Saving Iceland

START ART – Laugavegi 12b, Reykjavik

Over a dozen major Icelandic artists have donated their work for an exhibition and auction in Start Art, Artists House in support of this weekend’s Saving Iceland conference.
The exhibition is open 3-5 July at 3pm-7pm, both days, and concludes with an auction of the artworks on Thursday 5 July at 5pm. The works and the artists will be introduced an hour before the bidding begins. Birna Þórðardóttir will act as auctioneer.
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Global Consequences of Heavy Industry and Large Dams
Saturday & Sunday July 7 – 8th, 2007, Hótel Hlíð, Ölfus

Click to enlarge

Updated July 5th

After three years of struggling against large dams and heavy industry, the Saving Iceland campaign will connect with struggles around the globe. The Saving Iceland Conference will be featuring speakers from South and North America, Africa, India and Europe, activists and scientists. Saving Iceland’s magazine Voice of the Wilderness (download pdf) introduces all the key issues and speakers, including for example Dr. Eric Duchemin (University of Montreal, consultant for the IPCC), Gudbergur Bergsson (writer), Cirineu da Rocha (Dam-Affected People’s Movement, Brazil) and many others, and the conference program.

Ráðstefna „Saving Iceland“ 2007 – Hnattrænar afleiðingar stóriðju og stórstíflna
Laugardaginn og sunnudaginn 7. og 8. júlí 2007
Hótel Hlíð, Ölfusi
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Iceland Review
31 July 2007

Icelandic investment company Geysir Green Energy has acquired one fifth of the shares in the Canadian geothermal company Western GeoPower Corporation. Geysir Green Energy, which specializes in investments in the geothermal energy sector, paid ISK 600 million (USD 9.79 million) for the 40 million shares it bought.

Ásgeir Margeirsson, CEO of Geysir Green Energy, will become a member of the board of WGP. In an interview with Fréttabladid daily, he declared that the acquisition was a part of Geysir’s strategy to become an influential player in the American energy sector. WGP is constructing a geothermal plant in Sonoma County in California. The capital that Geysir has provided will be used to complete the construction.

Geysir Green Energy is owned by FL Group, Glitnir Bank and VGK-Hönnun. It is the biggest shareholder in the energy company Enex which has also undertaken projects in the US. “Therefore, we have a twofold connection to the US energy market,” says Margeirsson.

31 July 2007

Twenty three year old British Saving Iceland activist Miriam R. has been arrested by the Icelandic police. She was protesting against the Icelandic government’s support for heavy industry, in particular Rio Tinto Alcan’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Iceland. Reports suggest she is still being held by the police. (1)

Dr. Derek Wall, Green Party Principal Speaker, said: “Although Rio Tinto have been making the headlines for their recent purchase of the Canadian aluminium group Alcan for 38.1bn dollars (18.7bn pounds), it is the environmental degradation and damage that goes hand in hand with most of their projects that should be drawing the spotlight.

“Iceland is the largest remaining wilderness in Europe. Activists such as Mirian R., most of whom belong to the Saving Iceland campaign group, are protesting against plans to turn it into the heavy industry capital of Europe – with companies such as Rio Tinto reaping in the profits. Read More

Marvin Lee Dupree, the Grapevine, Issue 11, 27 July, 2007

A great philosopher once said in a rather cryptic manner that nothing changes; one could say that our naked, tame souls cannot fathom this simple dictum of life, how our reality is merely constructed out of our simple hopes and childish beliefs. Meaning and change are part of the same illusion, stemming from a lack of ability to realise this uncomplicated truth. There is quite simply no single straightforward truth in life. In Buddhism, life is simply suffering until the final stage, Nirvana, is reached. Christianity invokes forgiveness and caritas or brotherly love. Islam is submission to the one true God head. For the neo-liberal it is money, stemming from greed, that is the alpha and omega. And for some the force is the truth. Others choose their own truth derived from a belief system as a cornerstone for their reality, or life, which is only a grain of sand in the whole cosmos. The many truths of the universe fill it up in a manner that recalls Archimedes’ famous sand corn experiment. Read More

9 August 2007

This morning Saving Iceland received this message from Danish friends of Icelandic nature:

“Last night, the 8th of August, the embassy of Iceland in Copenhagen, Denmark, was targeted for its complicity in the ecocide of Iceland’s precious wilderness. Read More

7 August 2007

Today lovers of nature almost danced on the graves of ALCOA, ALCAN, Century and Elkem when a mysterious power “thump” in the national grid managed to knock out power to all their factories!

At around 3pm today a power surge which originated from around the Hvalfjordur region (where Century and Elkem run their aluminium-cancer and alloys factories), created such a surge that all power to the west, north and east of Iceland was brought down, even Reykjavik’s for a split second. Energy was not restored to the heavy industry factories for a number of hours. Unfortunately, whilst we were counting the minutes these factories were offline, we are told that the pots of molten aluminium did not cool down enough to destroy them entirely.
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