March 30, 2019

The Richest Country in the World.

Iceland has everything: breathtaking landscape, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls, fish, sheep and energy. And so much of it. Countries worldwide try to save energy and find alternative energy sources. Uniquely Iceland will never have to worry about energy nor fresh water. This volcanic island is sitting on the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates drifting apart making it a hot spot for geothermal energy. Geothermal is everywhere: it heats homes, supplies hot water and is also turned into electrical energy. Mountain spring water supplies the homes’ cold water needs and runs out of faucets and flushes toilets. Icelanders let their water faucet run a while either for very cold drinking water or scathing hot water. The houses are heated with underfloor heating with hot spring water running through the pipes. If it is too warm in the apartment, Icelanders open a window rather than turn down the heat. Vegetables are grown in enormous green houses geothermally heated and brightly lit (link to the BBC program ‘Earth Lab’ on Island’s geothermal energy here) About two sheep per Icelander wander the island all summer long and fish is always fresh caught in the morning.

There is no shortage, no reason to save. Energy and water are an endless resource in Iceland. That is an overwhelming thought. Even incredible wealth has it’s limits and billionaires have a budget, but energy is limitless here. Money can’t buy this. Are the relative cold outside temperatures the price Iceland pays? Wealth is always relative and there is always another side of the coin. If Iceland would have a tropical climate, it would be totally overrun and overpopulation would devour Iceland’s other natural resource: it’s pristine nature.

When I visited the first time in summer of 1991, I hardly saw a tourist. I rented a car and drove around the whole island, some stretches just by myself. Today, Iceland lives primarily from tourism and struggles to establish a balance not to jeopardize what attracts tourists in the first place: it’s nature. In the last 25 years, the population grew from 250.000 to 350.000 and tourist numbers skyrocketed from 200.000 to 2 million. There is a building boom which Icelanders cannot sustain by themselves, so immigrants mostly from Poland augment the work force and today 10% of the population are foreigners.

The island is vast, only slightly smaller than Cuba and about the same size as New York state, it has room for more citizens and tourism. Icelandic environmental agencies and green politicians criticize an unmonitored aluminum industry and the country’s marginal recycling in comparison to it’s European neighbors. Very few incentives for electric cars are given to fend off green house emissions levels, which are at the same level to Russia. Policies and governmental regulations seem to be needed and fast, as tourism and population are steadily growing.

This paradox reminds me of an experience of my mother’s when she visited an Maldive island in the Indian Ocean in the 1970’s. Tourism had just started coming to those remote islands and brought with it soda cans which the islanders threw onto the beach cleaned by the tide, where they had thrown their organic waste for eons. Not realizing that cans take a very long to break down, they came to find the cans washed back onto the beach a few days later. They were devastated, their symbiotic cycle with nature was lost. My mother recounted this as if the Maldives had tasted Eva’s apple (more on waste management in the Maldives here). 25 years later an El Niño year heated the ocean temperatures so high that two-thirds of the coral reefs of this small island nation died. They got proactive and trash is now collected on one island as a dedicated trash island. But rising ocean levels threaten to flood the entire island chain. The president of the Maldives has made pleas to US and European leaders to halt climate change and has been looking for suitable land for his people for when that day comes.

It is not too late for Iceland’s politicians to understand the responsibility wealth brings. The wealth of energy, clean water and pristine nature will be the most valuable commodities of the future if correctly managed now. Sweden has found a way to recycle all of its waste and Norway saved its forests by managing them sustainably (link).

Iceland had a head start in front of the rest of the world and I am curious if the Icelanders will continue on their Viking victory path – the only nation to throw bankers in prison after the 2008 crash! Will they soon do the same with greedy politicians not crafting environmental legislation to protect their country? Go Vikings!