point in parliament, during a discussion on so-called increased police investigation powers.

It has been confirmed that when environmentalists protested against the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dams, a foreign infiltrator was planted into the group. It has been stated that this policeman violated laws and rules by his operations here and along Europe […] The infiltrator was able to operate at Kárahnjúkar because of how unclear the regulations were regarding the police’s investigation methods. The legislation was far from being strong enough and in addition to that, there were a few regulations in force that were never made available to the public. This has now been changed. About a year ago, new regulations were passed regarding the police’s special investigation methods and actions. These regulations prohibit any kind of proactive police investigations of grass-roots groups or political organizations. Thus it can be mentioned that today, an infiltrator would not be permitted to operate at Kárahnjúkar.

According to the above-stated, the minister believes that the new laws on pre-emptive investigation powers will prevent espionage of such kind. On the contrary, Hunko claims that as long as movements, located on the left-wing of politics, are still systematically labelled as “left-wing extremists and terrorist organizations”, the increased investigation powers will be used to spy on such groups, just as other “terrorist groups”. Thus it is only a matter of definition.

Well Known Methodology

When I mention how unbelievable this case has been, bringing to mind James Bond films from the 1970’s or something that took place in the Soviet Union, Hunko replies calmly: “There is nothing particularly Soviet about this. Western police authorities used spies and agent provocateurs throughout the whole 20th century, in order to infiltrate political movements that were believed to pose a threat to certain interests. What comes to mind at first is the Gladio Project, which was organized by NATO after the Second World War, with the aim of stopping the upswing of communism in Italy.”

The Gladio Project, which has been the subject of various books, was a secret army run by the CIA, the British secret service, the Pentagon and NATO. From the end of the Second World War and up until 1990, the army operated in Italy and its primary goal was to fight against the upswing of communism in West Europe by any means necessary. To that end, American and British soldiers collaborated closely with right-wing terrorists, as explained in a book by Daniele Ganser, ‘NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe’.

“The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II,” was one of the ways The Observer used to describe the Gladio project after its exposure in 1990, while The Times stated: “The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller.” In the wake of the exposure of the Gladio project in Italy in 1990, it became clear that such armies had been active in most Western European countries during the Cold War.

“Perhaps this is no longer common knowledge, but it still is a documented fact that the police authorities in the Western world operated in such a way throughout the whole of the 20th century,” Hunko says before he takes leave of me to continue preparations of questions that he plans to bring forward in parliament.

These news echo the many warnings made by the opponents of the cluster of five dams at Kárahnjúkar and nearby Eyjabakkar, who repeatedly stated that the project’s alleged profitability was nothing but an illusion, but were systematically silenced by Iceland’s authorities.

Now, as these facts finally become established in the media—this time straight from the horse’s mouth—similarly bad news has arrived regarding another big Icelandic energy company. Reykjavík Energy has failed to make a profit from their 2007 and 2008 investments, effectively making them lose money. At the same time, new research shows that the environmental impacts of the Kárahnjúkar dams are exactly as vast and serious as environmentalists and scientists feared.

And yet, more dams, geothermal power-plants and aluminium smelters are on the drawing table—presented as the only viable way out of the current economic crisis.

Dividend: Close to Zero

During the last half century, Landsvirkjun has paid its owner—the Icelandic nation—only 7,8 billion Icelandic Krónur (66 million USD at present value) as dividend, which according to Hörður Arnarson is way too low and in fact almost equivalent to zero. While it would be fair to expect around eleven percent dividend from the company’s own equity, it has been at an average of two percent since Landsvirkjun was founded. The income from the Kárahnjúkar plant has been about 6 percent of its book value, which again is too low, as according to normal standards the income should be 9 percent of the book value.

At present, Landvirkjun’s total earnings have been 73 million US dollars at most, whereas it should be closer to 180 million USD, considering the owner’s 1,6 billion USD equity. It was made clear by Arnarson that the price of energy purchased by large-scale energy consumers plays a major role herein—a price that obviously has been far below any rational logic and standards.

Same Old, Same Old

In 2003, British newspaper The Guardian published “Power Driven”, Susan De Muth’s exclusive report about the Kárahnjúkar power plant, which at that point was already under construction. Among many critiques made in the article, De Muth questioned Kárahnjúkar’s allegeded profitability. She wrote:

Thorsteinn Siglaugsson, a risk specialist, prepared a recent independent economic report on Karahnjukar for the Icelandic Nature Conservation Association. “Landsvirkjun’s figures do not comprise adequate cost and risk analysis,” he says, “nor realistic contingencies for overruns.” Had the state not guaranteed the loans for the project, Siglaugsson adds, it would never have attracted private finance. “Karahnjukar will never make a profit, and the Icelandic taxpayer may well end up subsidising Alcoa.”

Siglaugsson is just one of many who critically analysed the economics of the Kárahnjúkar project, concluding that its contribution to Iceland’s economy would be about none—or in fact negative. But just as many geologists who cautioned against the risks of locating the dams in a highly geologically seismic area were dismissed by Valgerður Sverrisdóttir, then Minister of Industry, as “politically motivated and not to be listened to”, so were the skeptical economists.

De Muth’s article caused a real stir in Iceland, manifest for instance in the fact that Landsvirkjun and Iceland’s Embassy in London contacted The Guardian in a complaint about “so much space […] used for promoting factual errors and misconceptions of the project and Icelandic society as a whole.” Friðrik Sophusson, Landsvirkjun’s director at that time—who in the article is quoted calling all of Kárahnjúkar’s opponents “romantics”—actually offered The Guardian to send another journalist over to Iceland in order to do “a proper report on issues in Iceland”, this time with his “assistance.” ALCOA also sent a barrage of objections to the Guardian. All the facts presented in the article were double checked by the Guardian’s legal team and confirmed to be accurate.

This volatile response from the authorities and corporates only strengthened the article’s points on the Icelandic tradition of suppressing criticism. This was confirmed in a letter to The Guardian by Icelandic environmentalist and commentator Lára Hanna Einarsdóttir, who suggested that “an Icelandic journalist would have lost [his or her] job if he or she had been so outspoken.”

The Coming Recession

And no wonder, as the article pinpointed serious flaws in the whole rhetoric surrounding the plans to heavily industrialize Iceland, plans that would be nothing without the construction of a series of mega hydro dams and geothermal power plants. Whereas these plans were presented as a path to an increased economical prosperity, De Muth quoted aforementioned economist Siglaugsson, who voiced his fear “that a boom during the construction period, with attendant high interest rates, will be followed by a recession.”

And as time told, this was indeed what happened. In an article published in the early days of Iceland’s current financial crisis, Jaap Krater, ecological economist and spokesperson of Saving Iceland, gave it a thorough explanation:

These mega-projects in a small economy have been compared to a ‘heroin addiction’. Short-term ‘shots’ lead to a long-term collapse. The choice is between a short-term infuse or long-term sustainable economic development. The ‘shot’ of Fjardaal [Alcoa’s aluminium smelter in Iceland, powered by the Kárahnjúkar power plant] overheated the Icelandic economy.

Recognizing the dangers of overheating the economy—a point also made clear in Charles Ferguson’s recent documentary, Inside Job—leaves us with two options. As Krater pointed out:

There has been a lot of critique on the proposed plans to develop Iceland’s unique energy resources. Those in favour of it have generally argued that it is good for the economy. Anyone who gives it a moment of thought can conclude that that is a myth. Supposed economic benefits from new power plants and industrial plants need to be assessed and discussed critically and realistically. Iceland is coming down from a high. Will it have another shot, or go cold turkey?

Another Shot, Please

This spring, Landsvirkjun stated that if the company was to start its operations from scratch the aluminium industry would be its prime costumer. This particular paradox—as the aluminium industry is already its biggest energy purchaser—was just one of Landsvirkjun’s many. Another one is their suggestion that Icelanders should “settle upon” plans to build 14 new power plants in the next 15 years. And the third one is the company’s plans to sell more energy to aluminium companies—costumers who, in Landsvirkjun’s own words, do not pay a fair amount for what they get.

But Arnarson has said that the future looks better, referring for instance to the fact that the price for Kárahnjúkar’s energy is directly connected to world-wide aluminium prices, which Arnarson says are getting higher. Herein is the fourth paradox, as linking energy prices with aluminium prices has so far been disastrous for Iceland’s economy—most recently acknowledged in an official report regarding the profitability of selling energy to heavy industry. According to the report, commissioned by the Ministry of Finance and published last Friday, December 2nd, the total profitability has been an average 5% from 1990 until today, which is far below the profitability of other industries in Iceland, and much lower than the profitability of similar industries in Iceland’s neighbouring countries. The year 1990 is crucial here, as since then, Landsvirkjun’s energy prices to heavy industry have been directly linked to global aluminium prices.

It is worth quoting Jaap Krater again here, where he explains the dangers of interlinking these two prices, and describes how increased aluminium supply will lower the price of aluminium and decrease revenue for Iceland:

One might think that a few hundred thousand tons of aluminium more or less will not impact the global market. The reality is that it is not the sum of production that determines the price but rather the friction between supply and demand. A small amount of difference can have a significant effect in terms of pricing.

High Costs, Low Production

On top of this, recent calculations revealed in newspaper Fréttablaðið, show that Kárahnjúkar is Landsvirkjun’s proportionally most expensive construction. When the production of each of the company’s power plants is compared with the production of Landsvirkjun’s property as a whole, as a proportion of their construction costs, it becomes clear that Kárahnjúkar—with its 2.3 billion USD initial cost—is the most economically unviable plant.

Another Energy Company in Crisis

At the same time that Icelanders face Landsvirkjun’s confession to it’s virtually zero profitability, a damning report on another big energy company, Reykjavík Energy (OR), has been made public. It was originally published at the beginning of this year but wasn’t supposed to enter the public sphere, which it indeed didn’t until in late November. Reykjavík Energy’s biggest shareholder is the city of Reykjavík, meaning the inhabitants of Reykjavík.

As already documented thoroughly, the company—which operates several geothermal power plants, including Hellisheiðarvirkjun, largely built to fuel Century Aluminum’s production—is in pretty deep water. But the newly leaked report proves that it has sunk even deeper than generally considered. The report is a literal condemnation of the company, its board and its highest ranking managers, who get a grade F for their job. A good part of Reykjavík Energy’s investments from 2007 and 2008 are now considered as lost money.

The report also reveals that when energy contracts between OR and Norðurál (Century Aluminum) were made, for the latter’s planned fantasy-of-a-smelter in Helguvík, Reykjavík Energy’s directors completely ignored the very visible economic collapse confronting them.

Recently it has been reported that Reykjavík Energy owes 200 billion Icelandic ISK in foreign currency, which is two thirds of all foreign debts owed by Icelandic companies, whose income is not in foreign currency.

What we see here are two of Iceland’s largest energy companies, both of them public property, both having spent hugely excessive amounts of money—or more precisely, collected gigantic debts—struggling to continue to build power plants in order to feed the highly energy intensive aluminium industry with dirt cheap and allegedly “green” energy. As a result, they have ended up without profit and in a deep pool of debt.

And who is to pay for their gambling risks? As Thorsteinn Siglaugsson stated in 2003: the Icelandic taxpayer.

“No Impacts” Become Huge Impacts

To make bad news even worse, the irreversibly destructive ecological impacts of the Kárahnjúkar dams have, in the last months, become more and more visible. To quote “Power Driven” once again (as simply one of a good number of warnings on the dams’ environmental impacts):

The hydro-project will also divert Jokulsa a Dal at the main dam, hurtling the river through tunnels into the slow-moving Jokulsa i Fljotsdal, which feeds Iceland’s longest lake, Lagarfljot. The calm, silver surface of this tourist attraction will become muddy, turbulent and unnavigable.

This was written in 2003. Today, this is what is happening: because of the river’s glacial turbidity Lagarfljót has changed colour, which according to Guðni Guðbergsson, ichthyologist at the Institute of Freshwater Fisheries (IFF), means that light doesn’t reach as deep into the water as before (see photos aside and below). Photosynthesis, which is the fundamental basis for organic production, decreases due to limited light, its domino effects being the constant reduction of food for the fish. IFF’s researches show that near Egilsstaðir, where visibility in Lagarfljót was 60 cm before the dams were built, it is now only 17 cm. They also show that there are not only less fish in the river, but that the fish are much smaller than before.

In addition to this, residents by Lagarfljót have faced serious land erosion due to the river’s increased water content and strength.

This effect was warned of in an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the project by the Iceland National Planning Agency (INPA), purposely ignored and overruled by Siv Friðleifsdóttir, then Minister of Environment. Landsvirkjun had complained to the Ministry of the Environment, and the EIA ended up on Friðleifsdóttir’s table, who nevertheless issued a permit for the construction, stating that the dams would have no significant impact on Lagarfljót.

In response of the news on Lagarfljót’s current condition, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Minister of the Environment, said during parliamentary discussion last September, that her Ministry’s over-all administration regarding the Kárahnjúkar decision-process will be examined in detail. She should demand a similar investigation into the decision making of the Ministry of Industry, whose Minister, Valgerður Sverissdóttir has, along with Landsvirkjun’s Friðrik Sophusson, openly admitted while joking on film with the US ambassador in Iceland, how they enjoyed “bending all the rules, just for Alcoa.”

All the Old Dogs

Despite all of this, Iceland’s energy companies, hand in hand with the aluminium industry, some of the biggest labour unions and industry-related associations—not to mention a majority of parliamentarians, including those of government-member social-democratic Samfylkingin—are still in heavy industry mode, campaigning for the construction of more dams, geothermal power plants and aluminium smelters. Ironically, but still deadly serious, smelter projects such as Century Alumium’s Helguvík, which is at a standstill, unable to guarantee both necessary energy and financing, continue to be presented as profitable solutions to the current crisis.

Met with little resistance in parliament, most of these plans are still considered to be on the drawing table, though most of them seem to be on hold when looked at closely. The latter is mostly thanks to grassroots activists, bloggers and commentators who have systematically reminded the public of the reality, while the bulk of journalists seem to be unable to stick to facts—being extraordinarily co-dependent with those in favour of further heavy-industrialization.

Under the banner of “solving the crisis”, “creating jobs”, and most recently “getting the wheels of work to spin again”, the heavy industry-favoured parties seem to simply refuse to listen to hard facts, even their very own. This attitude is probably best summed up in the recent words of Valgerður Sverrisdóttir, responsible as Minister of Industry, for the building of the dams at Kárahnjúkar, who in response to the news about the power plant’s close-to-zero profitability, said that she wouldn’t want to imagine how the current financial situation would be, if the dams hadn’t been built.

It is said that an old dog will not learn new tricks. And to be honest, ‘old dogs’ pretty accurately describes those making decisions on Iceland’s energy and industry affairs. In order to learn from mistakes and prevent even bigger catastrophes, it wouldn’t be unfair to ask for a new generation—would it?
_____________________________________________________

More photos of Lagarfljót’s turbid condition

These photos are from 2008, which suggests that the current condition is even worse.

The Energy Master Plan is a framework programme, meant to result in a long term agreement upon the exploitation and protection of Iceland’s glacial rivers and geothermal areas. Its making, which since 1999 has been in the hands of special steering committiees, established by the two above-mentioned ministries, reached a critical status in July this year when its second phase was finished and presented to the ministers who in mid August presented their proposition for a parliamentary resolution. Before it will be discussed in parliament the proposition will be open to comments and criticism from the public, as well as interested parties, energy and aluminium companies on the one hand, environmentalists on the other.

Twenty-Seven Energy Options Put on Hold

The proposition lists natural areas into three categories; protection, exploitation and hold. The last-mentioned includes areas that, according to the steering groups and ministers, have not undergone enough research for a decision to be made upon weather to protect or exploit them. Included in this category are, among other, the glacial rivers in fjord Skagafjörður as well as other rivers such as Skjálfandafljót, Hvítá, Hólmsá and Farið by lake Hagavatn in the south-west highlands. Also geothermal areas such as Trölladyngja and Austurengjar in Krýsuvík and certain areas around mount Hengill where the heavily indebted Reykjavík Energy (OR) already operates Hellisheiðarvirkjun, a sulphur polluting geothermal power plant. The 27 areas of the waiting category will be revised in five years, given that satisfactory studies have been made at that time.

Þjórsárver Wetlands to be Saved

Delightfully, the protection category features the uppermost part of river Þjórsá where Landsvirkjun wants to construct Norðlingaölduveita, a dam that would destroy the Ramsar listed Þjórsárver wetlands. River Jökulsá á Fjöllum, which has been seen as an energy potential for a new Alcoa aluminium smelter in Bakki, is also listed protected. The same applies for certain parts of river Tungná, in which Landsvirkjun is already building the Búðarháls dam that will provide energy for increased production in Rio Tinto Alcan’s aluminium smelter in Straumsvík.

The protection category also features geothermal areas such as the ones around Brennisteinsfjöll mountains on the Reykjanes peninsula, as well as Gjástykki, close to volcano Krafla and lake Mývatn. The same goes for the Grændalur valley and Bitra, which are located close to the small town of Hveragerði and have been particularily desirable in the eyes of energy companies. Bitra was saved by a local campaign in 2008 whereas Grændalur was recently threatened when Iceland’s National Energy Authority allowed a company called RARIK to operate test drilling in the valley, in complete contravention of previous rulings by the Ministries of Industry and of Environment.

Krýsuvík, Þeistareykir and Þjórsá to be Destroyed

The exploitation list features geothermal areas Þeystareykir, Bjarnarflag and Krafla in the north of Iceland, as well as Hágöngur in the mid-highlands west to glacier Vatnajökull. Also certain parts of the area around mount Hengill and finally geothermal spots in Reykjanes, Krýsuvík and Svartsengi, all three on the Reykjanes peninsula. Rivers Hvalá, Blanda and Köldukvísl are then all categorised as exploitable. And most critically the Energy Master Plan proposition allows for Landsvirkjun’s construction of three dams in the lower part of river Þjórsá.

Environmentalists Threefold Response

The most common response from environmentalist so far has been threefold. Firstly there generally satisfied by the protection of areas such as the Gjástykki, Jökulsá á Fjöllum and Grændalur, let alone the Þjórsárver wetlands. Shortly after the publication’s release, Iceland Nature Conservation Association (INCA) stated that, if approved by parliament, the Master Plan will mark the end of environmentalists’ forty years long struggle to save Þjórsárver from destruction. Though listed by the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands due to its unique ecosystem, the wetlands have been on Landsvirkjun’s drawing table as a potential for construct a large reservoir, meant to produce energy for a planned expansion of Rio Tinto Alcan’s aluminium smelter in Hafnarfjörður, which was later thrown off in a local referendum. The plan has always been met with fierce opposition, no matter of Landsvirkjun’s repeated attempts to get it through by proposing a smaller dam and reservoir.

Secondly environmentalists are critical of the fact how many invaluable areas, such river Skjálfandafljót, are kept on hold instead of simply been categorised protected. Thirdly there is a clear opposition to the planned exploitation of certain wonders of nature, one example being the geothermal areas on the Reykjanes peninsula. Ellert Grétarsson, a photographer who has documented these areas extensively (his photos are here aside), fears that the drilling in Krýsuvík – covering between five and eight thousand square meters of land – will simply kill the area. And as a matter, says Ellert, the whole Reykjanes peninsula will be riddled with energy construction. Hjörleifur Guttormsson, former Left Green MP and a genuine environmentalists, shares Ellert’s worries and has asked for an integral study of Reykjanes before any decisions are made.

Þjórsá, the Bone of Contention

As as mentioned before the biggest concern regards Þjórsá, which has for a long time been the bone of contention between the two clashing arrays fighting for or against nature conservation. The struggle over Þjórsá has been especially tough, actually to such an extent that the government can be reputed to stand or fall with that conflict in particular. Guðfríður Lilja Grétarsdóttir, MP for the Left Greens, demonstrated, during parliamentary debate last April, her full opposition to the construction of dams in Þjórsá. At that point, three Left Green MPs, who up until then had been increasingly critical of the government and its lack of left-leaning policies, had just recently departed from the party, leaving the government with only one person’s majority in parliament. And as most members of the social-democratic People’s Alliance (Samfylkingin), which makes up the government along with the Left Greens, have not shown a sign of objection to the damming of Þjórsá, it wouldn’t be surprising if the river will be up for a heavy debate in parliament.

In fact it is more than sure that Þjórsá will be among the main matters of argument in parliament. The right wing Independence Party, which was in in power from and is largely responsible for the neo-liberalisation and heavy-industrialisation of Iceland, has always been one of the driving motors behind Landsvirkjun’s plans to dam Þjórsá. When the Master Plan’s proposition was presented in August, Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir, a MP of the party, called for the immediate starting of construction in Þjórsá. She also said she grieved the long period of which the project has been stuck within bureaucracy, referring to the attempts of Svandís Svavarsdóttir, current Minister of Environment, to halt the construction of one of the three proposed dams by refusing to include the dam, Urriðafossvirkjun, in a land-use plans for the parishes of Flóahreppur and Skeiða- and Gnúpverjahreppur (rural districts along Þjórsá) made by them at the request of Landsvirkjun.

Three Dams: Threat to Society and Ecology

The conflict in parliament mirrors the actual conflict in the Þjórsá region where locals have for a long time fought over the river’s fate. There Landsvirkjun hasn’t only used bribes in its attempt to get its plans through local administration, but also threatened farmers whose lands are at stake will the dams be built, by stating that if the farmers do not negotiate with the Landsvirkjun, the company will attempt for a land expropriation. This conduct has created a complete split within the local community, clearly demonstrated in last March when young locals from the region published a statement, in which they demanded a permanent halt to all plans of damming Þjórsá – thereby an end to the social conflict associated.

As a matter of fact two members of the Master Plan’s steering committee recently stated, when interviewed on state radio station RÚV, that due to the serious lack of studies regarding the social impacts of the planned Þjórsá dams, those plans should without any doubt have been put on hold. This is exactly what Guðmundur Hörður Guðmundsson, chairman of environmentalist organization Landvernd, said in last July following the publication of the Energy Master Plan’s second phase report.

Þjórsá’s position in the Master Plan proposition, yet shouldn’t be of any surprise. In the second phase report the three planned dams are not considered to be a great threat to the ecology of Þjórsá and its surroundings – contrary to the opinion of environmentalists who have voiced their worries concerning the dams’ impacts, for instance on the river’s salmon stock. Orri Vigfússon, chairman of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF), recently stated that “never before in the history of Iceland has there occurred such an attack on a sensitive area of wild salmon.” As is considered that the salmon’s spawning and breeding grounds are mosty located above waterfall Urriðafoss, where one of the three dams is planned to be built, Orri believes that the stock of salmon and salmon trout are likely to vanish.

Energy Companies Unsatisfied as Expected

As one could have imagined, Icelandic energy companies and other adherents of large-scale power production for heavy industry, are everything else than happy about the Master Plan’s proposition. Following its release Eiríkur Hjálmarsson, Public Relation manager of Reykjavík Energy, opposed the protection of Bitra on the ground that the company has already harmed the area with three examination boreholes, roads and electricity lines – but most importantly, spent 785 million ISK on the project. As reported earlier this year by Anna Andersen, journalist at the Reykjavík Grapevine, the foolhardy business operations of Reykavík Energy during the last decade or so – including large-scale geothermal projects associated with heavy industry – have brought the publicly owned company a debt of 233 billion ISK (2 billion USD or 1.4 billion Euros). Despite this financial collapse the company still advocates for the continuation of the agenda that brought it down.

Other energy companies have responded similarly, mostly complaining about the amount of areas listed as protected or on hold. Landsvikjun’s director Hörður Árnason has said that compared to the second phase report, the parliament proposition suggest that way too many energy options are put on hold. Another company, Suðurorka, owned by Alterra Power (former Magma Energy) and Íslensk Orkuvirkjun, had planned to construct a dam, called Búlandsvirkjun, in river Skaftá – a plan that the proposition puts on hold. The company argues that few energy options have been studied as thoroughly and while the studies might have been done – and might be thorough – not everybody agrees with the company on the impacts. Farmers in the area have opposed the project as some of their most important grasslands will be drowned under the dam’s reservoir.

Energy company RARIK will, due to the Master Plan, loose its grip on geothermal areas in Grændalur valley, as well as rivers in Skagafjörður and Hólmsá river – projects that the company claims to have invested in with 300 million ISK. Using the same monetary argument, HS Orka, also owned by Alterra Power, has been vocal about its 700 million ISK investment into their proposed, but now delayed if not entirely halted, geothermal plants in Trölladyngja. Finally representatives from Reykjahlíð, a small town that holds the good part of Gjástykki’s property rights, have stated that if the area will be protected, billions of ISK will be demanded as compensation.

The Predominant Strategy

Those arguments do in fact manifest the predominant strategy of those involved in the heavy industrialization of Iceland. Instead of waiting for all necessary contracts to been signed, all needed permissions to be granted, and all required energy to be ensured, the energy and aluminium companies have simply started major construction immediately when only one or a few permissions have been granted. And when criticised, not to mention when forced to stop, they have stated that because these projects have been announced and vast amounts of money put into them, they should be allowed to continue. If needed, they have also pointed out that because the natural areas at stake have already been harmed (by themselves), there is “no point” in preserving them.

One example would be Helguvík, where a framework for a proposed Century Aluminum smelter has already been built but hardly any construction has taken place there for two year. With every day that passes it becomes clear that not only has the company failed to ensure the energy needed to operate the smelter, but also that the energy simply doesn’t exist.

Geologist Sigmundur Einarsson has, for the last years, pointed this out and stated that the amount of energy needed for the Helguvík smelter cannot be found and harnessed on Reykjanes, like stated by the parties involved. For instance he believes that no more than 120 MWe can be harnessed in Krýsuvík, contrary to the official numbers of 480 MWe, and has repeatedly demanded answers from the authorities about where from the rest of the energy is supposed to come. Just as Saving Iceland’s questions about the whereabouts of energy for Alcoa’s planned smelter in Bakki, Sigmundur’s questions have never been answered, but he claims the Energy Master Plan proofs his theory.

Yet Another Three Kárahnjúkar Dams!

Environmentalists have reacted to the energy companies’ complaints and asked how on earth the companies can still pretended to be unsatisfied. As pointed out by Landvernd, these company’s are about be granted permission to harness energy equivalent of three Kárahnjúkar dams. From 2004 to 2009, Iceland’s energy production duplicated, largely with the construction of Kárahnjúkar dam, and is currently 16,900 gigawatt-hours. If the Energy Master Plan will be accepted as proposed, the energy companies will be able to duplicate the production again in few years, says Guðmundur Hörður, chairman of Landvernd, and continues:

The increase of public electricity usage is about 50 gigawatt-hours per year. The expansion entailed in the proposition would thus sustain that particular public increase for the next 265 years! If this will be the conclusion, the energy companies can be very satisfied. Still they send their agents onto the media, in order to cry and complain. That doesn’t give a good hint for a settlement.

Other environmentalists, Ómar Ragnarsson for instance, have mentioned that the whole discourse surrounding the Energy Master Plan portrays a false image. While the plan regards Iceland’s each and every hydro and geothermal area, potential for exploitation, the areas that have already been harnessed are kept outside of the discourse. Ómar says that it is simply false to state that “only twenty-two areas” have been categorised exploitable, as twenty-eight large power plants have already been built in Iceland. That means that out of the ninety-seven considered in the Master Plan, fifty have already been or will be utilised. In addition to the twenty-seven areas put on hold, another thirty-two have yet not been categorised by the steering committees, which makes the current proportion of protected areas even lower.

Ómar has also pointed out mismatches within the proposition. One example regards geothermal area Gjástykki that is listed as protected, as it is “a part of Krafla’s volcanic system, which has a protection value on a worldwide scale,” like stated in the proposition. But according to Ómar this will depend entirely on definitions. As an energy option, Vítismór, which is a part of Krafla’s volcanic system and is an inseparable part of the Gjástykki-Leirhnjúkur area, is currently listed as an addition to the Krafla power plant and would thus, regardless of its position within the Master Plan, be available for exploitation.

Limnology (or freshwater science) professor Gísli Már Gíslason upholds Ómar’s argument and has stated that half of Iceland’s “profitable hydro power” has already been utilised. One of those rivers is Jökulsá á Dal, harmed by the infamous Kárahnjúkar dam, which in order to be built required disallowing the protection of Kringilsárrani, an extremely important grassland for reindeer. This is not a unique incident as, for instance, the three dams in river Láxá are also manifestations of hydro power plants built in protected areas.

The Coming Struggle

Notably by the above-listed contradictions, which though demonstrate only a small part of the debate about the Energy Master Plan so far, the coming struggle about the fate of Iceland’s nature is going to be harsh and heavy. Armed with the rhetoric of economic crisis, unemployment etc., those in favour of heavy industry – in other words a big part of parliament, the energy companies, the Associations of Industry and Employers, the country’s biggest trade unions, and most recently Samál, a joint association of aluminium producers in Iceland – use literally every opportunity to push for the further development of industry, especially aluminium. In order for that development to occur, the country’s glacial rivers and geothermal areas have to be exploited on a mass scale.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, need to sharpen their knives and both ask and answer a great amount of questions. What, if any, are the actual benefits of heavy industry and its parallel large-scale energy production? And what are its impacts on Iceland’s society and ecosystems? No less importantly, what are its global impacts such as on the atmosphere or bauxite communities in India, Guinea, Hungary and Jamaica? How has it affected the economy and what are its contributions to the current economic situation? What are the impacts of the building of big dams and geothermal power-plants, fuelled by extremely high loans, bringing a temporary pump into the economy that inevitably leads to the demand for another shot? And what is the value of nature per se?

Only by answering all of these and many more questions, one can honestly try to answer the one fundamental question regarding the Energy Master Plan: What actual need is there for yet another three Kárahnjúkar dams, or in fact just a single more power plant?

Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national energy company, intended to channel river Skaftá to river Tungnaá river through Langisjór, which would effectively become a reservoir. The Skaftá dam (Skaftárveita) would have added another 7 km2 to the lake-reservoir with the purpose of increasing the energy capacity of planned dams in rivers Þjórsá and Tungnaá. The three planned dams in Þjórsá have been met with fierce local and national opposition whereas the construction of Búðarháls dam in Tungná is already taking place, its energy meant for increased aluminium production in Rio Tinto’s Alcan smelter in Straumsvík. Effectively, the damming of Langisjór would lead to a sediment build-up and increased turbidity which would destroy the lake ecosystem.

The enlargement of Vatnajökull national park involves two areas, which in total match 420 km2. On the one hand is the area of lake Langisjór, one of the biggest pristine lakes on Iceland’s highlands, and mountains Tungnárfjöll, which wilderness and unique formations are linked to volcanic activity on large-scale eruptive fissures. Amongst those are tuff ridges Grænifjallagarður and Fögrufjöll, which maturated during a Pleistocene volcanic eruption, as well as the north-east part of volcanic canyon Eldgjá, which in 934 spouted an enormous lava eruption. On the other hand is the uppermost part of the Skaftáreldar lava, south-east of volcanic fissure Lakagígar, which formatted during the well known 8 month long Laki and Grímsvötn eruption in 1783-4. Including the Skaftárledar lava in the national park is meant to protect the extremely uncommon biotope of the area.

According to geophysicist Helgi Björnsson, Langisjór and its surroundings make an unique area on a global scale as nowhere else is such enormous volcanic activity to be found under a Pleistocene glacier. The natural monument consisting of Lakagígar, Eldhraun and the tuff ridges lying from Grænfjallagarður and north-east on Langisjór’s both sides, has an unique educational and scientific value, and is considered likely to get on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Eldgjá lava from 934 and the Skaftáreldar lava from 1783-4 are the biggest of their kinds during the last several millennia. Would Landsvirkjun’s ideas of changing Langisjór into a reservoir been realized it is considered that Langisjór would have filled with mud, all the way south to Útfall, in 80 years, and in about 150-250 years the whole lake would probably have been half-filled with mud. Roads would have been counstructed in the area, which along with dams, reservoirs, dikes and other structures, would have completely changed the area’s countenance for futurity.

As a part of the plan to heavy-industrialize Iceland, the right-wing government of Sjálfstæðiflokkur and Framsóknarflokkur (in power from 1995 to 2007, Framsóknarflokkur then replaced by social democrats Samfylkingin) excluded Langisjór and its surrounding area from the Vatnajökull national park in order to able the way for Landsvirkjun’s plans. Early in 2002 the management of the much debated Energy Master Plan of Iceland, published a temporary report on the valuation and comparison of possible hydro power projects, especially done for the government to compare different options with the infamous Kárahnjúkar dam, which then was in its beginning stages. The report – in which it stated that the environmental impacts of Kárahnjúkar dam would be the highest of all, which still did not cease its construction – displayed Skaftárveita not only as the most economically valuable project but also as one of the least environmentally destructive.

Such statements have systematically been objected by environmentalists, who now, by the officially declared protection of Langisjór, have seen one of their biggest victories realized.

A slide-show of photos from the area surrounding Langisjór can be viewed here.

Since October 2006 Orkuveita Reykjavíkur (Reykjavík Energy) has produced geothermal energy on Hellisheiði, predominantly for the Norðurál/Century aluminium smelter in Grundartangi, Hvalfjörður. Since then increased sulphur pollution in the power plant’s surrounding area, as well as in the area around Reykjavík, has regularly become a topic of discussion and Sigurðardóttir says that the pollution’s impacts are systematically underestimated. Instead of using recent researches into the issue, Mannvit bases the EIA on prediction-models, but new studies by the University of Reykjavík indicate that the increased use of medicine for asthma and heart disease angina pectoris is directly linked to increased sulphur pollution.

Sigurðardóttir pointed out that according to an assessment made by the Public Health Authority (PHA) the construction at Gráuhnjúkar could increase the amount of sulphur in air by 40 percent. Since the energy production at Hellisheiði started in 2006, increase by 140 percent has already been measured at Hvaleyrarholt, close to Hafnarfjörður. The PHA’s concerns are the exact same as those from the PHA of Hafnarfjörður and Kópavogur. In the preliminary EIA there is no mention of climate and the fact that due to easterly winds the pollution from the power plant travels regularly to Reykjavík.

The impacts of hydrogen sulphide are well known but there is lack of knowledge about the long term impacts of low sulphur valency on people’s health. Sigurðardóttir said that nothing is known about the results of Reykjavík Energy’s experiments with refinery equipment. “Suitable equipment already exists but it is expensive and there is a question how much will there is to put it up” she said.

Mannvit, the engineering firm that made the preliminary EIA, is directly connected with the construction of Hellisheiði power plant and the planned expansion at Gráuhnjúkar. The company, which according to its website states to be “dedicated to the development of green energy”, is the result of the merger of Iceland’s three major engineering firms: Hönnun hf., VGK hf. and Rafhönnun hf. Due to the 2008 merger, Mannvit is linked to all major energy and heavy industry projects in Iceland, as the three merged companies “have played significant roles in Iceland’s development into a modern, industrialized nation,” like it says on their website. The list of Mannvit’s projects includes the three aluminium smelters in Reyðafjörður, Grundartangi and Straumsvík, as well as the Kárahnjúkar dam.

See also this analysis from Saving Iceland on the harmful effects of geothermal energy on an industrial scale: Development of Iceland’s Geothermal Energy Potential for Aluminium Production – A Critical Analysis PDF

Landsvirkjun’s new plan was presented at the company’s annual general meeting, which took place on April 15th. According to the company’s director, Hörður Árnason, the planned power plants are to be built in several rivers, including Þjórsá, Tungnaá and Hólmsá, as well as geothermal areas in the north of Iceland. The construction of Búðarháls Dam in Tungnaá has already started and Landsvirkjun plans to start energy production there in 2013, whereas all the other options are still being looked at in the making of a framework programme concerning the use and protection of Iceland natural resources.

These plans are presented as a way to increase Landsvirkjun’s profitability as the the company is heavily indebted after the Kárahnjúkar disaster, especially in comparison with other European energy companies. This means that even more loans are needed for the construction of the new power plants, which later will have to be paid up by the same method. In other words: A vicious circle.

Saving Iceland and other environmentalists have repeatedly warned against large-scale energy projects as a counterweight to the current economic crisis, e.g. in an article in Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið in October 2008 where Jaap Krater, ecological economist and one of Saving Iceland’s spokespersons said:

How did the [Alcoa] Fjardaal smelter contribute to Iceland’s economic crisis? The two billion dollars for the construction of the country’s largest dam [Kárahnjúkar] had to be borrowed by the state. That led to a more than significant increase in the current account deficit, which is now felt in increased inflation and depreciation of the currency. The economic cost now needs to be coughed up.

And he then continued:

Note that any schemes that demand new power plants associated with a significant amount of borrowed capital will have this effect, whether an expensive dam or power plant is meant for aluminium, a silicon refinery, data centre or some other purpose.

During a recent presentation of Landsvirkjun’s plans, held in the University of Iceland, the company’s representatives highlighted their interest in three possible energy purchasers; data centers, the European energy market (through a marine cable) and above all the aluminium industry. Like repeatedly reported by Saving Iceland all proposed aluminium projects in Iceland are on hold at the moment, because of either financial or energy-related uncertainties but due to massive mismatch in media coverage it is hard to get a clear picture of the situation.

At the same time as Landsvirkjun proudly presents its plans for a “new Kárahnjúkar dam”, the company, along with the minister of industry, states that the Icelandic nation has to settle up on a joint energy policy. There was never a joint reconciliation upon the Kárahnjúkar Dam, in fact it split the Icelandic nation in two conflicting arrays, which reveals Landsvirkjun’s democratic jargon as nothing but clear Orwellian Newspeak. It is known to both the company and Iceland’s authorities that Icelanders will never reach an agreement about such large-scale energy production, especially when it is aimed to be sold to aluminium companies.

After many years of preparations the Greenlandic government say the final decision on Alcoa’s proposed smelter will be taken at the spring 2012 of the parliament. It is more likely, as the global history of the industry and the evidence in Greenland tells us, that the decision has in fact already been made undemocratically behind closed doors, despite the decreasing support of the Greenlandic people. In fact Alcoa and the Greenland government are so keen on passing the project that they have just hired an eighth employee at their national company Greenland Development- formed to enable the industry to go ahead. Juaaka Lyberth’s explicit remit is to influence public opinion on the smelter through the media. Greenland Development paints a rosy picture of an aluminium future for Greenland, but will their promises of prosperity come true? A comparison to Alcoa’s Fjardaal project in East Iceland suggests that many will not.

Local employment?

“The aluminum project is a major project that will offer a large number of stable and lasting jobs.” says Minister for Industry and Mineral Resources, Ove Karl Berthelsen.[1]

Despite this claim Alcoa recently asked the Greenlandic government’s permission to use Chinese contractors to build the two hydro dams and smelter. Chinese workers would be paid half the salary of members of the Greenland Workers Union. They claim this will be necessary to make the project competitive and that the Greenlandic labour force will not be sufficient[2].

Greenland Development responded immediately to this unpopular news by sending out a press release explaining why competitiveness was so important. The release explained that since the financial crisis China has increasingly dominated the market for aluminium smelting due to their low cost of construction and production. Building a smelter in China costs $3000/ton of production capacity compared to $4500 – £5000/ton in Iceland or Saudi Arabia. Greenland is in direct competition with these prices and will have to provide very good terms for the company if they want the project to go forwards[3]. ‘Good terms’ means cheap labour and foreign workers over Greenlandic contracts.

The labour question has dominated debate on the smelter in Greenland recently. Bjarne Lyberth, Head of the organisation Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland is concerned that other important issues are being sidelined:

“In my view the issue on cheap foreign labour is just one of many problems. There is a risk that this becomes perceived as the main hurdle to the project and other serious cultural, social, health, environmental and, economic impacts just become “minor issues” to deal with later.”

However, the promise of jobs is usually cited as the biggest rationale for building such huge industrial constructions, and it is a very tempting one in economically deprived rural areas where smelters are often built. When the decision on the Fjardaal aluminium smelter and associated Karahnjukar dams was pending, the Iceland government made similar claims. They promised the Confederation of Icelandic Labour that the ratio of Icelanders to foreign workers at the dam construction site would be about 8:20, amounting to 3000-5000 jobs for Icelanders[4]. In reality the construction company Impregilo only employed around 100 Icelandic workers out of 1100 employees at the site. Many of these workers were Chinese, Portuguese and other non EU nationalities. Impregilo claimed that Icelanders didn’t want the work as it was not as highly paid as they had hoped, and there was a high turnover. In contrast the Chinese workers were very stable despite tough conditions[5]. Increasing company profit by using temporary low paid foreign labour is known as ‘social dumping’.

The construction of the dams was plagued with controversy as it was revealed that foreign workers were being paid less than Icelanders and made to work in unsafe conditions without proper equipment[6]. 1700 work related injuries were reported during the dam’s construction, 120 resulting in long term or permanent inability to work. Four workers are known to have died from injuries on the site[7] [8]. There is evidence that when the Icelandic coalition of unions became vocal about the treatment of workers in the press they were silenced by bribes from Impregilo who promised to pay into the union’s pension funds. A few years later it was revealed that the payments had not been made and the union (ASI) raised rights of foreign labourers again. Shortly after the funds were finally paid and ASI’s complaints ceased.

National income from aluminium export?

Greenland Development‘s recent news release explains;

‘The project economy of each individual project is decisive. The competition is as such between countries that it among other issues hinges on the terms a host country will provide for a new project. Countries in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are all trying to develop smelter projects. Only projects that are competitive on a global scale will have a chance to become real projects and be implemented[9].’

In reality, being ‘competitive on a global scale’ with countries such as China means selling energy and labour as cheaply as possible and providing tax breaks that make the project attractive to the company – minimising benefit to the host country. National unions of workers the Greenland Employers? Association and the Organisation of Greenlandic Employers have warned that the only income from the project in its first few years will be tax paid by its employees, and with much workforce coming from abroad on low wages this is likely to be very little[10]. The government has also said that company tax should not be counted on for the first fifteen years, suggesting that large tax breaks have been given[11].

In Iceland predictions that the smelters could be an economic drain and not a boost are increasingly being proven. Energy prices paid by the smelter operators were kept from the Icelandic public until very recently following a scandal when it was revealed that  Century Aluminium had been paying a fifth of domestic prices – the cheapest energy for aluminium production in Europe[12]. Prices for Alcoa’s Fjardaal smelter were accidentally revealed by then company Chairman Alain Belda when he claimed that Iceland was charging some of the lowest rates in the world, just $15 per MWh (megawatt hour)[13]. The deals they made link energy prices to the cost of aluminium so when the market drops the taxpayer can end up subsidising the companies rather than profiting from them.

In the run up to Iceland’s dramatic financial crash in 2008 the OECD concluded their country report by warning Iceland that ‘large scale public investments are inherently risky’ and strongly advised them not to approve further aluminium developments until it was clear whether they would get a long term profit from existing ones:

‘No major investments in energy-intensive projects, including those already in the planning phase, should proceed without prior evaluation within a transparent and comprehensive cost-benefit framework (including environmental impacts and inter-generational effects).[14]’

Two years earlier a report by Icelandic bank Glitnir warned that any benefit from large scale aluminium developments “is probably outweighed by the developments’ indirect impact on demand, inflation, interest rates and the ISK exchange rate”. Similarly economist Thorsteinn Siglaugsson claimed that “Kárahnjúkar will never make a profit, and the Icelandic taxpayer may well end up subsidising Alcoa”[15]. A 2009 report by Economist Indriði H. Þorláksson concluded that the industry would have negligible benefits on the Icelandic economy, possibly causing long term damage, and should not be considered a way out of the financial crisis[16].

Despite all of this evidence Greenland Development have dedicated another recent news article on their website to trying to disprove that Iceland’s crash had anything to do with the smelters. Though they admit that ‘high investment in construction also played a role which put pressure on the economy’, this was ‘hardly significant‘. Instead they claim that aluminium industry ‘has been crucial in earning foreign currency for Iceland during the crisis‘[17].

In another article Greenland Development’s website enthusiastically claims that the aluminium price is likely to rise in the coming years due to demand for ‘green’ cars and solar panels and economic growth in Asia[18]. Though this would somewhat increase Greenland’s chances of making a profit there is no guarantee of market stability, which has been very volatile in recent years. A critique of the concept of ‘green aluminium’ can be found here[19].

Already there seems to be some degree of caution in Greenland about taking too much of the burden of construction costs and loans which caused so many problems in Iceland. The Greenlandic government is considering bringing in a third party to ownership of the project instead of taking the whole of the 50% stake they were offered by Alcoa.

Public more sceptical now

Despite Greenland Development’s expensive propaganda war, public support for the Alcoa smelter has been steadily decreasing. People’s organisations Avataq and the newly formed Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland have worked hard to discover the truth about the environmental and social impacts of the smelter and the ethical track record of the company abroad. As a result Greenland Development reported that their own October/November 2010 survey of public opinion revealed rapidly changing attitudes:

‘there is a very low degree of knowledge, as well as a less positive attitude towards the project than in previous years. Of the citizens that have expressed either a positive or negative attitude towards the aluminium project, there is thus now only a small majority (54 percent) who are positive.[20]’

The main reason for the ‘increased scepticism‘ towards the project was ‘concern about the possible environmental consequences‘ with 20% of those interviewed believing that the project ‘can have a markedly negative impact on nature and the environment‘ compared to only 7% the previous year[21]. This was identified to be mainly due to critical media coverage and Greenland Development’s ‘information manager’ was hired shortly afterwards to address this. Environmental protection group, Avataq, says Greenland Development has deliberately tried to distort public opinion about the aluminum industry. Their head Mikkel Myrup explains:

“Greenland Development has assumed a role as an aluminium industry propagandist, and do that rather primitively. But this wouldn’t be possible without strong support from the civil servants in the central administration and the smelter municipality administration. The civil servant’s pro industry influence on the cabinet members and the parliament is a massive democratic problem, because they suppress and/or ignore information that would equip the politicians with a wider, and more realistic knowledge base from which to make enlightened decisions.”

With three operating smelters Icelanders have had a good opportunity to assess the benefits of the industry which has been promoted as their economic saviour. A recent online poll by news outlet Visir revealed that only 13% of participants thought heavy industry was the most important area to focus on. Despite high level promotion of the industry’s benefits by certain sectors of the national leadership evidence shows that tourism and fishing are still the most important and growing industries for the Icelandic people[22].

In other articles that are concerned with Mark Kennedy’s involvement with British groups the Guardian several times quotes British activists in saying that Kennedy did not act as a strategist or decision maker in their movement, but that he made him himself useful as a driver and an energetic facilitator in day to day logistics. One source is reported by the Guardian in even going so far to say that Kennedy was not considered the sharpest knife in the box. This would make the Guardians’ claims about his supposed vital role in Saving Iceland surprising to say the least.

We have written this further detailed statement to discuss the various claims made in relation to Kennedy’s role in Iceland. These claims include: that Kennedy was pivotal in the birth of Iceland’s environmental movement; that he was instrumental in training Icelanders in direct action; that he was a key figure in various protests in the east of the country; and that he was a key decision maker within Saving Iceland.

Kennedy had no role in the birth of Icelandic environmentalism
Mark Kennedy did not return to Iceland for the 2006 protest camps at Karahnjukar, Snaefell and Reydarfjordur. Although he continued attending some of our gatherings for a while, his activities within the campaign gradually diminished, and finally ceased in 2007.

It appears the Guardian reporters are quite ignorant of Icelandic environmentalism in claiming that Kennedy “played a key role” in forming it. Saving Iceland is by no means the only nature protection group in Iceland. There are several other Icelandic environmentalist groups and NGOs, some older than the Saving Iceland network. Kennedy was also not instrumental in founding Saving Iceland in 2005 as the Guardian claims, as SI was in fact formed in 2004.

Kennedy did not provide training to Icelandic protesters and did not play an important role in actions
Mark Kennedy was never a trainer for Saving Iceland nor did he train any Icelanders. The only training he may have taken part in is training Icelandic policemen during their self confessed “collaboration” with the UK police, in 2005-2006. The purpose of this collaboration was to help Icelandic police to deal with SI activists.

Kennedy did not play a major role in actions in Iceland in 2005. He had already left the protest camp before it was evicted from Karahnjukar, and was not present when we relocated at Vad Farm in Skriddal. Kennedy only participated in two mass lock-ons at the Karahnjukar dam site, prior to the eviction, and consequently he played no part in a number of actions we carried out following the eviction later that summer, both at Karahnjukar and at the construction site of the ALCOA smelter in Reydarfjordur, or the actions we carried out in the Reykjavik area in August. Kennedy also never ran errands to Reykjavik on behalf of SI; as far as we know, he never set foot in the capital.

Thus the following statements published in the Guardian are nonsense: “It was during this campaign that Kennedy showed the Icelandic activists the techniques of ‘lock down’ – when protesters attach themselves to an immobile object – and how to block roads by constructing tripods from scaffolding, placing a protester at the apex” and “Undercover police officer made himself indispensable to the movement, activist claims”. It is worth noting that a reporter who uses the words ‘lock-down’ for a practice that is generally referred to by activists as ‘lock-on’, clearly does not know much about direct action protests.

None of the activists in the first two lock-ons at Karahnjukar in 2005 were actually Icelandic; these were the only actions Kennedy was part of in Iceland. All the people involved apart from Kennedy were highly experienced activists from different countries who had no need of any training or introduction to such methods, by Kennedy or anyone else. Furthermore, road blocks and tripods were not even employed that summer. SI did not use tripods as means of protest until in the summer of 2008 at the site of a Century Aluminum smelter in Hvalfjordur, near Reykjavik, several years after Kennedy had come to Iceland.

Saving Iceland founder Olafur Pall Sigurdsson had already organized several direct action workshops for several days for Icelandic activists in Reykjavik, in collaboration with the Icelandic peace movement in the spring of 2004 and again under the banner of SI in June 2005. These workshops were given by other foreign trainers. Both courses were publicised openly and reported on by the Icelandic media with a certain amount of puzzled amusement.

It is possible that Mark Kennedy exaggerated his importance to Jason Kirkpatrick, one of the Guardian’s sources. Also, the so-called ‘training videos’ Kennedy showed to Kirkpatrick were in fact footage from the real actions at Karahnjukar. DVDs with this footage were in circulation amongst activist and media all over Europe. There have never been any training videos of SI activists, let alone any with Mark Kennedy as a trainer.
The actual direct action training courses in Iceland took place in May 2004 and June 2005, while Kennedy did not come to Iceland until July 2005, after the protests at the G8 summit in Gleneagles. Consequently, Kirkpatrick’s testimony is founded on the boasting claims of a professional liar, i.e. Kennedy.

As regards Kennedy’s involvement in SI info tours and his supposedly vital role in linking Sigurdsson with other European activists. Kennedy’s role was limited to driving and carrying out some of the logistics for a few of the many trips Sigurdsson and others undertook to publicize the struggle to save the Icelandic highlands. To say that Kennedy was vital in introducing SI to foreign activists or that he introduced direct action to Iceland is therefore utterly false.

Kennedy was never a key decision-maker in Saving Iceland
Likewise, the claim that “Kennedy quickly became a […] key decision-maker” in Saving Iceland is completely erroneous. Saving Iceland is not a hierarchical organisation but a loose campaign, we have no leaders and important roles are shared and rotated. We count on a fluid group of inspired and dedicated people contributing from time to time to the best of their capacity and interests. The emphasis on ‘key-decision makers’ is a form of dramatisation that may help sell newspapers, but shows a lack of understanding of the basic mode of organisation of most of the networks that are written about in the Kennedy case. Besides, if most of the British activists did not find Kennedy to be the sharpest knife in the box, why should SI have found him to be any sharper? Several other people were much more capable and dedicated than he was when it came to strategy and decision-making.

During the few years Mark Kennedy was involved with SI, he was simply one of a large and very active group of foreigners who contributed their efforts to the organization. Indeed, the only remarkable thing about Kennedy’s involvement in Saving Iceland is the fact that he was a police spy.

The reports of the Guardian are misleading, they misrepresent the true context of Kennedy’s involvement and are not in keeping with the integrity that the Guardian journalists at first wished to project in their communications with Saving Iceland. Saving Iceland demands to see the real truth that lies behind Kennedy’s heinous personal betrayals in the name of state-sanctioned violations of basic human rights.

Kennedy did act as an agent-provocateur
Saving Iceland can now confirm that Mark Kennedy did certainly act as an agent provocateur within our network, regularly calling for more extreme forms of protest, and that he abused trust in clearly an illegal manner, even using sex as a means to gain access.

We want to see that the truth about his betrayals while under the command of the British authorities, and possibly in collaboration with the Icelandic authorities, be exposed and that those responsible be made to answer for their actions. The British and Icelandic police and governments, for whom Kennedy seems to have gathered information, must end their silence about which agencies and authorities were aware of his undercover work in Iceland.

Kennedy himself has now confirmed, in an interview with the Daily Mail, that when operating in Germany he was always in direct contact with the German authorities and personally passed on information to the German police. This has been confirmed in the Bundestag by high-ranking German police officers. The Daily Mail reports that “Kennedy says he would travel abroad with fellow activists, and feed information back to his British superiors to share with other nations. ‘Activism has no borders,’ he says. ‘I would never go abroad without authority from my superiors and the local police.’” Why should the case be any different when it comes to Icelandic authorities?

Illegal Icelandic collaboration with British services?
Saving Iceland will in the next few days publish evidence that shows that the police in Seydisfjordur and Eskifjordur did not tell the truth in their statement to the Icelandic National Broadcaster by stating that they did not have any “dealings” with Mark Stone/Kennedy in 2005. Later, after a lengthy delay in answering, the Icelandic State Police, “refused to comment” on the National Broadcasters’ question if the State Police was aware of a British police spy in SI. Saving Iceland asks: What are the State Police hiding?

Finally, on 2 February, Haraldur Johannesen, head of the Icelandic State Police, asserted in a meeting with Ögmundur Jonasson, the Icelandic Minister of Internal Affairs, that the State Police had no idea that the British agent was operating in Icelandic jurisdiction. (Update.) Apparently the Minister ordered the police officer to submit a report about this.

Icelandic legislation does not allow pre-emptive investigations. If the British police was operating without the knowledge of Icelandic authorities they were clearly violating Icelandic jurisdiction. If the Icelandic police received any of the information gathered by Mark Kennedy they broke the law.

The published confirmation [in the Police Magazine] of close collaboration between British and Icelandic authorities on the issue of Saving Iceland in the winter of 2005-2006 together with the statements of the police in Seydisfjordur and Eskifjordur, that contradict the evidence that Saving Iceland is in possession of, gives ample grounds to assume that the Icelandic authorities were in the know about Mark Kennedy’s infiltration of Saving Iceland.

Instead of reporting made-up spectacle, the Guardian and other media should now focus on breaking open the silence of the British and Icelandic governments as regards to whom Kennedy’s information was passed on and which agencies/authorities were aware of his undercover work in Iceland.

When put into context with work related accidents in the rest of Iceland during that same eight year period, it becomes crystal clear that Kárahnjúkar was by far the single most dangerous workplace in the country. The 120 workers still disabled from work ammount to over 70% of all work related disabilities registered in the period, with eight times as many disabilities spawned from Kárahnjúkar than the rest of the country combined. The four who died as results of their accidents count 15% of all work related deaths in the country for those eight years, but they were 26 in all.

86% of those injured in Kárahnjúkar were employed by the construction company Impregilo, but they are known for being seriously lacking in worker security wherever they work around the globe. As an example of how safety issues were handled, Impregilo workers in Kárahnjúkar were forbidden from holding fire exercises, as it would waste valuable work-hours.

According to Kristinn Tómasson, senior physician at the Occupational Safety and Health Authority, the injury rate at Kárahnjúkar was exceptionally high and doesn’t stand comparison to any other projects in Iceland, the main reason being that safety issues were lacking in all regards and a proper risk assessment had never been fully completed.