Two rules for industry in Iceland: Don’t
piss off the elves,
and do NOT mess with Bjork. She is the Hugo Chavez of Iceland, and if you take
her country’s geothermal natural resources, she will threaten you with expropriation
of nearly half a billion dollars of your company’s assets. Also, she
is friends with the first openly gay head of state
in modern times, Johanna Sigurdardottir, who recently stood shoulder to
shoulder with the pop queen to sing protest songs outside of Iceland’s
parliament building. Their bird-like caterwaul was specifically aimed at
Canadian geothermal company Magma Energy, which is trying to seal a deal on
Iceland’s largest private geothermal company, HS Orka.
A fountain of blood in the shape of a
girl: Bjork’s on a quest to see Iceland take back its geothermal resources, after
selling off 9 percent in a deal authorized by Iceland’s previous (now extremely
unpopular) government. Her latest move: a petition signed by
47,000 people—nearly a sixth of the entire population of her
adorable little Christmas village of a country.
Nature forges a deal to raise wonderful
hell: Iceland could be the only developed country in the world to skip the
industrial revolution and go straight to whatever sustainable post-carbon
paradise lies beyond it, says Bjork, but only if they keep their
geothermal resources intact. The country already gets the overwhelming
majority of its primary energy from clean, renewable geothermal
power. This wellspring of heat has also been proposed as a way to help
the country rebuild its shattered economy, which won’t work if they
auction off the underlying resource off like some kind of resource-cursed
developing world basket case.
If you complain once more, you’ll meet an
army of me: Bjork
publicly threatened Magma Energy with expropriation
of its assets—that means the Icelandic government would just take
back the geothermal power plants, but maybe pay for them if they’re feeling
charitable. Iceland has
no navy, though, so this might not be the best idea.
Regardless, the latest development is
that Iceland’s government is about to give Magma Energy a talking to.
The obviously frustrated company has said it was “promised” that the
deal would undergo no more reviews, but they should have known not to tangle
with a woman who controls a robot tank
with teeth.
You shouldn’t let poets lie to you: After her
meeting with the prime minister, Bjork told reporters: “Basically we are
in agreement on the issue, but it’s always a question of methods. In plain
language—it’s a question of how to deal with the system, the
bureaucracy.”
We’re just hoping she understands
“the issue” and “the bureaucracy” better than she
understands the magic of television:
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