Saving Iceland

Rights Action Group. Email: rightsactiongroup@gmail.com

No Smelter TnT – good articles but hasn’t been updated in a while.

Smelta Karavan

17 August 2007

The SI collective gave a presentation on Thursday 16th at the UK’s Camp for Climate Action. Over 30 people attended to hear about the heavy-industrial destruction of Iceland, Trinidad, South Africa, Brasil and India. Read More

By Felix Padel and Samarendra Das, Economic and Political Weekly, December 2005

“The evidence we present goes against the conventional history of aluminium, which tends to portray the industry as central to various countries’ economic power and prosperity, without understanding the financial manipulation and exploitation between and within countries, and the true costs.”

Few people understand aluminium’s true form or see its industry as a whole. Hidden from general awareness are its close link with big dams, complex forms of exploitation in the industry’s financial structure, and a destructive impact on indigenous society that amounts to a form of genocide. At the other end of the production line, aluminium’s highest-price forms consist of complex alloys essential to various ‘aerospace’/’defence’ applications.1 The metal’s high ‘strategic importance’ is due to its status as a key material supplying the arms industry. In these four dimensions ‘ environmental, economic, social and military ‘ it has some very destructive effects on human life.
Read More

The local council in the westfjords yesterday gave their permission to build an oil refinery in the area, to “save the community from disintegrating since people are moving away.” They hope that a factory like this would interest young people in moving back to the area.
The likeliest place for the refinery would be Arnarfjordur, a place of tremendous beauty as most places in the westfjords are.
Scientists have pointed out that oceanic iceblocks may make the sailing route to the area unsafe for bigger ships. Also, a refinery of this size would pump one million tons of C02 into the atmosphere per year, which more than exhausts Iceland´s quota according to the Kyoto agreement.
Read More

The first issue of Saving Iceland’s magazine Voice of the Wilderness (download pdf) introduces all the key issues and speakers at the Saving Iceland 2007 Conference.

“The hurt many of us feel towards the developments in eastern Iceland is so great that we will never accept another aluminum smelter to be built in Iceland. We would not be surprised if the environmental NGO’s and grass root organizations would consider the proposed developments in Northern Iceland to be a serious provocation on the behalf of Alcoa.”
Read More

Rio targets being top player in aluminium
By Nigel Wilson

August 08, 2007 06:00am
Article from: The Australian

RIO TINTO aims to be the world’s biggest aluminium producer – with the help of some of the world’s cheapest energy – before the end of the decade.

Rio Tinto Aluminium chief executive Oscar Groeneveld said yesterday that the possibility of a new aluminium smelter in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, coupled with closer links with Abu Dhabi once the Rio Tinto/Alcan merger was completed, would create a leading world player in the aluminium business. Read More

What this news item fails to mention is that the majority of the Icelandic reindeer population live in the highlands around Karahnjukar. A third of the population calve in the “protected” area of Kringilsarrani, now devastated by the Halslon reservoir.

Iceland Review
7 August 2007

Two reindeer, a female and her offspring, have been spotted in Arnarvatnsheidi in west of Iceland this summer.

The Icelandic reindeer population is confined to the east part of the country so this unusual sighting has generated speculation as to whether the animals are migrating westwards. That might increase the risk of animal diseases being transmitted between the different regions of Iceland.

In an interview with the national radio RÚV, Halldór Runólfsson, Chief Veterinary Officer, expressed his worries over such a migration but doubted that these two reindeer were indicative of that. Therefore he didn’t think it was necessary to kill these two far-traveled animals.

The Sidney Morning Herald
August 6, 2007

US environmental campaigner Erin Brockovich has joined West Australian residents to examine the merits of a court case against mining giant Alcoa.

About 160 Yarloop residents have complained of respiratory problems, skin irritation, sore throats and eyes, extreme fatigue, mental dysfunction, stomach upset, blood noses, cancers and organ failure in the last 11 years.

They claim emissions from Alcoa’s Wagerup refinery are causing the ill effects. Read More

06 August 2007
Indigenous farmers arrive in London to protest at mining giant’s AGM
an Action Aid report

Kumuti Majhi and Phulme Majhi, members of the Kuntia Kondh indigenous group travelled to London to protest at the annual general meeting of mining giant Vedanta.

They are concerned about the environmental impact of its proposed aluminium mining and processing plants in the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, India. Read More