Iceland's President Says the World Should Look to Icebound North for Global Change Help


WASHINGTON — Iceland's president is offering his tiny North Atlantic country as a case study for the world as it works its way through the perils of global warming. Iceland is already experiencing clear signs of climate change, but also offers a good source of energy that has not yet been tapped, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson told an audience at the Washington Summit on Climate Stabilization. "Nowhere in the world can you see traces of climate change as clearly as in the North," said. Experts estimate that about one quarter of the energy potential of the world is in the North, including hydrological and geothermal forms of energy, Grimsson said. Soon the country will produce close to 100 percent of its energy by renewable sources, he said. The summit, sponsored by the Washington-based Climate Institute, is meant to identify ways to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases within its participants' lifetimes. Grimsson said he understands the goal. "In my own country I have seen in my lifetime an extraordinary focus" on climate change, the 63-year-old president said. As a child half a century ago, he seldom saw a day when Reykjavik, now a pristine capital, was not beneath a blanket of smoke. Its harbor was dominated by the coal terminal, and its waterway was clogged with coal-carrying ships. He said Iceland has changed that by focusing on new energy sources. Had he thought in the 1950s he would see such a metamorphosis, Grimsson said, "I would have been considered a Utopian dreamer." He said Iceland's approach is "to find the big solution to the problem, whether nuclear, geothermal, whichever is the best solution." Often that is geothermal, he said, which is so versatile it can be used to electrify a house, a village, a city, a region. Even the oil industry is vital because of its drilling technology. Iceland's energy comes sometimes from miles inside the earth, and Grimsson said the technology to reach it "is one of the benefits of the oil industry." Russian scientists have vast experience in dealing with conditions in the North, he said, and they have much to offer toward solving climate change problems. Grimsson said he is "reasonably optimistic" that the world will deal with the effects of global warming, because the subject has become widely discussed. The world must remember, however, that "the forces that dominate the Earth still are much stronger than human capabilities," he said. "That is why this is so important." Source: Associated Press Contact Info: